The idea of suggesting that Hannibal Lecter - in the book, he has a sixth finger and red eyes, and so there is a devilry in Thomas Harris' presentation - so it felt like it was completely honest and appropriate for the character. And we often talk in the writers' room, "Okay, there is the Hannibal as the devil explanation of that plot point, but we also need to ground that in a reality that is answerable to the physics of the storytelling."

Bryan Fuller

Categorized in : Book Character Eye

In junior high I read a lot of Stephen King, whose Americana approach to writing was often about "the terror next door" and at the same time I was reading a lot of Clive Barker, who was on the other end of the horror pendulum: insidious and disturbingly psychological. I found it fascinating how these two authors came at horror from two totally different perspectives.

Bryan Fuller

reading kings writing

I love that India has declared dolphins non-human people with all laws that apply to human. I'm fascinated with the alien-ness of that.

Bryan Fuller

dolphins law people

I've never been one of those to kind of like, 'I want somebody to do something against their nature to titillate me.' That never holds any interest. And I always want people to be who they are and if they're being not who they are I feel like it's false and, therefore, less easy to connect to. I don't need them to kiss or to display physical intimacy. I think that almost becomes too obvious. I love playing in the suggestive.

Bryan Fuller

kissing people thinking

As an insecure writer, I'll finish a scene and worry there's a better version of it. Or it could be elevated somehow.

Bryan Fuller

insecure scene worry

Relationships are now off-kilter.

Bryan Fuller

As a horror movie fan, I was very obsessed with horror films. Still am. I love the genre. For me, horror films are opera, and they are... instead of consumption killing off the young lovers, it's Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. It is when the stakes are at their absolute largest in a story: whether somebody is going to live or die. In a way, it's just holding up a mirror to life.

Bryan Fuller

young-love opera mirrors

One of the things that I always think about is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we're learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you're eating a pig, you're essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being.

Bryan Fuller

emotional animal thinking

I'm not always successful, but I take my job as a storyteller very seriously and want to make sure the audience has as much fun watching it as I am creating it.

Bryan Fuller

successful fun jobs

I'm always looking for the idea in a scene or the philosophy that makes a scene worth existing beyond exposition.

Bryan Fuller

scene philosophy ideas

I had always loved horror films, so I wanted to do something in the horror genre but wanted it to be sweet and charming at the same time. Because there's a difference between watching horror, where you can leave it behind, and writing horror, where you have to live in it for months and months at a time.

Bryan Fuller

horror writing sweet

It's such a surreal experience, being shot out of the cannon for any kind of first season show. It all seems very dreamlike.

Bryan Fuller

shots kind firsts

For Hannibal, it's really about food as art and also, Hannibal's specific brand of art. And I guess I'm a bit of a foodie.

Bryan Fuller

bits brands art

I love the supernatural in storytelling. The Twilight Zone was a huge influence on me, in terms of writing and storytelling, where you're not restricted to the parameters of reality to tell your tale.

Bryan Fuller

twilight writing reality

We often do to people what people are very comfortable with doing to animals without a second thought.

Bryan Fuller

second-thoughts animal people

Cinema and emotion trump reality for me.

Bryan Fuller

cinema emotion reality

Anybody who is capable of doing terrible things, you don't want them out in the world, but you can't help but respect their ingenuity and their savvy and their intelligence as they go about their dastardly deeds.

Bryan Fuller

deeds want world

I'm very hard on myself when it comes to writing.

Bryan Fuller

hard writing

I've never been one of those who is attracted to straight men. Like I always said, 'you're straight, so there's no point' and I have friends who are pursuers of the heterosexual men. They see it as conquests, which I think is a different thing and a more narcissistic thing. And not necessarily a healthy thing.

Bryan Fuller

healthy men thinking

I'm probably harder on myself than I need to be, but it's important to me if I'm going to ask an audience for an hour of their time that I don't waste their time. I want to give them something significant to chew on.

Bryan Fuller

important giving needs

Red Dragon's my favorite of the books, because it is written with such a poet's ear. Whenever it gets really flowery and poetic and it's dialogue, chances are that's a Thomas Harris quote of some kind that's kind of been repurposed or reinterpreted or re-imagined somehow. That's where a lot of that poetry comes from.

Bryan Fuller

red dragons book