28. Harris also signed off on Demme's proposed change to the ending, the film showing the escaped Dr. Lecter coolly lying in wait in the Caribbean for the arrival of his "old friend" and tormentor Dr. Chilton, calling newly minted FBI Agent Starling to say farewell and assure her she's safe from his particular brand of visit.
The author thought about it, Demme told Deadline, and told him, "'I'll tell you, I would picture Dr. Lecter more quickly strolling on a fashionable back street in Zurich, looking at watches in jeweler's windows. But if you take Dr. Lecter to the tropics, this one thing I'm sure of. He would never sweat.' So, armed with that, when you see the movie, everybody's sweating like crazy, except Dr. Lecter."
29. Interestingly, the 1992 Golden Globes were all over the place, the HFPA naming Foster Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama, but splitting all the rest of the top categories among different movies: Bugsy (Best Motion Picture, Drama), JFK (Best Director for Oliver Stone), The Prince of Tides (Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama, to Nick Nolte) and Thelma & Louise (Best Screenplay to Callie Khouri).
And—yeah, this was a long time ago—there were no SAG Awards yet. They didn't begin until 1995, though Demme won the DGA prize and Tally got the WGA win.
But Oscar night, starting with host Billy Crystal's perfect opener (prompting Hopkins to put his glasses on to get a better look at what everyone was cracking up over), belonged to Silence of the Lambs, winner for Best Picture, Best Director for Demme, Best Original Screenplay for Ted Tally, Best Actor for Hopkins and Best Actress for Foster.
At 24 minutes and 52 seconds, Hopkins holds the record for Best Actor Oscar winner with the least amount of screen time.
30. As it turned out, Harris did have more Lecter stories in him, 1999's Hannibal and 2006's origin story Hannibal Rising, the latter a prequel to all that came before. Both were made into movies (both produced by De Laurentiis, who'd wised up), and Hopkins returned for the Ridley Scott-directed Hannibal, albeit opposite Julianne Moore as Clarice Starling, and again with a wildly different ending from the book. (Confusingly enough, the film Red Dragon, a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs and also featuring Hopkins in a few pivotal scenes, came out in 2002, a year after the Hannibal film.)
Of course they tried to get Demme and Foster back for the sequel, but he passed and, though she maintained she always wanted to work with Hopkins again, the scheduling clashed with her plan to direct Flora Plum. (Which actually still remains a passion project in development.)
"I really liked Red Dragon. I liked the original, too—Manhunter—even though it had that kind of Miami Vice feeling to it," Foster told Total Film in 2005. "You know, I don't think you can ever take away what Silence was... The official reason I didn't do Hannibal is I was doing another movie, Flora Plum. So I get to say, in a nice, dignified way, that I wasn't available when that movie was being shot. But Clarice meant so much to Jonathan and I, she really did, and I know it sounds kind of strange to say but there was no way that either of us could really trample on her."
But a line up A-listers had floated their interest in filling her shoes, including Cate Blanchett, Angelina Jolie, Hilary Swank and Ashley Judd. The chameleonic Moore, however, was Scott's pick. And when the director checked in with Hopkins, because the franchise "was more his than mine," Scott told the Guardian, the actor said, "Oh, yes, jolly good."
Asked if she ever watched Hannibal, Foster replied, reportedly in a whisper, "I saw Hannibal. I won't comment."