Brian Raftery | Longreads | January 29, 2026 | 15 minutes (4,256 words)From Hannibal Lecter: A Life by Brian Raftery. I’m Hannibal Lecter. On The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, guest host Jay Leno showed off a fake Hannibal Lecter cookbook, titled How to Eat Friends & Digest People. NBC even revived Michael Mann’s forgotten 1986 Lecter film Manhunter, airing the movie under the new title Red Dragon: The Curse of Hannibal Lecter and promoting it with a growling commercial voiceover: “Hannibal the Cannibal is coming to your house Friday night!”Everybody wanted to get into business with Lecter. Just a few years before portraying Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins had all but given up on being a Hollywood movie star.