Welcome back to Behind The Scenes Saturday!!! Since it’s the 4th of July, I wanted to dedicate this post to a film set on the holiday. So, today is dedicated to one of my favorite sequels, Hannibal! Although the holiday isn’t mentioned until the end of the film, I still count it. So, gather all your pigs, pack an extra brain for the picnic, and enjoy these fun pictures and bits of trivia!!

(Trivia provided by IMDb.com)

(Pictures provided by google.com and IMDb.com)

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

• After seeing his work in the film, Above Suspicion, the filmmakers offered Christopher Reeve the part of Mason Verger (Sir Gary Oldman). Not ever reading the novel beforehand, Reeve initially expressed interest in the role. He ended up declining when he realized the character he’d be playing was a quadriplegic, facially-disfigured child rapist. If Reeve did take the part, it would’ve been his last film appearance before his death.
• After Ray Liotta kept running into the film’s director, Sir Ridley Scott at the gym, he asked Scott if he had any parts for him. Scott immediately thought he’d be great as Paul Krendler, and that’s how he got the role.
• When Hannibal Lecter (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is in his study playing the piano, you might notice a book on his desk open, displaying the painting of the Red Dragon, a past memory to Lecter, but foreshadowing of the prequel, Red Dragon to us.
• Sir Anthony Hopkins wrote a screenplay for a sequel to this film. He supposedly titled it Hannibal Ending, and it would’ve involved Clarice (Julianne Moore) killing Hannibal once and for all.
• After years of being involved in getting this sequel made and after 15 drafts of the script were made, Jodie Foster ended up dropping out of the film. She stated, “I have been offered more money than ever in my entire career to make this film. But who cares if it betrays Clarice, who has become like a person to me, in the end.”

• Zeljko Ivanek stated that he accepted the role of Cordell because he really wanted to work with Ray Liotta. However, when Ivanek introduced himself to Liotta, Liotta reminded him that they actually have worked together before on the film, The Rat Pack. Ivanek was really embarrassed that he didn’t remember it.
• Some of the places where this movie was filmed were places that hardly ever allowed filming. While doing research for the novel, Thomas Harris contacted the heir of the Palazzo Capponi, Count Niccolo Capponi. Niccolo later allowed Sir Ridley Scott to film in the Capponi Library.
• Although Sir Anthony Hopkins had no official say in who would play Clarice, he was still consulted by Sir Ridley Scott about which actresses to consider. Hopkins recommended Julianne Moore after working with her on Surviving Picasso.
• The film’s producer, Dino De Laurentiis visited Sir Ridley Scott on the set of Gladiator to offer him the chance to direct this film. Scott misunderstood which Hannibal De Laurentiis was talking about, thinking he was talking about the General and historical figure from Carthage. Scott told him, “Basically, Dino, I’m doing a Roman epic right now. I don’t wanna do elephants coming over the Alps next, old boy.” De Laurentiis clarified by saying, “No, Hannibal LECTER.” Scott immediately accepted after that.
• Sir Anthony Hopkins ad-libbed the line, “Okey dokey.”

• Julianne Moore was very scared of cows. She stated that her scene with the cows scared her more than anything in this film.
• Years later, Sir Anthony Hopkins said he regretted returning to play Hannibal Lecter for this film and Red Dragon. He believed he should’ve limited his performance of the character to The Silence Of The Lambs. He also stated that he would never play Hannibal Lecter again.
• According to the film’s cinematographer, John Mathieson, three completely different endings were filmed. The filmmakers were not sure whether the ending in Thomas Harris’s novel would work for this film. So, three different endings were shot: one for Harris, one for Dino De Laurentiis, and one for Sir Ridley Scott. Scott’s ending ended up being the winner.
• Sir Gary Oldman based his character’s voice on Thomas Harris. He met Harris only once during production and he was so fascinated by Harris’s unusual and softly spoken accent that he decided on the spot that this was going to be Mason’s voice.
• In the film, Hannibal asked Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini) about being demoted from the Il Mostro case. There was going to be a subplot where Lecter would give Pazzi clues about the serial killer, Il Mostro, but it was eventually cut for being too complicated.

• Sir Gary Oldman spent 5 hours a day in the makeup chair.
• During an interview with the film’s producer, Martha De Laurentiis, she stated that Sir Gary Oldman demanded to share star billing with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore. When he was denied this, he angrily demanded to not be billed in the film at all. Oldman had a different reasoning for his lack of billing, however. He stated, “We thought that as I’m unofficially the man of many faces, you know, of Lee Harvey Oswald, Dracula, Sid Vicious, and Ludwig van Beethoven, we thought that I would be… I’m playing the man with no face. So we just had a bit of fun with it. We thought it would be great. The man with no face and no name, and sort of do it anonymously. It’s no secret that I’m in the film. We just had fun with it, really.”
• When Sir Gary Oldman first showed up on set in full Mason Verger makeup, all of the cast (except for Sir Anthony Hopkins) and a majority of the crew had no idea the actor in the elaborate makeup was. Some were even convinced it was Jared Leto due to his resemblance to Verger.
• The outdoor opera, La Vita Nuova, that Hannibal and Rinaldo see in Florence was composed specifically for this movie by Patrick Cassidy. Cassidy composed an entire aria, Vida Cor Meum, as opposed to just composing the three minute part for the scene. Sir Ridley Scott loved the recording so much, he reused it for the soundtracks of Kingdom Of Heaven.
• In the novel, Hannibal Lecter had plastic surgery in order to not be recognized. For the film, Sir Ridley Scott did consider having Hannibal more disguised while in hiding, but decided against it as he didn’t want Sir Anthony Hopkins to be unrecognizable.

• Over 6,000 hogs were auditioned for the film. Sir Ridley Scott picked out the hogs himself and they were purchased from a farmer, Chaloem Pasak, who lived north of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
• Several of the extras in the film, and some minor parts in the Florence Italy scenes were recruited by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins also helped secure some of the locales for the film.
• The film’s makeup designer, Greg Cannom based Mason Verger’s look on a fetus.
• In order to prepare for her role, Julianne Moore spent quite some time at the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia.
• Sir Ridley Scott never filmed in Florence, Italy before. When asked about his experience shooting there, he stated, “It was kind of organized chaos, traffic control was difficult and it was the height of tourist season.”

• When Jodie Foster and Jonathan Demme dropped out of this film, Sir Antony Hopkins was understandably hesitant to sign on at first. Before Hopkins committed to the film, John Malkovich and Tim Roth were considered to replace him.
• The largest boar in the film weighed about 770 pounds.
• Claire Danes, Gillian Anderson, Jennifer Aniston, Christina Applegate, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Connelly, Kristen Davis, Cameron Diaz, Shannen Doherty, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Nicole Eggert, Calista Flockhart, Bridget Fonda, Teri Hatcher, Helen Hunt, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lucy Liu, Heather Locklear, Alyssa Milano, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, Meg Ryan, Winona Ryder, Brooke Shields, Hilary Swank, and Denise Richards were all considered for the part of Clarice Starling.
• Mason’s sister, Margot Verger, and Clarice’s friend and roommate, Ardelia Mapp, were major characters in the novel, but they were removed from the film adaptation.
• The carousal scene was an homage to one of Sir Ridley Scott’s favorite films, The Third Man.

• The movie was filmed in almost 100 locations in Washington D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, and Italy.
• David Fincher was slated to direct the film, but he dropped out for unknown reasons.
• According to Sir Ridley Scott, Nurse Barney (Frankie Faison) got all of Hannibal’s belongings to sell by taking them out of Lecter’s cell while he was taking a walk outside.
• FBI agent, Melissa Thomas was a consultant on the film. She helped Julianne Moore learn how to handle her sidearm.
• Evelda Drumgo’s (Hazelle Goodman) baby that Clarice saved was actually animatronic.

• Tom Sizemore was originally cast as Paul Krendler, but he dropped out for unknown reasons.
• In the novel’s ending, Clarice joins Hannibal in eating Paul Krendler’s brain, and she accepts his desire for them to become lovers. The novel also dives into Hannibal’s past trauma that explained his cannibalism. Sir Ridley Scott cut both from the script, but Hannibal’s backstory was later told in Hannibal Rising.
• A special animatronic puppet of Ray Liotta was used for some shots of the brain-eating scene. Liotta later admitted that he wasn’t sure exactly which shots were him or the puppet.
• When Sir Anthony Hopkins was asked whether or not he believed the idea of Clarice and Hannibal heading off into the sunset as lovers, he said, “Yes, I did. Other people found that preposterous. I suppose there’s a moral issue there. I think it would have been a very interesting thing, though. I think it would have been very interesting had she gone off, because I suspected that there was a romance attachment there, that obsession with her. I guessed that a long time ago, at the last phone call to Clarice, at the end of The Silence Of The Lambs, she said, ‘Dr. Lecter. Dr. Lecter.’”
• Paul’s brain was made of two sheep’s brains put together. A brain surgeon was on set through the scene to help with its accuracy.

• The novel ends three years after Clarice and Hannibal ran off together. Barney finds the couple living together in Buenos Aires, Argentina under false identities and quickly escaping.
• When Paul is fed a piece of his own brain, Ray Liotta was actually eating a piece of dark chicken meat.
• In the novel, Mason Verger died when his sister, Margot shoved a moray eel down his throat. The eel latched onto his tongue and he drowned in his own blood. The ending was considered too violent, so Margot was completely written out of the film and Mason’s death took place during the boar scene.
• For Rinadlo Pazzi’s disembowelment scene, sheep entrails bought from a local butcher shop were used.
• Inspector Pazzi’s name is pronounced like “patsy” which means “gullible fool” in English, describing the character and foreshadowing his fate.