The Buzzmeter: Stop Apologizing for Great Movies Like The Silence of the Lambs

The news broke over the weekend thanks to the Penske media’s favorite brand of clickbait, sending out “something someone said” into the churn. I ignored it at first. So what, someone said something. But then the story got bigger.

Silence of the Lambs surprised the industry as an Oscar-winning, generation-defining smash. But over the years, the characterization of Buffalo Bill (whose sexual orientation is not explicitly stated) has been viewed as gender nonconforming and identifying as trans. For his part, Ted Levine — having played the character who is also known as Jame Gumb — has conflicting feelings about the movie, despite its success.

“There are certain aspects of the movie that don’t hold up too well,” Levine, who has never previously addressed pushback surrounding Buffalo Bill, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We all know more, and I’m a lot wiser about transgender issues. There are some lines in that script and movie that are unfortunate.”

This sentence, “has been viewed as gender nonconforming and identifying as trans.” Anyone who sees it that way did not watch the movie. The lines are very specific that Billy isn’t trans, but he wants to be, he’s pretending to be. Laid out right here:

The LGBTQIA+ community is so overly sensitive that no one is even allowed to pretend to be. Of course, we know that isn’t exclusively true. As long as the character is portrayed in a slightly good light -- as in Charlie Hunnam playing Ed Gein in that god-awful Netflix series -- no one will complain.

There was a time when I was deathly afraid of offending any of them. After almost ten years of unending and intensifying attacks by them, however, I don’t feel that way anymore. That doesn’t mean I think anyone should be bullied or mocked or dehumanized either. But acting as though it’s blasphemy is one of the most bizarre adaptations to life on the internet I can think of, especially when it comes to characters in movies. Expecting Hollywood to set the standard for human behavior has ruined Hollywood.

Apparently, this is a scene that many have found offensive. Why would the great Jonathan Demme have filmed it this way? Because it’s preposterously funny and everyone knows it, which is why it lives on in infamy.

And anyway, it was slightly ahead of its time, as we’ve now had three would-be transgender people go on shooting sprees before killing themselves. Probably, they weren’t really transgender (you’d never know that from the way the media covers the story), but they turned to that form of identity as a way out of bigger issues they were struggling with, and somehow, that led them to violence. And that is closer to what Jame Gumb really was -- trying to be something but not addressing his “deeper issues.”

Ed Gein remains a mystery, though he did seem to want to become a woman as he stole body parts from corpses and placed them on his body. He was so screwed up in every possible way that it’s hard to diagnose him and draw any conclusions. He was the model for both Norman Bates in Psycho and Jame Gumb in The Silence of the Lambs, though with the sexual component removed. In Psycho, Norman is punished by his “mother” for having unclean thoughts about Marion Crane. In The Silence of the Lambs, Jame Gumb simply wants a “great big fat person” for their skin.

And if anything rang false to me in the film, that was it. Serial Killers almost always seek some sort of sexual gratification from the type of person they kill. Even in Ed Gein’s case. But in The Silence of the Lambs, the victim is not a part of his fantasy beyond starving and skinning them.

Ted Levine probably feels bad that he’s met with scorn by many of the strident scolds who control the Left now, and wants to be absolved of these sins. Or perhaps he wishes his entire career wasn’t marked by this one role. It happens sometimes. Steve Railsback will always be the guy who played Charles Manson really well. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. But Levine should be proud to be part of such a great movie, one of the best films to win Best Picture in the history of the Oscars.

Producer Edward Saxon says, “There’s regret, but it didn’t come from any place of malice. It actually came from a place of seeing this guy. We all had dear friends and family who were gay. We thought it would just be very clear that Buffalo Bill adapts different things from society, from a place of an incredibly sick pathology.”

And of course, because this is Hollywood and everyone in Hollywood wants to make sure the other half of the country does not feel welcome in THEIR utopia anymore, they had to bring up Trump. Credit to the Hollywood Reporter for realizing the better clickbait was to draw anger from fans of the film rather than Trump haters -- maybe that’s a bit played out.

Here, you can see how the media strips everything Trump says of context and repurposes it for whatever point they wish to make without having any idea whatsoever about what he actually said or how he said it (you have to watch his entire rally to hear for yourself because the media never gets it right):

Silence of the Lambs has continued to be a steady part of popular culture throughout the decades, with AFI naming Hannibal Lecter as its top screen villain. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump brought up Hannibal Lecter in reference to migrants, while also having used the phrase “a wonderful man” to describe the character.

“To compare people who are looking for a better life coming over the border to Hannibal Lecter is about as perverse as anything we were able to come up with in the film,” says Saxon. As for Trump’s fascination with the character, the producer adds, “It’s a fascination with power and an elevated sense of self. Our president is stuck in a period: the Village People, Hannibal Lecter. I don’t think he stays up late watching new movies.”

They need their easy villains and their permanent heroes, which explains why storytelling has shit the bed in Hollywood. They can only tell one story because their power hierarchy is so specific, so rooted in identity, they start with the idea “who can we not offend?” And in so doing, the good guys are always the same and the bad guys are always the same -- just look at the film that is about to win Best Picture. There has never been a movie that better captures this moment of the Left’s insular bubble and its view of the other half of the country than One Battle After Another.

When The Silence of the Lambs first opened, I saw it three times in the movie theater on the same day, bringing different friends each time. “You have to see this movie,” I told them. What a thrill to bring people in to see a movie I knew delivered 100%.

Everything about this film is perfect. The writing, the directing, the acting. I know it so well I can’t even watch it anymore because I’ve seen it too many times. And if that means, as Saxon says, that I am stuck in the past, well, he’s wrong. It isn’t because I (or Trump) don’t watch movies anymore, it’s that movies aren’t this good anymore, and everyone knows it.

In Saxon’s worldview, and in the worldview of the Left, all humans are not to be viewed equally. He sees migrants as all good, noble, and virtuous, just as anyone in the designated marginalized groups is viewed. He does this without realizing that to do so robs them of their complexity and unintentionally elevates their only available target for evil: heterosexual white men (sometimes women), always Trump supporters.

How boring to have everything fixed in a permanent power hierarchy, making all art nothing more than dogma - a way to affirm the rules of the new utopia. It’s kind of like how only one story can be told with Christian movies or Scientology movies or movies made in China. Hollywood arrived there all on its own, as the ruling class sought absolution after attaining so much of the country’s cultural power and wealth. As long as they virtue signal, the mob won’t come for them.

But where does that leave us? Bereft without great stories from brave storytellers who know our world and feel free to write about it, not just to tell one story (”see how good we are and how bad all of those people over there are?”) but to tell a variety of stories, one where a creepy villain in a movie dared to say into the camera as he painted his lips, “would you fuck me? I’d fuck me.” Or a movie with a great protagonist in Jodie Foster who stares straight into the camera and gives Hannibal Lecter everything he wants just to break the case.

“Brave Clarice. You let me know when the lambs stop screaming.” Oh, no, we’ll never ever get a movie that good. Everyone knows it because everyone knows Hollywood must play by the rules of Woketopia. They know that they can’t even get to the line, let alone cross it. They know the Democrats are their overlords, and they can’t make a movie about, oh, say, the coup that George Clooney inspired with an op-ed that pushed out Joe Biden and installed Kamala Harris -- a terrible candidate -- without a single vote. Oh, but hey, Netflix donated to her campaign, so we’re not allowed to criticize.

The real stories all around us Hollywood is afraid to tell. I know it. You know it. They know it. Back in 1991, they were not afraid. The only thing they worried about was people not showing up to see the movie. They wanted it to be good enough to draw a crowd, not just a blue-state/Whole Foods crowd, but a real crowd from all over the country. That is why everyone knows and remembers Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, and it’s why I quote that movie to this day, as does everyone else.

The irony of the rise of AI is that they aren’t worried about offending. AI artists on YouTube make what people want to see without the clutches of the puritans tugging at them, forcing them into compliance to right the wrongs of society. AI is a free industry to do what Hollywood used to do - push the boundaries, test the limits.

The internet is moving faster than Hollywood because Hollywood is crippled by fear. They are the ruling class, and they’re desperate to hold power and status. The bigger the monopoly, the more worried they will be about their status, which is why Netflix’s buying Warner Bros. is such a dangerous move.

In AI, no one has to worry that every single marginalized group is represented or if it sends the “right message” - so why not AI? At least they can entertain everyone, as opposed to passing the test of everything always being “correct.”

Saxon doesn’t need to apologize for one of the greatest films of all time. If they had a chance to do it over again, it would suck, and everyone knows it. He also doesn’t need to separate himself from Trump - not necessary. The art speaks for itself. Boy, does it ever.