Trivia for
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) More at IMDb Pro »

• Dino De Laurentiis, who had produced Manhunter (1986), passed on Silence of the Lambs because Manhunter had flopped. He gave the rights away free to Orion Pictures.
  
  
• Then Secretary of Labor, Elizabeth Dole's, Washington, D.C. office doubled for that of the F.B.I. director's office in the movie.
  
  
• The Tobacco horn worm moths used throughout the film were given celebrity treatment by the filmmakers. They were flown first class to the set (in a special carrier), had special living quarters (rooms with controlled humidity and heat) and were dressed in carefully designed costumes (body shields bearing a painted skull and crossbones)
  
  

• A large part of the shoot took place in Pittsburgh. The city was chosen for its variety of landscapes and architecture, which was necessary to portray various parts of the country. Some of the film's interior, including the Baltimore jail scene in the beginning and the ballroom scene of Lecter in his cage, were shot in Soldiers and Sailors Memorial located on Fifth Avenue in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh.
  
  
• The events in this film occur after the events in Manhunter (1986). Although there are several characters common to both films, there are only two actors who appear in both movies. Both actors play different characters in both movies. Frankie Faison plays Lt. Fisk in Manhunter and Barney in Silence of the Lambs, and Dan Butler plays an FBI fingerprint expert in Manhunter and an entomologist in Silence of the Lambs.
  
  
• Like Casablanca (1942), this movie contains a famous misquoted line: most people quote Lecter's famous, "Good evening, Clarice," as, "Hello Clarice."
  
  
• Both Scott Glenn (Jack Crawford) and Ted Levine (Jame Gumb) have played astronaut Alan Shepard: Glenn in the film The Right Stuff (1983) and Levine in the miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" (1998).
  
  
• Anthony Hopkins described his voice for Hannibal Lecter as, "a combination of Truman Capote and Katharine Hepburn."
  
  
• After the shootout with Gumb, Starling has partially burned gunpowder buried in the skin on the side of her face, the result of a near-miss. One name for this type of injury is "coal miner's tattoo" - a clever reference to the character's background.
  
  
• Scott Glenn's character of Jack Crawford was based on real-life detective John Douglas. Douglas spent time with Glenn to coach him.
  
  
• The pattern on the butterfly's back in the movie posters is not the natural pattern of the Death's-Head Hawk Moth. It is, in fact, Salvador Dalí's "In Voluptas Mors", a picture of seven naked women made to look like a human skull.
  
  
• Buffalo Bill is the combination of three real life serial killers: Ed Gein, who skinned his victims; Ted Bundy, who used the cast on his hand as bait to make women get into his van; and Gary Heidnick, who kept women he kidnapped in a pit in his basement. Gein was only positively linked to two murders and suspected of two hers. He gathered most of his materials not through murder, but grave-robbing. In the popular imagination, however, he remains a serial killer with uncounted victims.
  
  
• A 'Bon Appetit' magazine can be seen in Hannibal Lecter's temporary cell.
  
  
• At least six directors have roles in this film: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Kasi Lemmons, Roger Corman, Dan Butler (who directed episodes of "Frasier" (1993)), and a cameo by George A. Romero.
  
  
• Almost all the scenes in Hannibal's original cell have either a reflection of Hannibal or Clarice, depending on the camera's point of view.
  
  
• The third EMS attendant treating "Sgt. Pembrie" is Jeff Busch, a paramedic in real life and owner of an emergency vehicle company in Pittsburgh that detailed all of the emergency vehicles for the film.
  
  
• Cameo: [Roger Corman] The veteran filmmaker and president of New World Pictures played the FBI Director.
  
  
• Director Cameo: [Jonathan Demme] wearing a blue cap at the end of the film.
  
  
• Cameo: [George A. Romero] the bearded man who accompanies Chilton and the two guards who forcibly remove Clarice Starling after her final meeting with Lecter.
  
  
• In his first meeting with Clarice Starling, Lecter describes the drawing on his cell wall as "the Duomo, seen from the Belvedere" in Florence, Italy. Lecter's line, in fact, foreshadows Buffalo Bill's location; Starling later finds Buffalo Bill living in Belvedere, Ohio.
  
  
• When Jonathan Demme filmed the scene where Lecter and Starling first meet, Anthony Hopkins said he should look directly at the camera as it panned into his line of sight. He felt Lecter should be portrayed as "knowing everything."
  
  
• Jonathan Demme cast Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter based on his performance in The Elephant Man (1980).
  
  
• After Lecter was moved from Baltimore, he was originally to be dressed in a yellow or orange jumpsuit, but Anthony Hopkins was able to convince director Jonathan Demme and costume designer Colleen Atwood that it would make the character seem more clinical and unsettling if he was dressed in pure white. Hopkins has since said that this idea came from his fear of dentists.
  
  
• Brooke Smith gained 25 pounds for her role as Catherine Martin.
  
  
• Brooke Smith (Catherine Martin) and Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill) were actually very close on the set, making Jodie Foster refer to Brooke Smith as "Patty Hearst" (meaning a woman that is actually close with her kidnapper).
  
  
• Anthony Hopkins invented the fast, slurping-type sound that Hannibal Lecter does. He did it spontaneously during filming on the set, and everyone thought it was great. Director Jonathan Demme became annoyed with it after a while, but denied his irritation.
  
  
• The filmmakers had completely prepared to go to Montana to shoot a flashback sequence depicting Clarice's runaway attempt. But after filming the dialogue between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, director Jonathan Demme realized it would be pointless to cut away from their performances and announced, "I guess we aren't going to Montana."
  
  
• Jodie Foster, Jonathan Demme and Scott Glenn - and a few other cast and crew members - did a great deal of research at the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia. They studied under criminal profiling agents, learned about firearms and agent training, and sat in on a number of classes.
  
  
• The first moth cocoon found in one of the victim's throats was made from a combination of "Tootsie-Rolls" and gummy bears, so that if she swallowed it, it would be edible.
  
  
• The film originally was going to be released in the fall of 1990. However, Orion pictures, which distributed the film, decided instead to delay its release until January 1991 so that it could concentrate all their efforts in promoting Dances with Wolves (1990) for Oscar consideration.
  
  
• In preparation for his role, Anthony Hopkins studied files of serial killers. Also, he visited prisons and studied convicted murderers and was present during some court hearings concerning serial killings.
  
  
• Anthony Hopkins's performance was the shortest ever to win a leading acting Oscar.
  
  
• Note Lecter's mention of having consumed a victim's liver with "some fava beans and nice chianti". Liver, fava beans, and wine all contain a substance called tyramine, which can actually kill you if you're also taking a certain class of antidepressant drugs known as MAO inhibitors. MAO inhibitors were the first antidepressant drugs developed, and were used primarily on patients in mental institutions. Lecter both worked in, and was committed to, a mental institution.
  
  
• Cameo: [Edward Saxon] head in jar
  
  
• When Ted Tally was writing the screenplay for the film, he suggested Jodie Foster for role of Clarice Starling. Foster had been lobbying hard for the part from the start but when Jonathan Demme was hired to direct the film, he felt she was wrong for the part and wanted Michelle Pfeiffer instead. Pfeiffer turned the part down because she felt the film was too violent. Demme then agreed to meet Foster and hired her after only one meeting because he said he could see her strength and determination for the part that he felt was perfect for the character of Clarice.
  
  
• Originally, the film was to open with Clarice Starling and a male FBI agent in the middle of a drug bust. They were to burst into the room and make a number of arrests, and only then would the audience be let in on the fact that it was a training exercise. However Jodie Foster was able to convince director Jonathan Demme to change this scene, as she felt it had been done so many times before. It was Foster herself who came up with the idea of opening with Starling running through the assault course.
  
  
• Jodie Foster spent a great deal of time with FBI agent Mary Ann Krause prior to filming and it was Krause who gave Foster the idea of Starling standing by her car crying. Krause told Foster that at times, the work just became so overbearing that this was a good way to get an emotional release.
  
  
• The song heard playing while "Buffalo Bill" does his little dance is "Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus. A more commonly known version of this song is performed by Psyche.
  
  
• The inspiration for the Silence of the Lambs was the real life relationship between University of Washington criminology professor and profiler Robert Keppel and real life serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy helped Keppel in his investigation of the Green River Serial Killings in Washington. While Bundy was executed 24 January 1989, the Green River Killings went unsolved until 2001 when Gary Ridgway was arrested. On 5 November 2003, Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first degree murder in a King County, Washington (Seattle) courtroom.
  
  
• Anthony Hopkins studied videotapes of serial killers as part of his research for the film. After noticing that Charles Manson hardly ever blinked when he spoke, he did the same for Hannibal Lecter. (He did, however, blink at least once during Lecter's conversation with Clarice in his "open-plan" cell.)
  
  
• After working with John Douglas for some time Scott Glenn thanked him and said how fascinating it was to have been allowed into his world. Douglas laughed at this comment and told Glenn that if he really wanted to get into his world, he should listen to an audio tape of serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris torturing, raping and murdering two teenage girls. Glenn listened to less than one minute of the tape, and has since said that he feels he lost a sense of innocence in doing so and that he has never been able to forget what he heard.
  
  
• In the second draft of Ted Tally's screenplay, the names of three characters had to be changed from 'Thomas Harris''s novel for legal reasons. "Jack Crawford" became "Ray Campbell"; "Frederick Chilton" became "Herbert Prentiss"; and, finally, "Hannibal Lecter" became "Gideon Quinn".
  
  
• Despite being recently declared bankrupt, Orion still managed to stump up $200,000 for the film's Oscar campaign.
  
  
• The first film to win the Best Picture Oscar that was widely available on home video at the time of the ceremony.
  
  
• After being cast as Buffalo Bill, Ted Levine had done a lot of research into developing his character by reading profiles of serial killers. Levine later said that he found the material very disturbing. He also went out and attended a few transvestite bars, where he began interviewing patrons, as Bill was also a cross-dresser.
  
  
• One of only three films (the others being It Happened One Night (1934) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)) to win the top five Oscars - Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay (Adapted).
  
  
• Thematic parallel: The tune played by the music box in Bimmel's bedroom is from the Mozart opera "The Magic Flute." Also from a music box, the magic tune releases the heroine from the clutches of a lecherous character who 'covets' her throughout the opera.
  
  
• The movie's poster was as #16 of "The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever" by Premiere.
  
  
• Clarice Starling was chosen by the American Film Institution as the sixth greatest film hero (out of fifty), the highest ranked female on the list; Hannibal Lecter was chosen as the #1 greatest film villain (also out of fifty).
  
  
• Jodie Foster claims that during the first meeting between Lecter and Starling, Anthony Hopkins's mocking of her southern accent was not rehearsed and that Hopkins improvised it on the spot. Foster's reaction of horror was totally genuine, as she felt personally attacked, though she later thanked Hopkins for generating such an honest reaction.
  
  
• Entertainment Weekly voted this as the fourth scariest film of all time.
  
  
• The real-life FBI's Behavioral Science Unit assisted in the making of this film.
  
  
• John Hurt, Christopher Lloyd, Patrick Stewart, Louis Gossett Jr., Robert Duvall, Jack Nicholson, and Robert De Niro were all considered for the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Jeremy Irons turned down the offer.
  
  
• Gene Hackman bought the rights to "The Silence of the Lambs" and was planning to direct the film as well as taking on the role of either Lecter or Jack Crawford, but he withdrew after watching a clip of himself in Mississippi Burning (1988) at the The 61st Annual Academy Awards (1989) (TV), which made him uneasy about taking more violent roles.
  
  
• Thomas Harris, author of the novel "The Silence of the Lambs", has never watched the film because he is afraid it will influence his writing.
  
  
• Michael Keaton, Mickey Rourke, and Kenneth Branagh were all considered for the role of Jack Crawford.
  
  
• Cameo: [Kenneth Utt] the producer appears as the coroner.
  
  
• Although when characters are talking to Starling, they often talk direct to camera, when she is talking to them, she is always looking slightly off-camera. Director Jonathan Demme has explained that this was done so as the audience would directly experience her POV, but not theirs, hence encouraged the audience to more readily identify with her.
  
  
• Anthony Hopkins has stated that he saw the character of Lecter as similar to HAL in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); that is to say, a highly complex, highly intelligent, highly logical killing machine who seems to know everything going on around him.
  
  
• After Jodie Foster first read the Thomas Harris novel, she tried to buy the rights herself, only to find Gene Hackman had beaten her to it.
  
  
• The idea to use glass in Lecter's Baltimore cell as opposed to traditional bars came from production designer Kristi Zea. The idea came about because director Jonathan Demme was unhappy shooting the Lecter scenes through bars, as he felt they negated the sense of intimacy between Lecter and Starling which he was trying to achieve.
  
  

• SPOILER: In the film, Lecter tells Senator Martin that Buffalo Bill's real name is "Louis Friend", an anagram of iron sulfide or "fool's gold". In the novel, he gives the name "Billy Rubin". This is wordplay on bilirubin, a pigment found in feces and the color of Dr. Chilton's hair.
  
  
• SPOILER: The FBI was very impressed by the film's accuracy in depicting criminal investigations, serial killers and their victims. However, they protested against the fact that Clarice discovers Buffalo Bill on her own, since inexperienced agents are never sent out alone on dangerous assignments. When Jonathan Demme explained to them that he wouldn't change it because it would be the psychological climax of the movie, they agreed, saying that it would be the most improbable course of action of all time, never to be repeated again.
  
  
• SPOILER: In an early version of Ted Tally's screenplay, Lecter's ingenious and horrific ruse to escape from captivity in the courthouse is given away by the head of SWAT team (when the top half of the body on the top of the elevator swings down), by recognizing the body. In the final edit we cut straight to the ambulance and Lecter's unmasking.
  
  
• SPOILER: The position of Boyle's (Charles Napier's) body after Lecter has disemboweled and hung him from the cell was specifically based on the work of painter Francis Bacon.
  
  

Related Links