LOS ANGELES, April 24 (UPI) — Oscar-winning screenwriter Ted Tally said The Silence of the Lambs, which returns to theaters Sunday and Wednesday via Fathom Entertainment, is a different experience in theaters.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Tally said he has seen film buffs who know the film intimately get surprised again.
“If you think you’ve seen the movie but you’ve never seen it in a darkened theater with a lot of strangers, it’s a whole different experience,” Tally said. “Even though you know the plot twists, you still get lost in it.”
Tally is not surprised that people quote obscure lines like Buffalo Bill’s (Ted Levine) threat, “It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.” Tally said every aspect of the film has captured some attention.
“It’s amazing how its reputation has held up and even seemed to grow,” Tally said.
Gene Hackman launched ‘The Silence of the Lambs’
The Silence of the Lambs was not the first Hannibal Lecter movie. The 1986 film Manhunter adapted Harris’s Red Dragon, featuring Brian Cox as the cannibal doctor. Gene Hackman was originally attached to play Lecter in Silence, and direct the movie. Tally began adapting the book for him in 1988.
“Gene Hackman is the one who actually gave me the job,” Tally said. “Mike Medavoy at Orion Pictures called me after Gene left and said, ‘Don’t be discouraged. Keep writing. We believe in you.'”
Hackman never explained his exit and never directed a film in his career. Tally finished his first draft with Jodie Foster in mind for FBI trainee Clarice Starling, then had to convince Jonathan Demme.
“Jodie Foster was hardly a brainstorm,” Tally said. “She had just won Best Actress [for The Accused] the year before. She was the right age, the right intelligence and the right spirit. She was everything that’s perfect for the part.”
The screenwriter also suggested Anthony Hopkins for Dr. Lecter. Tally had seen him in The Elephant Man, playing Adolf Hitler in The Bunker, and was aware of Hopkins’ classical theater training.
“I thought if he could handle Shakespeare, he can handle this language and make it sound like real conversation,” Tally said. “And I thought he has a kind of sexiness to him.”
Tally was pleased with all of Demme’s casting choices, including Anthony Heald as prison warden Dr. Chilton. Heald captured the codependent relationship Chilton had with Lecter, which Tally incorporated from Harris’s book.
“He had his own agenda,” Tally said. “He clings to Lecter like a talisman because it gives him a feeling of importance in the psychology field.
Adapting ‘The Silence of the Lambs’
In The Silence of the Lambs, FBI behavioral science chief Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) sends Starling to interview Lecter to help profile kidnapper Buffalo Bill. The film explores her relationship with Lecter, and the plight of Bill’s latest victim, Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith).
As with any adaptation, Tally could not include everything from Harris’s book. Tally’s biggest regret is that he could not include a subplot about Crawford’s wife.
“His wife is dying during this time,” Tally said. “It was very moving in the book. I tried to save it but it was just too off the main subject.”
When Tally began researching the psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane, he realized he could never catch up to the research Harris did for the book.
“I asked him one time, ‘Thom, how can you know all this? How can you know what the minute procedures are in a hospital for the criminally insane?'” Tally recalled. “He said, ‘My mother did volunteer work in one.'”
The FBI cooperated with the production too. Demme just had to convince them to excuse one bit of Hollywood logic, Tally recalled.
“They said, for instance, they would never send a trainee in a field interview by herself, like happens at the end of the movie,” Tally said. “Jonathan said, ‘If we don’t send her by herself, we don’t have a movie. We don’t have an ending.’ So they said okay, they can live with it.”
Silence of the Lambs was not Tally’s first adaptation. He had already completed the script for the 1990 film White Palace when he was hired on Silence.
“It was the script of White Palace that caught Gene Hackman’s attention,” Tally said.
After the success of Silence of the Lambs, Tally worked almost exclusively on literary adaptations like Before and After, All the Pretty Horses and 12 Strong. He has written some original screenplays that were not made.
“Pretty quickly after Silence of the Lambs, I got offered every book that came down the pike so I was able to pick and choose,” Tally said.
One of those adaptations was not Harris’s follow-up, Hannibal, directed by Ridley Scott in 2001. However, Tally returned to adapt a Hopkins-led version of Red Dragon.
“I assumed that after I turned down Hannibal that I was out of the Thom Harris business,” Tally said. “He never held it against me that I had passed on Hannibal.”
‘Silence of the Lambs’ controversies and legacies
Amid the popularity and acclaim, The Silence of the Lambs was also controversial. Not only for the graphic, macabre subject matter, but this film and Basic Instinct were held up as negative portrayals of LGBTQ characters as psychopaths and murderers.
As Buffalo Bill, Jame Gumb skins his victims and is piecing them together to make a woman suit for himself. In February, Levine spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about his regret that Buffalo Bill was ever used to criticize trans people.
Levine also said he never played him as gay or trans, but as “a [expletive] up heterosexual man.” Tally has also thought about Buffalo Bill, whom Harris created, in the years since.
“I never thought of Jame Gumb as representing all transgender people any more than Hannibal Lecter represents all psychiatrists,” Tally said. “I couldn’t think of any way to make him a more useful role model for trans people.”
The legacy of Starling has been a gratifying epilogue to the film’s success. She is now one of the most lauded female protagonists in movies. At No. 6 on AFI’s “100 Years… 100 Heroes & Villains,” Starling is the highest ranked woman on the list. Lecter is the No. 1 villain.
Her effectiveness in the book and the film adaptation, Tally said, came from addressing realities women face in professional settings and movies.
“She has to endure the male gaze in every form while going about her job,” Tally said. “She’s constantly being hit on or underrated, taken for granted even sometimes by her mentor, Crawford.”
In one scene, Starling tells Crawford how he treats her publicly sets the tone for his junior agents. Tally valued that scene too.
“It’s like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, she had to do everything he did backwards in high heels,” Tally said. “That’s what Clarice Starling has to do in this movie. She has to carry such a burden.”