Con Air's Director Simon West Accidently Locked Up Steve Buscemi

For those unfamiliar with "Con Air," the mask Steve Buscemi is wearing in the scene is vaguely reminiscent of the restraining mask Anthony Hopkins wore as Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter in the legendary 1991 psychological thriller "The Silence of the Lambs." Ironically, it was Buscemi's silence that prevented him from being unleashed from his plane's jail set any earlier than he did.

"He [was] still in there like, and he can't say anything," West told The Digital Fix, laughing. "He's still got his mask on, but he never started banging on the door. I went back in and let him out. I'm going 'Sorry, Steve, I completely forgot you'. He said, 'Oh, it's OK.' The poor guy was in those restraints for way longer than the scene."

Any viewer familiar with the scene knows that the finished product gives off an atmosphere of foreboding tension. Accompanied by ominous background music, the dialogue in the scene includes "Baby-O" O'Dell (Mykelti Williamson) filling Cameron Poe in on Garland Greene's horrific past, saying that the killer "butchered 30-something people up and down the Eastern Seaboard." O'Dell then punctuates his description of Greene by adding, "They say way he killed those people makes the Manson Family look like the Partridge Family."