The Brown Bunny
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The Brown Bunny is a film by maverick actor/director Vincent Gallo that had its world premiere at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where it played in competition. Critical reaction was so hostile that the film quickly became labelled the worst in the festival's history, and many journalists even questioned the entire festival's artistic direction in admitting it in the first place.
The film is a rambling odyssey about a motorcycle racer (played by Gallo) who undertakes a cross-country van drive in search of his former lover. The road scenes received especially heavy ridicule, consisting as they do of lengthy unbroken shots out the van's windshield, and one sequence in which Gallo parks the van and washes it, which plays in real time.
But the strongest outrage was reserved for the film's final scene, in which Gallo's character finally meets up with his ex-lover (Chloë Sevigny), and she performs unsimulated fellatio upon him.
The screening of the film at Cannes, where audiences will openly let their displeasure be known with loud boos and catcalls, was a fiasco, reportedly bringing Sevigny to tears and provoking a humiliated Gallo to apologize for making the film. Upon his return to America, however, Gallo took a defiant stance, defending the film and denying his apology. A war of words then erupted between Gallo and popular critic Roger Ebert, with Ebert writing that The Brown Bunny was the worst film in the history of Cannes, and Gallo retorting by calling Ebert a "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader." Ebert then responded, paraphrasing a statement once made by Winston Churchill that "although I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of The Brown Bunny." Gallo then put a hex on Ebert's colon, cursing the critic with cancer. Roger Ebert then replied that his colonoscopy was better than The Brown Bunny. Later on, Gallo told Ebert that he had been misquoted, and he had actually wished him cancer of the prostate and not the colon.
Ironically, the outrage and hysteria surrounding The Brown Bunny meant it ended up being the most-talked about film of the festival—even more so than the eventual Palme d'Or winner, Gus van Sant's Elephant, and Lars von Trier's highly-anticipated Dogville—creating a mystique that some think might enhance its likelihood of securing US distribution.
A shorter, re-edited version of the film played later in 2004 at the Toronto International Film Festival (although it still retained the controversial sex scene). While not receiving the highest praise, neither did it garner the same level of derision as the Cannes version, and on the August 28, 2004 episode of Ebert & Roeper, Roger Ebert gave the new version of the film a thumbs-up. In a column published at about the same time, Ebert reported that he and Gallo had made peace.
External links
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- "Playboy Bunny: Vincent Gallo proves he just wants to be loved" (http://slate.msn.com/id/2106174/), David Edelstein, Slate.com, Sept. 10, 2004.
- "The Brown Bunny" (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2004/09/17/brown_bunny/index.html), Charles Taylor, Salon.com, Sept. 17, 2004.