Hannibal Tiring

[This is an old piece, dug out from a website that nobody ever saw.]


 I've long suspected that by the time I'm thirty, two people will become billionaires.
Well, this is inevitable, but two people whom I can specifically predict will become billionaires.
The first is Matt Groening, who created a family of yellow doodles in the late eighties and now slaps them on every conceivable product known to man. I'm looking forward to The Simpsons Home Pregnancy Testing Kit, Flame Thrower and Electron Microscope, which may or may not come as an all-in-one product.
The other is George Foreman, who had a fairly successful and well publicised career punching people in the skull for years before turning his (presumably battered and flat-knuckled) hand to making grills. He now makes grills, larger grills, smaller grills, steamers, crispers, barbecues and Christ-knows-what-else.
Presumably, microwaves, ovens, fridge freezers and anything else that can alter the temperature of flesh will soon follow. Can the George Foreman Napalm Delivery System and Toaster Oven be far behind? Time will tell.
Still, judging by recent posters, someone else may soon join the list; author Thomas Harris.
I have a mild dislike for Harris, simply because he shares a name with one of my many cousins, who isn't a stupidly rich author, or even old enough to legally have sex, as far as I recall. Which is annoying for me, as it means I can't mooch off of my well-off relatives. And annoying for him, because he can't legally have sex yet.
In 1981, Harris wrote an excellent crime thriller entitled "Red Dragon", in which a twitchy FBI agent must catch a serial killer, and is forced to enlist the help of the monstrous and intellectually brilliant psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter.
This novel was subsequently filmed in 1986 as "Manhunter", with Brian Cox as the re-namd Lecktor.
Nobody cared.
Harris then wrote a pretty-good novel entitled "The Silence of the Lambs", in which a nervous young FBI agent must catch a serial killer, and is forced to enlist the help of the monstrous and intellectually brilliant psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter.
Ignoring the fact that this is such lazy, derivative writing that it's akin to writing a civil war novel in which a turbulent romance blossoms between Charlotte O'Hara and Chet Butler, the novel did well and was soon filmed as a phenomenally successful movie.
After a while, everyone forgot about Harris, so he decided to write a critically panned novel, "Hannibal", dealing with the now-escaped Lecter, which was turned into a critically panned film almost immediately.
In his down-time, Harris whined about how hard it is to write these books.
I daresay it is hard to write whilst riding around in your solid gold limo eating roast dodo and swimming in your money like Scrooge McDuck, but then I'm cynical.
Not to be deterred by the fact that nobody was impressed with either version of "Hannibal", Harris is back again with the prequel novel "Hannibal Rising", which got such a critical kicking in every review I read I almost wanted to jump through the page and tell the reviewer "Alright, he's had enough, leave it!" and guide him gently to the other side of the room.
On my way home from work the other day, I noticed a movie poster. "Coming soon: Hannibal Rising."
Wondering if there could possibly be any barrel left to scrape, I checked into these things and we can expect at least one more Lecter novel, apparently.
I'm not sure if this is official, or whether Harris just stood naked on his desk and shouted "I WANT MORE MONEY!!" and that his press secretary took this to mean there would be another book due soon.
The sad thing is, the public will eat it up, because the public tends to let people get away with quite a lot when it comes to lazy writing.
The worst example I can remember is the cartoon "Super Mario Brothers", which I wasn't a particular fan of, but seemed to be on a lot during my childhood.
In every episode, Mario and his hangers on would travel to some dimension or another, find out that the evil King Koopa was behind some sort of bad plot (this isn't my memory being faulty, the storylines sometimes actually were this half-assed) and then they'd foil him and catch him. As far as I recall, Mario never did the logical thing and beat his enemies unconscious with a length of pipe, as would befit a plumber, but this is not my biggest gripe.
At the end of every episode, with his plot foiled, King Koopa would be held captive by Mario and his entourage. Then, without fail, one of our heroes would give a long soliloquy and Koopa would use this as ample time to escape. Without fail, someone would then shout "Oh no, he's escaping into a Warp Zone!" and the whole tedious process would begin again next week, with everyone arriving in yet another dimension. It was never adequately explained how Mario and co. followed Koopa through a warp zone within the space of about five seconds, and yet in the intervening time Koopa had already enslaved the next dimension.
Even as a child, I remember finding the whole thing patently ridiculous. I was baffled as to how the writing team - if there was one - could be allowed to be so slack.
Alright, maybe you can lose a captive tyrant once by delivering an impassioned speech and taking your eye off him, but surely by the time it's happened seventeen straight times in a row you'd learn to tie him up or something. Or at least not to all stand around with your backs turned and your thumbs up your arses while Mario gives a sermon.
Despite my continuing annoyance at a fifteen year old plot device in a kids show, I remain fairly certain that nobody made their fortunes from the Mario cartoon.
I like to imagine all the writers were taken outside and summarily shot after the first series ended, but I have no proof.
However, Thomas Harris will make millions because everyone out there will buy "Hannibal Rising", and see the movie, and then buy the next book, which will probably be called "Hannibal Lecter and the Author's New Mansion", or something similar.
And that's annoying, not least because Harris isn't actually my cousin.