DVDFILE: So, how the heck did you wind up in the DVD business, and at Scott Free Productions?

Charles de Lauzirika: Following my graduation from USC Film School, I had been working for Scott Free in development for a couple years, reading scripts, doing story notes and occasionally handling some special projects for Ridley and Tony Scott. During that time, I made a short film, a music video and some commercials which seemed to catch their attention. And just as I was about completely burned out on development, Fox began work on the "Alien" 20th Anniversary Edition DVD.

This was long before Fox was the DVD-friendly studio it is now, and being a DVD fanatic, I persuaded Ridley to get personally involved to make sure the disc was done right. I wasn't planning on being involved with the project at all, but because Ridley was leaving to shoot "Gladiator," he decided to put me in charge of the DVD. That led to further work on "Legend," "Gladiator" and "Hannibal," as well as some non-Scott Free titles such as "The Cell," which I co-produced with David Prior, and then I worked with David again on the menus for "Big Trouble in Little China."

DF: Let's talk about Hannibal. Obviously, this was a mammoth task and rather extensive for such a recent motion picture. How much input does Ridley Scott have during production, in terms of picking things like deleted scenes, or the applications of such technologies as multi-angle on the "scene deconstructions"?

CL: It depends. I think Ridley is comfortable enough with me doing this now that he gives me some measure of autonomy to just go ahead and put things together, but at the same time, if it's something I feel could have major repercussions down the road, I'll definitely run it by him.

Case in point, as you mentioned, was the multi-angle breakdown of the Fish Market scene. But after explaining to him exactly what I had in mind, he didn't even hesitate. He thought it was cool and gave me the go-ahead. I had some further discussions with his editor, Pietro Scalia, just to assure him that what I wanted to do didn't take away from his work. This wasn't an editing workshop like on "Die Hard" or "Men in Black" where you can produce a new cut of the scene. It's completely live, on-the-fly angle surf-abililty.

If anything, I think that by breaking the scene down like this, it makes the editor's work look even more impressive. But generally, Ridley is definitely supportive of trying new things with DVD, and he does his best to participate whenever I need him.

DF: Did you look at the various SILENCE OF THE LAMBS laserdisc and DVD editions before approaching putting together HANNIBAL? Did it influence how you approached the sequel?

CL: The Criterion release ended up influencing some things on "Hannibal" that unfortunately never made it to the disc. Obviously, the Criterion "Silence" disc had that wonderful commentary track, with Hopkins, Foster, Demme, etc., so I was hoping to one-up that track by actually getting Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore and Ridley in a room together, rather than recording them separately and editing them together like they did on the Criterion disc. But as you can guess, it was a scheduling nightmare and it didn't work out. And plus, both Anthony and Julianne had gone into production on other movies immediately following "Hannibal," so they became unavailable as well.

I also really loved the FBI profiles on serial killers that were on Criterion's "Silence" disc, so I wanted to put together an interactive FBI dossier on Dr. Lecter based on all of the filmed and unfilmed background information that Thomas Harris included in the three novels. I had actually done some design work on the FBI interface and doctored up some photos of him to look like a younger, pre-incarcerated Lecter. But it was always intended as a low priority Easter Egg, so it kept getting pushed aside as work on the real supplements continued.

And at the end, in the final couple of weeks, I decided to drop it altogether because I'd rather spend those precious days refining the principal supplements than throwing together another Easter Egg, especially since I've become somewhat anti-Easter Egg lately.