Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (3)

SILENCE OF THE SWAG
January 25, 2007

My fellow entertainment journalists over at The Onion AV Club have recently put together a fun little list of the recent swag they’ve received. (http://www.avclub.com/content/node/57652 )

I’ve received most of the same stuff that they covered-The Mommie Dearest Hollywood Royalty Edition bathroom cleaning kit, Family Guy boxer shorts, Snakes on a Plane fake rattle-snake eggs (they come in a small manila envelope that “rattles” when you try to tear it open---it actually scared the hell out of me!) and, most recently, Silence of the Lambs hand & body lotion.

The Silence cream promoting the Jan. 30 release of yet another Silence of the Lambs special edition

DVD from MGM/FOX is actually a bottle of some brand x lotion with a new label attached that reads “It rubs the lotion on its skin - On DVD 1/30/07,” a reference to a line of dialogue hissed by Silence’s serial killer Jame 'Buffalo Bill' Gumb (as so creepily portrayed by Ted Levine). And an attached tag offers another snippet of dialogue directed at the writers who are reading it: “It reviews the Silence of the Lambs Collector’s Edition or it gets the hose.”

Okay, so the Silence lotion is cool, but it’s not as clever or useful as the swag that MGM delivered back in 2001 when they were hyping the DVD release of Hannibal. With the arrival of the check disc, the entertainment press also received a new hardcover edition of The Joy of Cooking

autographed on the inside cover by serial killer par excellence Hannibal Lecter himself (granted it was fake, but it was still so cooooool), a reference to a mention in the movie that a Lecter-autographed edition of the venerable guide was purchased by a private collectdor for $6,000

Lecter’s inimitable appetites are on-hand in the new edition via an enclosed collection of fava bean recipe cards. The epicurean delights include recipes for chicken liver with fava bean crostini and foie gras and fava bean salad. Dig in!

Posted by Laurence Lerman on January 25, 2007 | Comments (3)