RE: RARA-AVIS: RED DRAGON and MANHUNTER: Robison and Doherty

From: Todd Mason ( Todd.Mason@tvguide.com)
Date: 16 Aug 2002


I, in turn, enjoyed RED DRAGON perhaps slightly better than THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, the novel, and the casting of the film of SILENCE, as bad as Hopkins was, wasn't nearly as ludicrous as that of the film version of BLACK SUNDAY, Harris's previous novel...I've gathered the impression that Harris didn't want to write HANNIBAL, and took his against-better-judgement anger out in the prose.

One of the bits of SILENCE the novel I thought very good was Clarice Starling's shaming the local police out of her way, using what she knew would be an effective emotional tactic. This almost wasn't screwed up by the film, though the scene immediately following most assuredly was. TM

-----Original Message----- From: JIM DOHERTY [mailto: jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com] Todd and Miker,

Re your comments below:

> A new RED DRAGON is indeed in the offing; I rather
> preferred the
> unspectacular MANHUNTER as a version of RED DRAGON
> to the hamming of Anthony
> Hopkins and the dumbing-down generally of THE
> SILENCE OF THE LAMBS in the
> film version of that one. Haven't read nor seen
> HANNIBAL yet.

While I rather liked the film version of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, I did prefer MANHUNTER, and, moreover, prefered Bryan Cox's version of Lector to Hopkins's
(which struck me as Cox-influenced), and, on balance, Dennis Farina's version of the head of Behavioral Science. Curiously, I preferred the novel SILENCE OF THE LAMBS to RED DRAGON. Go figure.

> And the ending blew me away. WAHOOOO!!! Thomas
> Harris, you
> kick butt, dude! The ending was so revolutionary,
> so much of
> a breach of everything we hold holy about the good
> guys, such
> an ultimate transgression of truth, justice, and the
> American
> Way, that they pitched it and wrote a more
> conventional ending
> for the movie.

I happen to like Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
 I don't really find the fact that Harris decided to revolt against those verities a point of literary merit. Call me reactionary.

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