![]() ![]() He could be borrowing the Nazi's tactic of dehumanizing their victims notably, Gumb has a bedspread embroidered with swastikas.Frank Theodore Levine (born May 29, 1957) is an American actor. Just take the well scene where he calls Catherine "it." This seems to be a conscious decision to distance himself from the grisly truth of his actions because in the same scene he also refers to Catherine as "she" to his dog. ![]() Levine certainly uses every second he has on the screen to tell us something about Gumb's character. Screenwriter Ted Tally admitted that the character was a "cipher" compared to how Thomas Harris had written him and that Levine "rescued" him with his performance. Perhaps because we spend so little time with Gumb, those motivations aren't clear. He was a tormented man who hated himself and wished he was a woman because that would have made him as far away from himself as he could possibly be." Jonathan Demme defended his intentions, stating (via New York Times): The Jame Gumb character drew a lot of controversy from activists and continues to do so. He stands back raising his arms in a wing-like pose, continuing the moth and butterfly symbolism throughout the movie. Ducking out of the frame, he tucks his genitals between his legs to give himself the appearance of having a vagina. Draped in a shawl and wearing the scalp of a previous victim, he dances to " Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus before an idea strikes him. Gumb is unaware that she is luring Precious with a leftover chicken bone because he's busy making himself up for a performance in front of his video camera. Down below in the well, Catherine has hatched a plan to take his beloved dog, Precious, as a hostage to negotiate her way out of the hole. While Starling is playing psychological cat-and-mouse with Lecter, we see Gumb working diligently on his skin suit. We learn that Gumb was denied gender reassignment surgery and now he's tailoring himself a "woman suit" out of real women's skin to complete his transformation. He keeps her alive in a well in his basement, starving her to loosen up her skin so it'll be easier to remove once he murders her. ![]() Meanwhile, Bill, real name Jame Gumb (Levine), snatches his would-be sixth victim, Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith), the daughter of a U.S. Hopkins created one of the great screen villains, but there was a touch of theatricality about the performance that hinted at the caricature Lecter would become in "Hannibal." A few years later Dame Judi Dench won Best Supporting Actress for a five-minute walk-on in "Shakespeare in Love," so a nod to Levine's superb work certainly wouldn't have been outrageous. If anything, Levine's portrayal is more nuanced. While Levine only has about ten minutes of screen time in the film, what he does with such a thinly written role is remarkable, every bit as impressive as Hopkins' lip-smacking Dr. Whether the film is transphobic or not remains a subject of debate today but that doesn't detract from the quality of Ted Levine's performance as Bill, which should have earned him an Oscar nomination too. It was a cannibal love-in, alright in the building at least, because outside in the street several hundred protestors gathered to angrily decry the portrayal of gay characters in a number of the year's films, most notably " The Silence of the Lambs" for its transgender serial killer Buffalo Bill (via Advocate). ![]()
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