Hannibal Lecter inspires an NFT

The other day, Anthony Hopkins stood in front of a green screen in a Culver City movie studio, contorting his face and arranging his limbs according to the demands of Ramy Romany, a director in a fedora. Hopkins wore textured black loafers and had a fuzz of white hair.

“Now, monster!” Romany called. Hopkins’ eyes widened. “Now, strength and happiness!” Hopkins flexed his biceps. “Now, savior!” Hopkins stretched out an arm and unfolded his fingers, the big bad wolf of Bottega Veneta.

“Oh, my God, it’s so scary,” said Stella Arroyave, Hopkins’ wife. She had brown clogs and had her hair in a ponytail. “Evil, evil savior!” Nearby, crew members mingled between a squat black couch and a table of assorted taco salads.

Hopkins had agreed to star in a series of NFTs, or digital artworks, “built on Jungian archetypes,” according to one of his recent tweets, but also derived from his most famous Hollywood characters.

“You obviously know the iconic Hannibal Lecter,” said Dante Ferrarini, co-founder of Orange Comet, the company that manufactures the NFTs “But we’re not going to be able to use the exact mask.” (Copyright and intellectual property are among the least fungible things around.) Instead, Ferrarini and Hopkins came up with archetypes associated with Hollywood movies—the fool, the narcissist—that Hopkins would embody with facial expressions and physical movement.

“Now make a three hundred and sixty degree turn,” commanded Romany, as Hopkins wagged his finger to “Staying Alive.” The footage will be combined with reproductions of paintings by Hopkins – a triangular self-portrait; a grim face – as well as digital artwork by others.

“We bring the darkness of human nature, – What do we call the gathering?” Dave Broome, Orange Comet’s other co-founder, called out to the crew. He had close-cropped black hair and wore a black diamond studded dog tag.

“Anthony Hopkins, the eternal collection,” Ferrarini said.

One thousand units of The Eternal will be made available to online buyers in October. Starting price: around a thousand dollars. “I was a baseball card collector as a kid,” said Broome, who has produced “The Biggest Loser,” among other projects. He put his cards in a shoebox. He went to college. The shoebox went to the garage. “Eventually it went to the trash can,” he said. “Gone forever. Now, in the NFT world, I never have to blame my parents for throwing my shit out. If you own an NFT of Anthony Hopkins, he’s immortalized on the blockchain. It’s not going anywhere.”

“It’s almost like ‘Westworld,’ isn’t it?” Hopkins chimed in and settled into an Aeron chair across from Broome. He was holding a mug of hot water.

“Tape is disappearing,” Broome said. “It’s being digitized, but it’s disappearing. This is a very unique way to take a legend and bring him to life.”

Hopkins, a lifelong doodler, made a more concerted investment in producing art twenty years ago. “During the years of making movies, I had scripts and I used to draw on the blank pages opposite the text,” he said. “Stella found them before we got married. She said, ‘You’re an artist. I want you to do some paintings for our wedding. ” Hopkins churned out seventy-five, including renderings of the Welsh countryside where he grew up. “Then she said, ‘Now you’re going to start painting.’ ” Hopkins protested: ” ‘I’m not an artist.’ She said, “Of course you are.” Now his canvases sell for as much as eighty thousand dollars.

A little later, Hopkins found himself in a house previously occupied by another hobby painter who did not quit his day job, Henry Miller. (The house is now a library that Hopkins called “a little California treasure.”) “Miller said, ‘Paint and die happy.’ I took it as a principle: the more we think about it, the less likely we are to achieve it,” Hopkins said. “The point is to leave the critic and just paint. I’m a prolific painter because I don’t know what I’m doing with. I don’t have any training, and that’s the best freedom I have.”

He continued: “That’s what I tell young actors. You know, ‘We’re all going to die, and it’s not important.’ “

Hopkins said he didn’t own any NFTs (he has since bought some.) “It’s all brand new to me. Everything is Aaron Tucker,” he said, referring to the CEO of Margam Fine Art, the Los Angeles gallery that represents him. “They started this project and they got it together. I just came in as a, you know, ‘move here.’ ” He wiggled his fingers, as if to indicate an actor for hire. “I mean, I don’t quite get it all,” he added with a shrug. “It’s an extraordinary age we live in.” ♦