Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 6, 2001, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
To the annals of classic cannibalism scenes in the movies, one must now add the fate of duplicitous Justice Department stooge Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta) in Hannibal. In a scene so graphic that individual theaters have reportedly trimmed it, the drugged Krendler is seated at his own dinner table by Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), who opens up his skull, peels back the membrane encasing his brain, carves off a choice piece of gray matter and carefully fries it up in a pan. Then, in the ultimate punchline, Lecter serves the tidbit to Krendler himself as agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) reels in horror and disgust—much like a good percentage of the audience.
According to Liotta, however, shooting the sequence wasn’t such an unpleasant experience. “It was fun!” recalls the actor. “At first I read it, and thought, ‘How are they going to do this?’ and ‘How am I going to do this?’ Then when I saw it—they built this $70,000 animatronic likeness of me, ’cause they wanted to take off the piece and reveal what’s going on. After we did it a couple of times, it was just so bizarre, so out there, that Tony and I would look at each other and just laugh. We saw the movie together about a month or so ago, and that scene came up, and we just looked at each other afterward and said, ‘Wow, that’s nutty.’ ”
To be sure, there’s a good deal of black humor built into the sequence as well. “The best place to start for that was the medication that [Lecter gives Krendler],” Liotta says. “It helped us have a little more fun with it than it could have been, if it had been heavy-handed and presented what he was doing like he was a mad scientist. This way, the medication made [Krendler] act goofy, so we were able to have some fun.”
It also helps the black-comic tone that Krendler is far from likable; in fact, with his manipulation of Starling and attempted destruction of her FBI career, he may be the least sympathetic in a cast of very flawed characters. Liotta notes that the additional backstory in Thomas Harris’ Hannibal novel helped him flesh Krendler out on screen. “He has a strong jealousy of Starling,” the actor says. “He once put the moves on her and she said no to him, and also, we layered in the fact that he really wanted to catch Buffalo Bill [the serial killer stopped by Starling in The Silence of the Lambs]. He didn’t get that attention, at least this is what it says at the beginning of Hannibal the book.
“Also, being a political climber, he has a benefactor in Mason Verger,” the disfigured victim of Lecter now seeking revenge, played by Gary Oldman. “So when he’s asked by Verger to do something, he gets money and also hopefully backing to help his political agenda later on. And then, if Krendler wasn’t so jerky, you wouldn’t really care when he gets his comeuppance at the end. So hopefully I’m jerky enough that you’re kind of glad about it—though I don’t think anybody deserves that demise,” Liotta laughs.
And Liotta had no problems acting antagonistic toward Moore in their many scenes together. “She can hold her own,” he raves. “She doesn’t take any guff. Just the fact that she decided to take on a part that somebody else won an Academy Award for, that speaks volumes about who she is. And after Boogie Nights and Magnolia and the other movies she has done, she’s just a solid, solid actress, one of the best out there. So it was fun going at her, because then she would come back at me, and it would make me want to come back even harder.”
He has equal praise for Hopkins, whom he first met way back at a screening of the previous Lecter adventure. “I had worked with [Silence director] Jonathan Demme [on Something Wild], so Tony had seen the movie, and he was very nice about it,” Liotta remembers. “He was just a really great guy right off the bat, and I said, ‘You know, I’d just love to sit down and pick your brain one night…’”
“So to speak,” this writer interjects, and Liotta laughs: “Poor choice of words! But that never worked out, and then this worked out, so it was terrific. I’ve been very fortunate in the past few movies I’ve done, including a couple that haven’t come out yet—one with Anthony Hopkins, one with Robert Duvall [John Q.] and one with Gene Hackman [Heartbreakers]. To be a fan of acting, and wanting to learn as much as I can, it was great watching them.”
Prior to tangling with Lecter, the actor has played his own share of screen psychopaths, including Melanie Griffith’s nasty ex-husband in Something Wild and an unbalanced cop with a fixation on Madeleine Stowe in Jonathan Kaplan’s Unlawful Entry. To Liotta, there’s no difference between playing these types of heavies and essaying more “normal” characters. “You play them like human beings, you know?” he says. “Like in Unlawful Entry, that girl did something to me that hit me at such a level that I would go to extremes to be a part of her life, or to get rid of her husband. The simpler and more direct you do it, the scarier it is, and what made it even more frightening was that it could happen—what if a cop did obsess on you? He would have the means to do things. So it’s really approaching it on a human level; it just comes from the story.”
Mention the serial-killer-on-a-plane thriller Turbulence, however, and Liotta rolls his eyes. “Turbulence is a whole other story; that one got by me,” he says of the critical and box-office disappointment (albeit one that has spawned two direct-to-video sequels). Ironically, he took the role of murderous Ryan Weaver based on commercial imperative. “The movies I was doing at the time weren’t becoming huge hits, and that really gives you leverage in this business,” Liotta says. “That one seemed to have potential for success, which was the wrong reason to go into it, but that’s what led me, just out of frustration. It was also…sometimes you just have to pick the best of the lot. It’s the profession I chose, and you really need to save your money, because you never know how it’s going to go, but you still want to get out there and work. And now, Blow [an upcoming drug drama in which he plays Johnny Depp’s father] just landed in my lap, same thing with John Q.”
Beyond these films and Heartbreakers, Liotta can be seen later this year in the cop thriller Narc and the HBO movie Point of Origin. Clearly, he’s as busy as he has ever been, but the interview can’t end without one final question being asked: What were the brains he ate in Hannibal really made out of? “Chicken,” Liotta responds with a laugh. “Tastes like chicken!”
