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FROM PRINT TO SCREEN

By Matthew Savelloni

Red Dragon – The One That Started Them All

In 1981, a paradigm shift occurred in the literary world as Thomas Harris single-handedly birthed the serial-killer thriller. Yes, there were examples of the genre dating back a hundred years (Poe’s MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE) but Harris’ masterpiece was such a stunner that its effects are still being exhibited twenty years after its publication. History provides the best evaluation of an artwork’s impact and without a doubt, RED DRAGON has stamped one of the most distinctive imprints on our culture.

RED DRAGON has been adapted, borrowed from, idealized and ripped off repeatedly for over two decades. And every facet of the entertainment world has been effected. Harris created a genre unto itself which helped spawn, free up or inspire, at least in part, hundreds of artists interested in the darker side of life. It’s chaos theory for the entertainment world. Music has seen the likes of Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Primus, Monster Magnet, Nine Inch Nails, Tool and legions of Goth rockers whose albums and concerts play like horror movies. Countless authors such as James Patterson, Jeffery Deaver, David L. Lindsey, Michael Connelly, Jonathan Kellerman, John Sandford and Ridley Pearson were similarly inspired to venture into the coal heart of serial killers. On television, shows like PROFILER, CSI, MILLENIUM, LAW & ORDER and HOMICIDE all focus on the hunt for killers and madman and their motivations. And the movies? Forget about it. A partial list would include: 10 TO MIDNIGHT, SE7EN, KISS THE GIRLS, CLAY PIGEONS, THE CELL, THE BONE COLLECTOR, THE VANISHING, CRIMSON RIVERS, KALIFORNIA, IN DREAMS, THE MINUS MAN, JENNIFER 8, THE PLEDGE, FROM HELL, CANDYMAN, THE MEAN SEASON, BLOODWORK, COPYCAT, RELENTLESS, MURDER BY NUMBERS, ALONG CAME A SPIDER, THE WATCHER, SWITCHBACK, and JUST CAUSE. That’s not counting MANHUNTER (the first cinematic incarnation of RED DRAGON by Michael Mann), SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, which swept the Big 5 at the Oscars: Picture, Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Actress (Jodie Foster), Adapted Script (Ted Tally) and Director (Jonathan Demme), and HANNIBAL. All of these artists and their works, and many more, owe some level of gratitude to RED DRAGON and the doors it opened.

Most people will point to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS as Harris’ seminal work because of the incredible success of the film, but it was RED DRAGON that sowed the seeds nearly a decade earlier. Serial killers are our favorite bad guys. They have always fascinated with their singularly twisted deeds. Norman Mailer’s THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG, Terence Malick’s BADLANDS, Vincent Bugliosi’s HELTER SKELTER and Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD are some earlier examples of efforts to humanize the inhumane. Ironically enough, works such as these tended to be based on real life events. However, it was Harris and his fictional RED DRAGON that finally plumbed the deepest depths of these killing machines to their most devastating effect.

Harris portrays every side of a barbaric killing spree with incisive, bone-chilling clarity. It’s all here: The haunted profiler who is able to look inside the abyss more clearly than anybody else. The legions of dedicated law enforcement personnel who are incapable of stopping the evil. The highly educated sociopath who serves as both a tour-guide of the Inferno and bemused commentator. The victims who are unwitting canvases upon which the horrendous acts are painted. The love interests representing both suffering and redemption. And of course, the killer, whose signature must be understood before he can be stopped. All of these are archetypes, so familiar in contemporary thrillers that it’s hard to look anywhere else but at RED DRAGON to determine how they were instituted so fully formed into verisimilitude.

It is the two characters of Frances Dolarhyde and Will Graham that explode RED DRAGON like an atom bomb on the audience’s conscious. They are the same man save for the choices they’ve made. Each shares a part of damnation, a kinship with the corrupt pulls of humankind. It’s what drives Dolarhyde to kill and gives Graham the ability to “see” these vicious crimes from the point of view of the perpetrator. Dolarhyde surrenders to the evil while Graham continuously struggles against it, even going so far as to retire after a life-and-death confrontation with Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter.

Usually, it is the dementia and the details of the murders that take center stage. Harris, however, writes the opposite. He puts Dolarhyde’s blight front and center, focusing on his abusive upbringing and the struggle between wanting to experience joy and the urge to kill. When Ed Gein claimed that when he saw a pretty girl he was torn between buying her an ice cream cone and wanting to see her head on a spike, the world was introduced to the most baffling aspect of serial killers: they are human beings. It would be easier if they were monsters and/or larger than life characters: Hitler, Mussolini, and Bluebeard. It’s harder to comprehend, and thus infinitely more frightening, when they are the neighbor behind you, the coworker next to you, the random commuter on the train. For some reason, you represent the twisted cravings of his heart and mind and for no reason you will ever understand, you will pay for it with your life. Dolarhyde is that quiet guy who eats alone, totally unthreatening. He is polite and friendly but not outgoing. After a while, you won’t even notice him. He desperately wants to beat the madness. But he cannot. And the only release valve he can turn is to kill a family in their sleep, to be the Tooth Fairy, the name the media has bestowed upon him.

Will Graham is physically and spiritually torn up by the Lecter case, which predates the timeline of the book. The authorities realize that only Graham can provide the insight to capture the Tooth Fairy. Graham is concentrating solely on caring for his family. He has made the connection to humanity that taunts and eludes Dolarhyde and it is the lifeline that pulls Graham up out of Hell. He still “sees” the bad but allows the good of his wife and child to balance it out. It is the Tooth Fairy’s MO—the ritualistic slaughter of the family—that pushes Graham back into action.

Oh, The Humanity – William Blake Was One Screwed Up Dude

Harris constantly tells a story of blood and guts with high class and learned sophistication. A William Blake painting that provides the nom de plume as well as the title of the novel entrances Dolarhyde. In the painting, a breathtaking red dragon surrounds a woman bathed in bright light. Dolarhyde sees himself as becoming the Dragon, transformed through the blood of the innocent, the content, and the happy, destroying the light. As Graham struggles to control the scenes of horror playing in his mind, Dolarhyde is similarly plagued by the simple friendship of Reba. Both men are isolated against their demons. But where Graham calls upon his family as a beacon of strength, Dolarhyde resorts to chimerical fantasy to resist Reba’s blind acceptance. He is so estranged to happiness, he cannot handle it when it finally presents itself and eventually, it is Reba’s own offer of redemption that fully transforms Dolarhyde into the Dragon.

Of course, the psychological underpinnings of Harris’ novel do nothing to slow down its pace. RED DRAGON moves like a freight train of horror. It is unsettling, uncompromising and bred from believable nightmares. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS might be a more entertaining read but RED DRAGON provides the mythos, the foundation upon which all “killer thrillers” have been poured (the less said about HANNIBAL the better). If one of those silly “Best Ever” lists is ever composed about 20th Century literature, RED DRAGON should be in the top 25. It is that compelling, that well written and researched. Harris gets everything right. Only now are we starting to appreciate the prescience of RED DRAGON. It’s hard to imagine anybody else predicting and shaping the future of a genre with the precision that Harris displays in this all-time classic.

From The Director of Rush Hour?

I can’t summon enough praise and accolades for RED DRAGON. It was adapted before as MANHUNTER by uber-autuer Michael Mann in 1986. Hannibal Lecter made his screen debut here in a performance by Brian Cox that many see as more true to the source and more unnerving than Anthony Hopkins’ over-the-top interpretation in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. The movie focused predominantly on Will Graham and the hunt for the Tooth Fairy, although Tom Doonan was perfectly cast—at least physically—as Dolarhyde. Much of the story on Dolarhyde was left out and his character arcs only from bizarre to homicidal. There was no attempt to tell his human angle. Still, the movie was a thrilling police procedural with a career-best performance by William L. Petersen as Graham and bravura filmmaking (no surprise here) from Mann.

I can appreciate the artistic urge to film RED DRAGON again, this time with an eye towards representing that side of Dolarhyde in the novel—pathetic, sad, lonely, scarred—neglected in MANHUNTER. Nobody really wants to feel sympathy for a serial killer but the truth is, there is a human cause to his frightful existence. Somebody, somewhere, warped him. Learning about that and the factors that pick at the scars of an already damaged psyche is what lends RED DRAGON its most effective bite. We’re not storming Dolarhyde’s castle to destroy the beast. We’re watching a human being spiral into madness that theoretically any of us could suffer the consequences of, either through direct effect or as a victim.

But this newest incarnation is hardly about any sort of artistic impulse. Otherwise, why in God’s name would you hire the man behind MONEY TALKS, RUSH HOUR I & II and THE FAMILY MAN? Is there some character depth that I missed in Chris Tucker’s performances? Was I blind to the emotional honesty of THE FAMILY MAN and too busy choking on the cloying sentiment and sappy, unbelievable pap? Brett Ratner might be the nicest guy in the world. I don’t know him and I wish the man the utmost success because at the end of the day all I want is a good movie. But on paper, he is the wrong choice to direct RED DRAGON. Maybe he wowed the producers with his take on this newest installment of what has been called the Hannibal Lecter trilogy.

And maybe that’s the problem.

The tagline of RED DRAGON is “How It All Began!” which completely misses the point. RED DRAGON is not Hannibal Lecter’s story. It’s not Will Graham’s story, either. It is Francis Dolarhyde’s story, the Tooth Fairy, Blake’s “Red Dragon” incarnate. It’s the story of a serial killer waging unholy war to satisfy a hunger that will never be sated. It’s a tale of human suffering and that is why it is so goddamn scary. You can throw $15 million at Anthony Hopkins to drop more pithy bon mots for humorous effect but that will only continue to distract from the real drama of the story: Francis Dolarhyde’s operatic lunacy.

Everything about RED DRAGON the movie stinks of money. The “Hannibal” series has been too successful for them to leave RED DRAGON the novel alone. I doubt if 75% of the audience that viewed SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and HANNIBAL even know MANHUNTER exists and if they do, a strong majority of them have never seen it. The market is ripe, in other words. But the demographics are outweighing the inclination to produce a more faithful adaptation of Harris’ work.

Ed Norton is a fine actor but too young to play Will Graham, a scarred veteran of years hunting the worst mankind has to offer. Beefing up Anthony Hopkins’ scenes as Lecter and inventing all new ones so he gets more screen time and justifies that $15 mil will only slow the story down—if they’re even bothering to tell the same story from the book. Ralph Fiennes, another great actor, is too good-looking and small to play Dolarhyde, who is an awkward giant. Emily Watson, Mary-Louise Parker (employed far too infrequently), Harvey Keitel, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Anthony Heald (back as Dr. Chilton) are all fine character actors who will undoubtedly bring some needed flavor to the mix. The writer is Ted Tally who masterfully adapted SILENCE…But Ratner, Norton, Fiennes and an expanded role for Hopkins are too spiffy, too shiny, too calculated. That’s what I mean by “stinks of money.”

If they had really wanted to make a faithful adaptation of RED DRAGON, they would have jettisoned the stars (marketing it as a prequel, which it most certainly is) and hired someone like James Gray to produce a gritty libretto much like what we saw in Demme’s SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. As presently constituted though, the intention seems to be to make something closer to the far more profitable HANNIBAL. And that’s enough to make everyone’s favorite cannibal puke.

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.” –Johann von Goethe

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