Silence Of The Lambs' Oscar Sweep Stunned Even Its Creators
There was a period of time in the early '90s when it looked like The Academy's long-standing dismissal of horror might be turning around. Kathy Bates won an Oscar for her all-timer performance as Annie Wilkes in Rob Reiner's Stephen King adaptation "Misery" and then "Silence of the Lambs" swept the Oscars, nabbing the gold for both acting nominees and Best Picture.
Sadly, those wins became anomalies. We still get sporadic genre love from the Academy (most notably Jordan Peele's win for his "Get Out" screenplay), but that's about all we can expect these days. The same was true back when "Silence of the Lambs" swept the 1992 Oscars, and if you dig up some old quotes from director Jonathan Demme, you can see just how surprised he was that it happened.
And I'm not just talking about winning the Oscars. Demme was shocked the movie got nominated in the first place. We know now that "Silence of the Lambs" is an iconic horror movie (or thriller if you want to be a snob about it, but let's face it ... there's a dude gutted and displayed like a Grand Guignol art piece in it and one of the main characters is a straight up cannibal), but back then the movie was made by Orion, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, and released in February.
Forget about The Academy's prejudice against genre; most movies released before the fall awards season are just forgotten by the Oscar voters.
The big 'freak out'
"Silence of the Lambs" was actually finished well before it was released. The studio held on to it as to not compete with their other heavy-hitter, "Dances With Wolves." But the movie was a critical and financial success right out of the gate, which the filmmakers thought would have to be enough. But when awards season rolled around they started picking up wins from the Directors Guild, Producers Guild, and Writers Guild award shows.
Demme recalled the thought process of the team going into the Oscars in a 2016 interview with Deadline:
"The awards were shocking. We knew how great Tony, and Jodie, and everybody was. But you just don't think in those terms because, at the end of the day, it is a thriller. [...] We thought these bigger pictures would win the prizes, and the only thing I can remember us ever really talking about was the impulse to put Anthony Hopkins in the Best Supporting Category because his screen time was so relatively short. He was on screen for less than 20 minutes, which would seem to relegate him to Best Supporting Actor. I just said, 'Look, you guys, let's have as much fun as we can with this. That's not a supporting performance. It's an outstanding achievement in a leading role by a male. So let's go for it.'"
Demme said they were shocked when they actually started winning. Well, the words he used were that he "freaked out."
Awards don't mean quality, but time has certainly been kind to "Silence of the Lambs" and I believe it will go down as one of the best films of the late 20th century. Now if only we can get the Academy to take any other horror film as seriously as it did "Silence of the Lambs."