Ed Cubberly had by no means heard of Anthony Hopkins when he gained a telephone name from Kathleen Gerlach, the colleague gown clothier on a film he knew not anything about. It was once 1989, and the movie model of “The Silence of the Lambs” was once two years from changing into a vital and business sensation.
Cubberly, a full-time attendant on the hour, dwelling in Bayonne, Brandnew Jersey, had a facet trade making mask for NHL goalies from 1988 to 2000. Mike Richter, Frank Pietrangelo and Mark Fitzpatrick have been a few of the gamers who wore his merchandise.
So how did he get drawn in to support manufacture certainly one of movie’s all-time villains?
At one level within the past due Nineteen Eighties, Cubberly left a trade card at Gerry Cosby & Co. Wearing Items in Long island. Now not lengthy then, participants of the “The Silence of the Lambs” prop branch going to the store in search of a masks. They moved on with Cubberly’s touch knowledge.
Gerlach reached out to Cubberly about creating a masks — no longer for hockey however for what would turn into a vintage scene within the film. And thus started Cubberly’s lone foray into movie and his connection to Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, who the American Movie Institute ranks as the No. 1 movie villain of all time.
“My 15 minutes of fame,” Cubberly says now. “I guess it turned out OK.”
Halfway thru “Silence of the Lambs,” Lecter speaks to a senator time strapped to a gurney. He’s a serial killer infamous for consuming his sufferers, however he’s additionally a magnificent psychiatrist with knowledge that would support catch some other serial killer, Buffalo Invoice. As he speaks to the senator, whose daughter has been abducted by means of Buffalo Invoice, he wears a directly jacket and a fiberglass masks that covers his nostril and the decrease part of his face.
There’s a gap over his mouth coated by means of 3 steel bars — a measure in opposition to a possible cannibalistic outburst.
That was once Cubberly’s completed product: probably the most well-known masks he ever made, with all due recognize to the Statue of Sovereignty masks that Brandnew York Rangers goalie Mike Richter wore within the 1994 Stanley Cup Ultimate.
“It was kind of devious and scary looking,” says Cubberly, now 67. “It fit the scene perfectly.”
When enlisting Cubberly’s support, Gerlach gave him an outline of the scene. Cubberly got here up with the idea that in only some mins, the usage of a Sharpie to attract the design on an image of certainly one of his impaired mask. He interpreted Gerlach’s directions as directions to offer Lecter a muzzle, which resulted in the mouth protecting. He additionally added a couple of holes over the nostrils.
Cubberly was once involved with Gerlach and week Academy Award-winning gown clothier Colleen Atwood during the method. At one level, they requested what he was once pondering for the masks’s colour. Cubberly steered protecting the fiberglass’s greenish-tan silhoutte. It will appear to be one thing that will have been made in prison, he informed them. Director Jonathan Demme beloved the theory, Cubberly remembers.
“I was just trying to get out of painting the thing,” he says with a laugh.
Cubberly by no means met Hopkins, who gained an Oscar for his efficiency. The movie’s prop staff mailed him a plaster mildew of the actor’s face, which he nonetheless has. Cubberly sculpted clay over the mildew, next constructed the fiberglass masks over the clay. The method took simplest a few days.
The gown branch had Hopkins attempt out various kinds of mask earlier than filming. One gave the look of a beekeeper’s masks. Others have been extra cage-like. Cubberly’s design proved best.
“It looked nothing like any of the other masks,” he says.
The scene is in a similar fashion distinctive — and worrying. Dramatic thread track performs as Lecter is wheeled ahead, and Hopkins makes piercing perceptible touch with the senator as he toys together with her during the dialog.
Cubberly doesn’t attend to many films, however he and his spouse going to “The Silence of the Lambs” when it got here out in theaters. He didn’t know precisely when his masks would produce an look. The second one it did, he jumped from his seat and set free a cheer.
The alternative consumers hissed at him to sit down ill.
“I made that mask for the movie!” he informed them.
No person within the theater believed him. Why would they suspect the masks got here from Brandnew Jersey?
Cubberly, who now lives in Frenchtown, Brandnew Jersey, gained $400 in cost for the masks. He additionally maintains copyright over the design. That’s gotten him some too much money over time. He’s signed pledges with Halloween gown corporations letting them reproduce the masks.
Billy Crystal wore the unedited time website hosting the Oscars in 1992, creating a comic story that he gave the look of the goalie from the Display Actors Guild hockey crew.
Cubberly hasn’t noticeable the unedited in particular person since he shipped it from Brandnew Jersey to Pittsburgh, the place many of the film was once filmed.
“It’s a question I get all the time,” he says. “I have no idea where it is.”
He does, then again, have a present from the person who wore it. Next making the masks, he requested the movie’s prop staff if he may just get one thing signed by means of Hopkins. They granted the request, mailing him a photograph of Hopkins dressed in the masks. He helps to keep the picture framed on his wall.
“To Eddie,” Hopkins scrawled on the base of the image, “All good wishes — and be very careful on dark nights, Eddie, because I’ll be waiting and watching.”
Hopkins signed the image two times: as soon as together with his personal title and as soon as with the title of the nature Cubberly helped give his iconic glance: Dr. Lecter.
(Lead picture: Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Pictures)
