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The Movie Guys Rewrite: The Silence of the Lambs

Rewrite by Steven Lewis

THIS ARTICLE OBVIOUSLY CONTAINS SPOILERS

Have you ever been watching a movie and thought to yourself, “I could have come up with a better ending than that!”. Or maybe you say to your friends afterward “This movie was alright, I guess, but it was way too long. That second sub-plot could have been cut entirely and the whole thing would have been so much tighter.” We all have these thoughts from time to time about the movies we see. Bad films could be made at least palatable, good films great, and great films – well, even greater . . . if only someone had asked YOU for an opinion of the script before it went before the cameras.

There is nothing so frustrating as the film that ALMOST works. You want to love it, or at least like it – but something about it keeps it from being complete or fully satisfying. Now, no one is going to give you a couple million dollars and unlimited access so that you can go away and fix what needs fixing. But that doesn’t mean you have to simply resign yourself to its flaws, either – not anymore. Why? Because The Movie Guys website exists, dammit – and is the perfect forum for film geeks of all stripes to put their two cents in, and by God we’re going to USE it!

And if we’re going to have the audacity to “fix” a film in the first place, there’s no point pussy-footing around on the margins. Might as well shoot straight for the top with a classic. So here we go with re-writing a classic! Today’s pick . . .

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

A CLASSIC?

Now, first off, there’s no question that “The Silence of the Lambs” is fully worthy of its “classic” status. It is truly one of the great horror/thriller movies of the past twenty years (yes, movie buffs – next February it will celebrate its 20th anniversary). The story of FBI Agent Clarice Starling’s pursuit of the serial killer Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb is gripping from start to finish, and fires simultaneously on the twin cylinders of ferocious, white-knuckle suspense as well as a fully engaging character study. Clarice’s fierce intelligence and drive, her struggles as a woman in a man’s world, and her emotional need to protect the innocent and helpless are grippingly presented, and serve to fuel and complement an already compelling, well-plotted tale.

As everyone knows, the heart of the movie is the cat-and-mouse chess match of wits between Clarice and Hannibal Lecter. It’s interesting, in fact, how Lecter is largely recalled as the “bad guy” of this film, rather than Buffalo Bill. That speaks, of course, to both how well his character is written, and how wonderfully embodied he is by Anthony Hopkins. But it also leaves one to wonder – why ISN’T Buffalo Bill more memorable? This is, after all, a guy who keeps women imprisoned in a dungeon, starves them, and flays them alive – certainly acts as horrific as those attributed to Lecter. And for all that, what do we really remember about this guy? Next to nothing, save for him dancing in front of the mirror with his willie tucked between his legs. It seems to me that the film tossed away an opportunity to deliver us TWO of the creepiest movie monsters of all time, and it settled for just one.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER?

And yet, the second-class status of Buffalo Bill is not what I’m concerned with here. Because I have a bigger bone to pick with this movie. For, to my way of thinking, sitting at the center of this otherwise masterfully conceived and plotted film is a glaring structural flaw that cries out for redress. I’m talking here of Lecter’s escape from custody. Now, the scene itself is crackerjack: creepy, tension-filled, and with a payoff that makes you jump right out of your skin (pun, ahem, intended). As far as execution goes, it’s probably the single best scene in a movie full of great scenes. Only problem is, it has no reason to exist.

That’s right – Lecter’s escape is an absolute waste of time in story terms; it serves as a show-off moment for everyone involved at the expense of moving the film forward. It serves no purpose in the larger picture because Lecter himself plays no role in the rest of the plot. This is a problem for a character of his stature. His character SHOULD play a role in how the film turns out – he’s too important not to – and I know how it could have been accomplished.

SEEING THE LIGHT

So picture this with me now – the final, climactic showdown between Clarice and Jame Gumb, in the crazy man’s basement. The room has just gone dark, and we see Buffalo Bill putting on his night goggles (damn, but this is still one of the most frighteningly intense sequences I have ever witnessed in a movie – such pure, unadulterated terror!). Oh no, we think – Clarice has had it. He’s got the jump on her, there’s no way she can defeat him now.

All at once, the lights flip on (we don’t know how), she sees Gumb with a gun pointed at her and she shoots. Gets him! As she’s busy handcuffing him and removing his gun, checking his wounds, etc. the camera does a slow pan around the room, then through the hallway, past the pit where the girl is screaming, up. . . up. . . up to the very top of the stairs, where a man’s hand rests upon the light switch. Pull back to see it is Lecter. He smirks knowingly to himself, makes a small flourish while putting on his panama hat, then closes the door and leaves. The rest of the movie – including the final phone conversation between Lecter and Clarice – plays out exactly the same.

Now, this change takes away none of Clarice’s bravery or heroism, or her brilliant detective work in getting to Gumb’s house in the first place. It just provides her a little bit of extra help (from above, as it were) And it’s a type of “help” that’s totally in keeping with Lecter’s character to provide: he’s not going down in the basement to fight alongside her, after all – there’s nothing decisive in his switching on of the lights; it’s still Clarice’s fight to lose or win. But, as with all their previous encounters, he’s going to give her a little positive push in the right direction, because . . . well, because he kind of likes her, and he considers it sporting to help her a bit (at least, up to a point). And it’s totally the type of controlling, patriarchal thing he’d do.

Now, as to how to establish he was there in the first place, and as to how he would know just the right MOMENT to flip that switch, let’s do some backtracking: Earlier in the sequence, have some establishing shots of Clarice walking around the town, being spied upon through the inside of a car, whose owner we never see. At first, we think it might be Gumb (although the smarter of us also ask, “Hey – Clarice isn’t big and fat like the other girls he goes after, so why would he be interested in her? Unless it’s someone else. . .”). The concluding event in the basement would establish that it had been LECTER, all along, who had been tailing Clarice – acting as a creepy sort of guardian angel. This would break no rules, as it’s clearly understood Lecter knows who Bill really is, and so of course would know the right town to go to. The perfect-ness of the timing in the actual switching on of the light is a thriller conceit that we would buy if everything else was in place. (After all, the way the sequence actually DOES end, with Clarice hearing Bill’s gun cocking, is a bit of hokum in and of itself.)

So there you go. That’s what I would do to convert “The Silence of the Lambs” from a Great movie into a PERFECT movie. And a gentle beginning to this feature on the website too, because I don’t have to run the film into the ground in the process of making it better. Not so with the next “classic” I have in my sights: Alfred Hitchcock’s unjustly lauded “Vertigo” – a fuckup of a movie if ever there was one. But oh how it could have been great . . .

“The Silence of the Lambs” is available on DVD and Blu-Ray.