Transverse Ted
Buffalo Bill’s reverse angle on Silence of the Lambs
“We all know more, and I’m a lot wiser about transgender issues,” Ted Levine tells the Hollywood Reporter. “There are some lines in that script and movie that are unfortunate,” but he didn’t repeat them.
The movie is the 1991 Silence of the Lambs, in which Levine plays played Jame Gumb, aka “Buffalo Bill,” who kills women, skins them, and dons the new wrap to complete his transformation. As Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) tells FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) “what a naughty boy he is.”
Gumb captures Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith), daughter of Sen. Ruth Martin (Diane Baker) and makes the girl prep her skin for removal. When Catherine fails to cooperate, Gumb famously yells, “put the fucking lotion in the basket!” Now that he is wise in the ways of transgender, Levin erupts in wrath for the whole movie.
“It’s unfortunate that the film vilified that, and it’s fucking wrong,” Levine told the Reporter. “And you can quote me on that.” This for a movie that won the “big five” Academy Awards, including best picture. So far Michael Caine has not come out against Dressed to Kill, in which he plays Dr. Robert Elliot, who as “Bobbie” Elliot carves up women like Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) because they remind him he’s a man. When dressed to kill, Bobbie bears strong resemblance to Biden HHS boss “Admiral” Rachel Levine, aka Richard Levine, who recommends penectomy, vaginoplasty and such as “gender confirmation surgery.”
In The Report, from 2019, Ted Levine plays CIA director John Brennan, a fascinating character. In 1976 Brennan voted for the Stalinist Gus Hall, presidential candidate of the Communist Party USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the USSR. Brennan never should have got in the door but the CIA hired him and composite character president Obama, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, let him run the place.
Brennan fundamentally transformed the CIA into a partisan domestic force for Democrats, as reflected in his Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad. See also Neutering the CIA: Why US Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences, by former CIA analyst Robert Gentry. There’s a movie or three in there but on such themes Hollywood cinéastes tend to be silent little lambs.
A reverse angle on films, through the lens of reality dysphoria, opens up countless possibilities. It will be interesting to see how many actors put the lotion in that basket.
STEVE adds: There is great promise in this revisionist remake genre. Here are two great Twitter takes on the idea:
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Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis were unavailable for comment regarding Some Like it Hot. "I'm a girl."
What is Levine saying? It's wrong to vilify a guy who kills women, skins them, and then wears their skin if he does these things because he's transgender? It sounds like that to me.
Sometimes it's amazing how stupid actors can be and still remember their lines.