The Brown Bunny

Dir: Vincent Gallo

2003

**

I absolutely adored Buffalo 66 when it came out and I suddenly found myself watching and listening to anything and everything that Vincent Gallo was attached to. His music is amazing, I still listen to it quite regularly, but I think he might just have reached his peak with Buffalo 66. I read the same stories about how mean he was to co-star Christina Ricci, how he had shouted at her and said if she couldn’t get her lines right he would replace her with a fat truck driver in a blond wig etc, and I still loved him and his work. The he made The Brown Bunny and I started to go off him. Years later, he listed his own sperm to his website’s online shop – One million dollars for a jar or free if you want him to insert it himself. I no longer make much of an effort to see what he’s working on next, but I digress, The Brown Bunny was hotly anticipated by me and a legion of fans and it came as a bitter disappointment. I think his ego finally got the better of him, the direction and story are great, I even liked the predictable ending, it just didn’t quite click for me. It’s filmed in 16mm which was then blown up to 35mm which is very effective and suits Gallos style. There is of course ‘that’ scene which has caused much debate. Credit it for Gallo for writing, directing, acting, producing and editing it all by himself though. It’s quite a simple premise; Bud, a motorcycle racer, drives across the country from one race to another, starting in New Hampshire and ending in California. He stops off in various towns and cities, including Massachusetts, Ohio, Missouri, Utah and Nevada, and meets several ladies along the way. He meets a girl at a gas station and asks her to join him but speeds off when she goes home to collect some clothes for the trip. He comforts a distressed woman he meets and kisses her passionate before running away again. He cruises the red light district of Las Vegas for prostitutes and picks one up, only to take her for a meal in McDonalds, rather than back to his hotel room for sex. He also goes into a pet shop to ask the owner what the life expectancy of rabbits is, which I still don’t understand the relevance of. He becomes more and more distressed throughout the film, clearly unable to progress with romantic or physical relationships following a break up with his previous girlfriend Daisy. He visits Daisy’s mother but she doesn’t remember him. He steals her stuffed brown bunny from her bedroom, giving the film its title. Daisy (played by Chole Sevigny) eventually turns up smoking crack at his California hotel room. They argue, she gives him fellatio and the truth behind Bud’s mental torture is revealed. It’s a great conclusion, very clever but a little predictable. However, it is ruined by the aforementioned fellatio scene. It’s no wonder both Kirsten Dunst and Winona Ryder left the project, one can only wonder whether it was this particular scene that saw them off. Sevigny pretended that Gallo’s appendage in the film was a prop but no one really believed her. Later she admitted that the scene was tough but Gallo was sensitive, gentle and the pair had been intimate in the past anyway. Her casting agent dropped her like a ton of bricks but she was back on her feet in no time and it doesn’t seem to have damaged her career. New York reviewer Manohla Dargis said: “… it's genuinely startling to see a name actress throw caution and perhaps her career to the wind. But give the woman credit. Actresses have been asked and even bullied into performing similar acts for filmmakers since the movies began, usually behind closed doors. Ms. Sevigny isn't hiding behind anyone's desk. She says her lines with feeling and puts her iconoclasm right out there where everyone can see it; she may be nuts, but she's also unforgettable”. I couldn’t disagree more. I would have way more respect for her if she had kicked Gallo in his manhood at the very suggestion, rather than to suck it for the sake of art. The actors have history, I get that, but she was clearly suckered in by his manipulative nature, as have many. The film is nothing more than an ego-trip, a self-indulgent load of nonsense, pretentious is an overused and often misunderstood description but I think it’s rather suitable in the case of Brown Bunny. Roger Ebert and Gallo had quite a public spat about the film, Ebert suggesting the original cut was the worst thing to have been shown at Cannes. Gallo retorting by calling Ebert a "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader.” Ebert responded with, "It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny." Gallo then claimed to have put a hex on Ebert's colon, cursing the critic with cancer. In response, Ebert quipped that watching a video of his colonoscopy had been more entertaining than watching The Brown Bunny. Fairly nasty stuff really, the product of a worthless film in my opinion. The later cut of the film fared better than the original but it still contained ‘that’ scene. It’s a shame really, as there is some beauty within the film – the performances are strong, it looks awesome and it has a strong sense of Americana about it but I think Gallo’s ego ruins it. I worry about the sort of person who would gladly perform a ‘downstairs act’ on another person on camera but I worry more about the guy who asks them to and wants people to watch it happen. I’m no prude but I found the film to be too grubby to love.