The Brown Bunny

[meatwad]

good job quoting a critic from Entertainment Weekly

[Ghostboy]

I think the trailer uses that quote, actually. If it were a Quicktime trailer, I could attest to that. I think it's great -- reminds me of the Lost Highway poster that proudly put 'Two Thumbs Down' at the top.

[matt35mm]

Yes, that quotation opens the trailer, which is why I used it.

I'd also dig it if they used a "two thumbs down" type thing, but my point is that I feel that they used the quotation to suggest that the movie is important and contains some "dangerous" ideas or something.  That's not the same as admitting that someone thought your movie sucked.

Also, it's not fair to use the reviews from what the filmmakers now claim to be an essentially different movie.  THEREFORE, Schwarzbaum wasn't wrong: No One in America will see the crappy version of The Brown Bunny that she reviewed in Cannes.  How does that quotation mean anything at all now that Gallo has re-edited the movie?

I know how much a movie can change by being re-edited.  So it's quite false to take the negative "buzz" and "controversy" from your crappy "workprint" and use it for a different version of the movie.

30 minutes is a lot to cut out of a movie.  If Lost in Translation had a 10 minute "real-time" scene of Bill Murray washing his van, people would hate the damn thing.  You could easily put that in a movie to piss people off and then change it, and then use the buzz from the previous cut of the movie to sell your current cut, which doesn't contain the "controversial" material in question.  So like I said before, it's false.

[MacGuffin]

Movie Ad Backfires
Source: Los Angeles Times

Director Vincent Gallo's embrace of controversy to drum up publicity for his film, "The Brown Bunny," paid off -- but it also appeared to have backfired.

A billboard promoting Gallo's controversial movie was taken down Thursday after several newspapers, including The Times, ran stories about the sign. (MacGuffin's note: See previous page for billboard image)

Positioned at Sunset and Crescent Heights boulevards, it featured an explicit image in which actress Chloe Sevigny appeared to be performing oral sex on Gallo, her director and co-star.

Wellspring Media, the film's distributor, was caught off guard by the move, a representative of the company said. A spokeswoman for Regency Outdoor Advertising declined to say why the sign was pullled.

The film about a motorcycle racer searching for true love will debut Aug. 27 in New York and L.A.

[UncleJoey]

I know how much a movie can change by being re-edited.

Good Example: Once Upon a Time in America

Excellent post by the way.

[Ghostboy]

A very good (and positive) review from AICN. I've read a handful of early reviews so far, and the word is generally good.

[MacGuffin]

Sex and the cinema is a risky proposition
By Gregg Kilday (Hollywood Reporter)

Contrary to popular belief, sex doesn't necessarily sell. While movies ads are usually rife with the promise of romance and sensuality, the rare film that frankly delves into explicit sexuality does so at its own risk.

Next Friday that truism will be tested once again when Wellspring Media dares to release Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" in New York and Los Angeles.

"Bunny," which premiered at the 2003 Festival de Cannes, should get plenty of press -- even if its boxoffice potential is unproven. At Cannes, the art house exercise arrived on a wave of titillation because it features an explicit sex scene between Gallo and Chloe Sevigny. But what earned it some of the loudest critical razzberries the fest has ever seen was the protracted plot, or lack of same, that leads up to the movie's climactic moment.

Playing a professional motorcycle racer, Gallo spends most of the film in a cross-country road trip that seemed to include every stop to gas up his truck in excruciating detail. (And, yes, the film also includes shots of a literal brown bunny, as Gallo has confessed he is partial to the furry creatures.) The film was subsequently trimmed by 25 minutes for the Toronto Film Festival last fall, and its critical reception improved.

Speaking with reporters in Cannes, Gallo defended the sex scene, insisting: "I didn't include the sex scene to be controversial. I included it because I'm interested in the subject matter. It's a very complex scene. You never see how people actually look when in deep intimacy in contrast to what's happening emotionally or see how people act out dark pathologies."

Now, arguably, if movies are meant to reflect the human condition, there's no reason why forthright sexuality should be off-limits. But in reality, there's something about sex on screen that throws filmmakers, critics and audiences for a loop.

It's as if real sex -- as opposed to the more common, simulated variety -- violates the suspension of disbelief that surrounds most movies.

Even in the most convincing and suspenseful action scene, there's a part of the viewer that knows the actors -- with the possible exception of Jackie Chan -- aren't really at risk.

But let an actor drop his trousers, and there's no faking it. And so the media turns downright silly, as happened earlier this summer when it couldn't stop talking about the fact that a full frontal shot of Colin Farrell apparently proved so distracting it had to be trimmed from "A Home at the End of the World."

But it's not just the easily distracted media that can't cope -- even serious-minded directors seem to lose their compass when they dive into the realm of the senses.

French director Catherine Breillat recruited Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi to strut his stuff in her 1999 X-rated "Romance," but the result proved so lugubrious it seemed to be warning folks off sex altogether. Michael Winterbottom documents a couple's sexual liaison in clinical detail in "Nine Songs," which is set to play the Toronto Film Festival, but advance word from Cannes, where it was peddled at the Marche, hasn't been encouraging. John Cameron Mitchell, who directed "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," is currently workshopping a project titled "Shortbus," designed to revolve around explicit sex scenes, but so far hasn't found the financing to mount the film.

As for the eccentric Gallo, he shouldn't be faulted for challenging our limited cultural mores. And Sevigny herself could even be applauded for, effectively, doing her own stunts. The debate surrounding "Brown Bunny" shouldn't be about the seriousness of its intent. The question is really about the quality of its execution.

[Sal]

There's also a pretty good New York times article that I assume will be in today's paper.  Gallo says some great things.

[Pubrick]

Gallo says some great things.

what, like "vote bush"?

i'll wait to see his dick before i finalise my judgment of him.

[coffeebeetle]

Gallo says some great things.

what, like "vote bush"?

i'll wait to see his dick before i finalise my judgment of him.

Tee-hee.

[Redlum]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330099/fullcredits

[Redlum]

Good interview with VG at Aintitcoolnews.com

http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=18202

[MacGuffin]

Sevigny Explains Graphic Scene in New Film

Actress Chloe Sevigny says a notoriously graphic sex scene in "The Brown Bunny," which opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles, will make "more sense" after audiences see it for themselves.

"I knew people would not understand it," Sevigny told The Associated Press. "It's a shame people write so many things when they haven't seen it. When you see the film, it makes more sense. It's an art film. It should be playing in museums. It's like an Andy Warhol movie."

The explicit oral-sex scene, which has garnered all sorts of attention since the movie's premiere, occurs between Sevigny and Vincent Gallo, who also wrote, directed and edited the film. Gallo shot the scene using remote cameras while he and Sevigny were alone in the room.

"This particular scene is the most complex, it's the most evolved thing that I've ever done in my life," Gallo said at a news conference during the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

Sevigny, 29, has an eclectic acting resume that includes "Kids," "Boys Don't Cry" and "American Psycho." She can next be seen in the HBO drama series "Big Love" and Woody Allen's "Melinda and Melinda," scheduled for release next year.

"I've always made films that are sort of avant-garde-y or whatever you call it," she told the AP last week at the opening of the Hard Rock Cafe inside Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Mashantucket, Conn.

[pete]

she totally does not understand avant-garde.

[ono]

"I've always made films that are sort of avant-garde-y or whatever you call it,"

Well, she's right, that is what you call a lot of the films she's been in before.  Well, specifically, julien donkey-boy.  But yeah, from what I've read of The Brown Bunny, it doesn't seem to be too avant-garde.  At least, it's not like this is the FIRST film to have a blowjob in it.