The Brown Bunny

[classical gas]

I didn't hear anything (edit--whoops, meant for Insomniac's statement)...

anyways, it's an interesting debate...

[03]

not really.

[classical gas]

yeah, i see what you mean

[modage]

This seems like it could be another Gerry.

lets hope not.  

as far as the trailer changing peoples minds about the movie, how can it not?  if a movie you've read about has a good premise and interesting people involved and you see a few minutes of hte film, (supposedly showcasing the films strengths and trying to get people interested), and hte acting is terrible and it looks like 100 other movies, how can you not be affected?  conversely, how can you not be drawn in by a great trailer?

[Ghostboy]

This seems like it could be another Gerry.

lets hope not.  

If it's even half the movie Gerry was, I'll be overjoyed.  

Anyway, as an editor and someone who takes a great deal of pride in cutting trailers for other people's films, I will concur with anyone who suggests trailers are an art unto themselves. I may not be expressing my own personal artistic intentions when I cut a trailer for someone else (I do when it's for my own work), but I am using my artistic skill to make something that is engaging, provocative, intriguing. I'm trying to sell the film as best I can, but the way to do that is to make a trailer that people want to watch. My favorite trailers -- most Kubrick trailers, Dark City, American Beauty -- make me want to watch them for their own merits.

I think all advertising, when you look past its inherent capitalistic intentions, has the opportunity to be great art as well. There are some commercials that, as Kubrick said, tell stories better than films.

Finally, I like The Brown Bunny trailer, more than the Buffalo 66 trailer, which I felt gave away too much.

[ElPandaRoyal]

Finally, I like The Brown Bunny trailer, more than the Buffalo 66 trailer, which I felt gave away too much.

Well, this is a perfect trailer for this movie, but after you see the movie, you'll realize that your previous statement is wrong.

[RegularKarate]

Wow... way to go

we didn't know it was spoiled... now we do... congratulations.

[ElPandaRoyal]

What the fuck? I didn't spoil shit. Don't be a jerk.

[MacGuffin]

Fellow Los Angelinos and those who happen to be in the area at the time:

A Two Week run at The Nuart in West L.A. - Friday, August 27 - Thursday, September 9

Last year, Vincent Gallo's unfinished film was perhaps the most controversial ever screened at the Cannes Film Festival. The finished film became a hit at the Toronto Film Festival and won the prestigious International Critic's Prize at the Viennale. Gallo's visual poem to a lost American tells the story of Bud Clay (Gallo), a man so haunted by the loss of his true love, Daisy (Chloe Sevigny), that he travels across the country desperately trying to forget her. Building to a notorious climax, the film presents one of the frankest portrayals of male sexuality ever seen in American cinema.

Vincent Gallo in person Fri. & Sat., Sept. 3 & 4 at 7:30 and 10pm (schedule permitting)

Fri. Sept. 3 also screens with the Uncut X-Rated version of Wild At Heart at Midnight.

[xerxes]

i think i will have to go see that

[MacGuffin]

Turning to shock value to promote 'The Brown Bunny'
The billboard for Vincent Gallo's latest film is raising eyebrows on the Sunset Strip. Source: Los Angeles Times



Rising above Sunset Boulevard, half a block west of Crescent Heights Boulevard, one movie's billboard stands in marked contrast to the glossy studio advertising surrounding it. Minimalist and provocative like the film it promotes, the sign features an explicit black-and-white image that appears to show Chloë Sevigny performing oral sex on director and costar Vincent Gallo. At the bottom is a simple message: "In color. X. Adults only."

Controversy is nothing new to Gallo's "The Brown Bunny," an unfinished version of which elicited boos at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Film critic Roger Ebert called it the worst picture ever to be screened at the event. Dismissing the possibility it could land a distributor, Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote: "No one in America will ever see a frame of this film."

That quote now opens the "teaser" trailer for the movie, the tale of an emotionally fragile motorcycle racer traveling cross-country in search of true love, set to open in New York and Los Angeles on Aug. 27.

Taking a page from the playbook of Miramax Films chief Harvey Weinstein ("Dogma," "Priest" and "Kids," and more recently "Fahrenheit 9/11") and Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," the Gallo contingent is banking on the notion that controversy translates into box office.

In spite of what's taking place in the billboard scene, which Gallo says wasn't shot with "smoke and mirrors," the 42-year-old denies that his billboard design is the act of a provocateur. His aim, Gallo contends, is to legitimize the film, diffusing charges of gratuitous sexuality by calling up "iconic references" to sophisticated, X-rated fare such as Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris" and John Schlesinger's "Midnight Cowboy." Gallo says the X rating, which the Motion Picture Assn. of America replaced with the NC-17 label in 1990, is his own marketing device to suggest that the movie is for grown-ups, rather than pornographic.

"People regard 'Brown Bunny' as a freaky, self-indulgent home movie," the writer-director (1998s "Buffalo '66") said on the phone from Chicago — one of six cities he'll hit on a road trip to promote the movie ending next week in Los Angeles. "By publicizing it on Sunset, I'm positioning it as a controversial mainstream movie, an event, rather than pretentious avant-garde. The billboard was designed for sophisticated people who'd understand the aesthetic, the fact that there's subtext and complexity. I guess I forgot about your everyday person — the old man in a Mercedes a friend of mine saw put his hand over his mouth and mime, 'Oh, my God!' "

Liza Burnett, who heads the film division of public relations firm Dan Klores Communications, says: "We all decided to embrace the controversy instead of running away from it."

Thus far, no formal protests have been filed. Dan Goldberg, vice president of marketing and publicity for the film's New York-based distributor, Wellspring, says Regency Outdoor Advertising, which owns the billboard space, asked no questions about content. A spokeswoman for the company says they've rejected certain subject matter on occasion — and that this was a "judgment call."

Screened to a somewhat more favorable reception at the Toronto Film Festival last September, the film will go out unrated — an option because Wellspring is not a signatory of the MPAA, which requires movies released by its members to carry a rating. Although essentially the same conceptually as the version shown at Cannes, the current film is 26 minutes shorter and has a new ending. Gallo says that he agreed to present the shorter version at Cannes only because of a deal he cut with the producers.

Sex isn't the point of "The Brown Bunny," a film about intimacy and relationships, maintains Ryan Werner, head of theatrical distribution for Wellspring. His company acquired the movie a year after Cannes. The Landmark chain, he says, has been particularly supportive, booking the movie for a two-week run at the Nuart in Los Angeles and a prime art house in Manhattan. On Sept. 3, "Bunny" is set to expand to Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, and could be playing in the top 15 markets by the following week.

Cannes was the first hurdle, Werner says. Getting critics into the movie is the second.

"This is the biggest marketing challenge we've faced," said the executive, whose company is about to release "Tarnation," winner of the best documentary award at the Los Angeles Film Festival. "I can't think of a single movie with a sex scene like this, featuring known actors. Still, this year the studios have released a number of NC-17 movies [prohibiting anyone 17 and younger from attending], including 'Young Adam' and 'The Dreamers.' I'd like to think Hollywood is growing up a bit, but it's always a roll of the dice."

The film's release coincides with the Republican National Convention in New York, which Gallo, a devout supporter of President Bush, plans to attend. Although some might question his association with the party's "family values" stance, the director sets things straight. "The right-wing people I know are more tolerant than the left-wing commies you find at Cannes. After all, what do I reveal that Calvin Klein doesn't — more suggestively — on the billboard across the street?"

[Ghostboy]

Vincent Gallo's a Republican worth loving.



Also, a good article in The New York Times about the same thing, and Indiwire reports minutely on Ebert and Gallo making up.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

When will I be able to see this film??

I've been hearing about it forever, and is this going to take around a year to hit DVD's?

[Ghostboy]

When will I be able to see this film??

Check out the official site, www.brownbunny.net, which details the release schedule and the theaters across America that will be showing the film.

I'm booked the morning of September 10th.

[matt35mm]

Hmm.  It actually opens relatively near me in August.  Too bad I'm not that compelled to watch this movie.  The trailer calls it "the most controversial American movie ever made" when there's nothing controversial about it at all.  All the controversy that was stirred up LAST YEAR was over how crap this movie was.  The re-cut movie's reception has only been a little better.

You have to admit that that's a particularly stupid thing to say, that it's the most controversial American movie ever made.  Controversy is when the whole world gets all riled up and agrues about it.  It's being released in the same year as The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenhiet 9/11, so that makes it an especially obviously stupid thing to say.

I mean, if the reviews were good, I'd watch it no matter how big of a lie it has in the trailer, but the only controversy that this movie rung up was over how terrible it is.  I dunno why anyone would want to watch this movie, except to witness a train wreck.

I wouldn't even be pissed off if the distributor weren't trying to sell it as a somehow "important and controversial" movie.  As if when Schwarzbaum said that "no one in America will ever see a frame of this movie," she meant that there was something shocking or dangerous about it.  She meant that it sucked.  And distributing a movie with a quote about how it would never get distribution proves NOTHING.  Maybe Schwarzbaum meant that no one SHOULD ever see a frame of this movie.

I didn't mean to write this much, but that "controversial" part of the trailer just pissed me off.  The whole thing is false.

But you know what?  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe the movie is fantastic, okay?  A wonderful, sensitive, and romantic look at the lonely life of a drifter etc... but it's still not anywhere near being the most controversial American movie ever made.  And the poster, regardless of Mr. Gallo's intentions, makes it look like nothing BUT a porno.