Trivia for
Manhunter (1986)

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• The film was originally going to be entitled "Red Dragon", the same name as the novel. However, when Year of the Dragon (1985) became a box office failure, Dino De Laurentiis decided to avoid a "dragon" title.
  
  
• The prison where Hannibal Lecter is being incarcerated is the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
  
  
• Frankie Faison (Lt. Fisk) is the only actor to appear in all four Thomas Harris "Hannibal" adaptations (he appears as Barney in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002)).
  
  

• During the filming of this movie, Anthony Hopkins was playing King Lear at the National Theatre. During the filming of The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Brian Cox was playing King Lear at the National Theatre.
  
  
• In a featurette included with the DVD version of the film, Tom Noonan (Dollarhyde) said that he avoided all contact with cast members in order to heighten the isolation and tension between himself and other people, particularly William Petersen (Graham).
  
  
• Tom Noonan (Dollarhyde) spent many hours in make-up so that artists could paint fake tattoos on his back and torso modeled after William Blake's "Great Red Dragon" paintings. Though Noonan appeared with the tattoos in publicity photographs (available in a Special Edition DVD), director Michael Mann concluded that the tattoos were too "over the top," and discarded the idea.
  
  
• This is the only Hannibal movie where his last name is spelled Lecktor. In all future movies, it's spelled Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
  
  
• According to an interview with Brian Cox, the following actors were considered for the role of Hannibal Lektor: Brian Dennehy, John Lithgow and Mandy Patinkin.
  
  
• Brian Cox said in the DVD interview that he based his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter on Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel.
  
  
• David Lynch was the first director attached to the movie, but he eventually left the project. During this time, screenwriter Walon Green wrote a draft of the script and it is unknown how much of his ideas were used in the final script.
  
  
• In the scenes where Will Graham is interviewing Lecktor in his cell, the director Michael Mann took care to set up the shots so that the position of the bars of the cell do not move when the point of view switches between Graham and Lecktor.
  
  
• Curiously enough, Michael Mann had initially considered fellow filmmaker William Friedkin for the part of Hannibal Lecktor, but when Brian Dennehy - also a prospective Hannibal - insisted that Mann see Scotsman Brian Cox in the acclaimed 1984 off-Broadway production of "Rat in the Skull, " Mann was instantly won over by Cox's award-winning performance. Cox's scenes as Lecktor were shot over a three-day period.
  
  
• When the production could not get permission to film on board a commercial airplane, Mann booked his actors and crew onto a twilight flight from Chicago to Florida where the production was relocating anyway. A stripped-down camera, lighting and sound equipment were taken on board as carry-on luggage. Pilots and flight attendants were appeased with gifts of film crew jackets.
  
  

• SPOILER: In the shooting final confrontation between Dollarhyde and Graham, actor Tom Noonan had to lie in a pool of stage blood for several hours as the crew worked on other shots. After all this time, the stage blood dried into a thick, cement-like advesive that all but fused Noonan to the carpet.
  
  

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