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Camaros and Chiantis The Farcical Tale of How Hollywood's Most Anticipated Sequel Fell Into the Wrong Hands.
Author Thomas Harris calls it "a terrible mistake— possibly the worst anyone has ever made in the history of show business." Burt Reynolds calls it "Fate's way of apologizing for all those crummy years." Whatever your vantage point, everyone can clearly agree on one thing— the film version of Harris' Hannibal that will be hitting movie screens across the country early next year is nothing like anyone expected. The trouble started last summer, when, upon publishing the first print of the wildly successful follow-up to Silence of the Lambs, Harris began speaking to his agent about the inevitable movie rights. "I could sit here all day long and say that I wrote the book to fulfill some literary drive within myself, but we all know I'd be lying. Everyone loved the Lambs movie, me included. Hannibal was just my way of submitting a first draft to the studio heads without the hassle of annoying pitch meetings. I do enjoy my privacy, you know." Convinced that a reunion of stars Jodie Foster and Sir Anthony Hopkins, along with director Jonathan Demme— all of whom walked away from Lambs one Oscar richer— was a no-brainer, Harris sat back and let his agent do the talking. That, he explains in hindsight, was his fatal mistake. To understand what happens next, one must first delve a bit deeper into the history of the Harris franchise. As has been pointed out several times before, Silence of the Lambs was not the first appearance of Hannibal Lecter. America's favorite homovore actually made his debut in the novel Red Dragon, which was later made into a moderately successful cult hit called Manhunter, produced by Dino DeLaurentis. Given the relative box office disappointment of Manhunter, DeLaurentis passed on his option to film Silence of the Lambs, a decision for which he has beat himself up ever since. Refusing to make the same mistake twice, DeLaurentis shrewdly arranged to retain his contractual option of Harris' characters and situations. This way, he would again have first dibs on the next Lecter project, and this time he wouldn't pass it up. And that's where the trouble came in. In preparing the new contract, someone (and no one is sure whom to blame— both sides are obviously laying full responsibility on the other) inadvertantly misspelled DeLaurentis' name. A spell check program containing an enormous database of thousands of Hollywood personalities then substituted the misspelling with the next closest thing— Dom DeLuise. DeLaurentis signed away his option without even reading the fine print, and the rest was history. "So my agent calls me," says DeLuise, well into his sixties and more or less out of work for the last decade. "He says that, through his brilliant negotiating tactics, he has managed to nab me the hottest project in Hollywood— the Silence of the Lambs sequel— which is funny, because I, of course, was involved in a parody called Silence of the Hams. I later found out that my agent had precious little to do with the whole thing. But that didn't stop me from taking full advantage of the situation." And take advantage he did. Within weeks, DeLuise and a team of writers had transformed Harris' disturbing tome into a hilarious vehicle for himself and longtime pal Burt Reynolds, as well as series newcomer Adam West and estranged Reynolds ex Loni Anderson. Entitled Hannibal Run, the story intertwines the Lambs mythology with that of the early 80s series Cannonball Run. "I had some reservations about keeping a lot of the elements in," said DeLuise. "But I figured that the best way to gain as large an audience as possible would be to sort of combine these two successful franchises into one cohesive whole. Besides, I was contractually obligated to use the cast of Hannibal— Julianne Moore, who replaces Jodie Foster, Gary Oldman, who I believe is just amazing, and of course, Sir Anthony Hopkins. I really feel that this is going to be, by far, the best Run movie yet." Harris, on the other hand, refuses to even discuss the matter further. "You want a comment? On the record? How about 'whatever'? That's the best I can give you," he says with a world-weary sigh. DeLuise, on the other hand, couldn't be happier. "If I could say only one word to sum up my feelings about this project..." He then proceeds in his own approximation of Hopkins' infamous slurping noise from Lambs. Hopkins, lurking in the background, can only manage a shrug. "Hey, this can't be any worse than Freejack," he says, then straps on his Lecter mask, climbs into a Camaro and rides off into the sunset. |
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Julia Roberts So what if she can't act? She has a big smile! We suddenly realized we hadn't written about this classy girl next door in over two weeks! Ack!
