Daily Dialogue — June 18, 2017

Clarice: Starling.
Lecter: Well, Clarice, have the lambs stop screaming?
Clarice: Dr. Lecter?
Lecter: Don’t bother with a trace, I won’t be on long enough.
Clarice: Where are you, Dr. Lecter?
Lecter: I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world’s a more interesting place with you in it. So you take care now to extend me the same courtesy.
Clarice: You know I can’t make that promise.
Lecter: I do wish we could chat longer, but…

Lecter sees Dr. Alex Chilton deboarding a plane.

Lecter: …I’m having an old friend for dinner. Bye.

Clarice stands clutching the phone.

Clarice: Dr. Lecter? Dr. Lecter? Dr. Lecter?

— The Silence of the Lambs (1991), screenplay by Ted Tally, novel by Thomas Harris

The Daily Dialogue theme for next week: Telephone.

Trivia: This is the only movie where Clarice actually uses the media nickname that they gave Dr. Lecter. When she is talking with Jack about who the subject she is to interview is, she says “Hannibal the Cannibal” but throughout the rest of the movie and in the 2002 movie “Hannibal,” she always calls him Dr. Lecter, except when she says Hannibal Lecter to Pazzi to tell him who she is looking for. She respects him so she always says Dr. Lecter, even when she’s not speaking to him directly.

Dialogue On Dialogue: One of the great phone calls in movie history because it gives the denouement a double whammy:

• Lecter surprises Clarice by reappearing on the scene after his escape in Memphis. In terms of screen time, it’s over 20 minutes before the phone call.
• The reveal of Lecter’s plan for his “old friend” Chilton for what promises to be a most interesting ‘dinner’.