The Brown Bunny

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Movie
German title The Brown Bunny
Original title The Brown Bunny
Country of production USA , Japan , France
original language English
Publishing year 2003
length 89 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Vincent Gallo
script Vincent Gallo
production Vincent Gallo
music John Frusciante ,
Jeff Alexander ,
Ted Curson ,
Jackson C. Frank ,
Gordon Lightfoot
camera Vincent Gallo,
Toshiaki Ozawa ,
John Clemens
cut Vincent Gallo
occupation

The Brown Bunny is a American-Japanese-French Independent - essay film directed by and starring Vincent Gallo from the year 2003 from his own screenplay. Gallo acted as the main actor, producer and director and was also one of three cameramen. Actress Chloë Sevigny is seen in a small but central role towards the end of the film. The film attracted public attention mainly because of the clearly visible, non-simulated fellatio between Sevigny and Gallo in one scene and a fierce media dispute between Gallo and film critic Roger Ebert after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003 .

action

Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer, takes a trip across the United States after racing in New Hampshire to come to California for his next race . During the entire journey he cannot get rid of memories of his former lover, Daisy. On his journey he meets three women, but is unable to form an emotional connection with any of them.

First he meets Violet at a gas station in New Hampshire and persuades her to come to California with him. They stop at her house where she wants to pack clothes for the trip, but he drives away as soon as she enters the house. The next stop takes Bud to Daisy's parents' house. They don't remember him who grew up in the house next door; even with the information that they had visited Clay and Daisy in their house in California, the parents can do little. The central element of the scene is Daisy's The Brown Bunny , which gives the film its title and is now being looked after by her parents. Bud finds out about the life expectancy of rabbits after visiting an animal shelter and is told that they would be around five or six years old. At a highway rest stop, he meets a distraught woman, Lilly, whom he first comforts and kisses, but then breaks down in tears himself and finally drives off alone. As his journey progresses, Bud himself becomes more disturbed; he starts crying while driving. He stops at the Bonneville Speedway , a salt flats designated for motorsport purposes, and takes the opportunity for a training ride at high speed on his motorcycle.

In Las Vegas he drives through the city in a car, initially refuses several prostitutes on street corners, but finally asks a prostitute named Rose to accompany him to dinner and buys it at McDonald’s . While she is still eating it in his car while driving, he stops suddenly, gives her the previously promised money and leaves her on a street in Las Vegas. Once in Los Angeles , Bud brings his motorcycle to a apparently familiar motorcycle shop and has it tested there for the upcoming race. Then he drives to Daisy's house, which he finds abandoned. After no one answers his calls and he remembers how he and Daisy kissed in this place, he leaves a note on the front door with his hotel name. Checked in at the hotel and arrived in his room, he sits on the bed and waits.

Daisy finally appears visibly nervous and tries to talk to him, but apologizes twice and goes into the bathroom to smoke crack apparently unnoticed by him . Bud continues to sit on his bed with his head bowed, but refuses her suggestion to have a drink together, because he has stopped drinking because of the event the last time they saw each other. A brief argument ensues in which he accuses her of kissing other men. Finally, she asks him if she can sit on his lap and kiss him, as before. Bud agrees, Daisy performs fellatio on him, whereupon he insults her as a whore and huddles up on the bed sideways. They begin to talk about the event already hinted at when they last met. Bud keeps asking Daisy why she started something with some men at their last party together. She tries to explain to him that she just wanted to be kind to them and smoke marijuana with them . Bud is upset that Daisy was pregnant at the time and he somehow remembers that the unborn child died because of what happened at the party.

The following flashbacks show the audience that Daisy was raped at the party, but Bud did not intervene. Bud tries to explain to her that he didn't know what to do at the time and therefore fled and left the party. The last flashback shows his return to the place: Daisy's lifeless body is being pushed into an ambulance on a stretcher in front of a crowd. Daisy now explains to him that she died that evening when she passed out before the rape and then choked on her own vomit while she was unconscious. Bud wakes up the next morning alone in his hotel room, he had only imagined the encounter with Daisy the previous night. The final scene is a close-up of Bud driving his truck in California.

background

Film shooting and application

The film was shot in various states of the United States (including New Hampshire, Massachusetts , Missouri , Utah , Nevada and California ) on 16mm film and then enlarged to 35mm . After Gallo was exposed to great criticism in Cannes in 2003, including from film critics such as Roger Ebert, he shortened the film by 25 minutes for publication and theatrical release in the USA. In doing so, he removed a large part of the motorcycle race at the beginning of the film (about four minutes shorter thereafter), about six minutes from the end of the film (essentially music and black screen) and about seven minutes of the footage from the car ride in front of the racing scene at Bonneville Speedway .

The Guardian reported in an article that Kirsten Dunst and Winona Ryder had also been slated for roles in the film; In that article Sevigny was also quoted about the fellatio with her former friend Gallo, saying that she had already been intimate with him before and that this scene was therefore not that bad.

For the film trailer, the style of Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls was taken as a model: a split-in-the-middle picture showed a single perspective of a driver on a country road on one side, while on the other side individual excerpts with Sevigny from the film were shown .

The film's application on a large billboard above Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood , California attracted media attention in 2004 . There a still image from the fellatio of Gallo and Sevigny was shown in black and white , but without explicitly depicting sexual content; she was shown kneeling and him standing. However, following complaints from residents and business people, the advertisement was removed.

Cannes 2003

The screening as a competition entry at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003 was a failure, part of the audience left the screening location prematurely, another part expressed loud displeasure. The displeasure of the audience was not so much the unconventional, avant-garde style of the film as the film's closing scene, in which the non-simulated fellatio from Sevigny to Gallo is shown.

Dispute with Roger Ebert and re-editing of the film

After his return to America, Gallo defended his film, but released a new cut version of the film, which should make the storylines clearer and more compact. With the film critic Roger Ebert, however, he fought a harsh media battle in which Gallo initially described Ebert as "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader." (in German roughly: “fat pig with the stature of a slave trader”), whereupon Ebert - alluding to a quote from Winston Churchill - wrote as a reply: “[…] one day I will be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny ”(in German roughly:“ one day I'll be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny ”). Thereupon Gallo claimed that he had put a curse on the critic's colon and thus caused his cancer . Ebert responded by stating that he had more fun watching his colonoscopy on video than The Brown Bunny .

The screening of the shorter, re-cut film version later in 2003 at the Toronto International Film Festival was followed by a more benevolent evaluation of the film by numerous critics, including Ebert, who eventually recommended the film on an episode of his television show Ebert & Roeper . A short time later, Ebert also announced that he had made peace with Gallo; Gallo himself had previously stated that his curse was meant as a joke and had also been misinterpreted.

Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack was released in 2004 exclusively in Japan by the Tulip record label . While the first five tracks, by different artists, also appear in the film, the other five tracks, all by John Frusciante, do not.

Track list
  1. Come Wander with Me ( Jeff Alexander )
  2. Tears for Dolphy ( Ted Curson )
  3. Milk and Honey ( Jackson C. Frank )
  4. Beautiful ( Gordon Lightfoot )
  5. Smooth ( Matisse  /  Accardo Quartet )
  6. Forever Away ( John Frusciante )
  7. Dying Song (John Frusciante)
  8. Leave All the Days Behind (John Frusciante)
  9. Prostitution Song (John Frusciante)
  10. Falling (John Frusciante)

Reviews

Desson Thomas from the Washington Post describes the film as a curiosity, the deeper meaning of which only Gallo himself can understand. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times compares the loose structure of the film, which is well worth seeing, with Two-Lane Blacktop by Monte Hellman from 1971, but sees the protagonist in Gallo as more lovingly designed. Dargis feels satisfied most of the time by the barely existing plot, but the end has become too weeping. Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly , on the other hand, rates the ending as surprising and moving, and Gallo's talent is also evident throughout the entire film.

Awards

The Brown Bunny won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Viennale in Vienna in 2003 . In the same year the film was also in competition for the Golden Palm of the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Alexander of the Thessaloniki Film Festival .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for The Brown Bunny . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2005 (PDF; test number: 103 524 DVD).
  2. ^ A b Rebecca Murray: Filmmaker Vincent Gallo Discusses “The Brown Bunny”. Retrieved on August 10, 2010 (English, 5 pages).
  3. ↑ Fiachra Gibbons: contrite Gallo apologizes for pretension. In: The Guardian . May 24, 2003, accessed August 10, 2010 .
  4. ↑ Rob Samra: Controversial Indie Film “The Brown Bunny” Gets Controversial Billboard on LA's Sunset Strip! (No longer available online.) August 3, 2004, archived from the original on September 28, 2009 ; accessed on August 10, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.airmassive.com
  5. ↑ THE BROWN BUNNY (The Official Selection 2003). In: Festival de Cannes. Retrieved September 17, 2010 .
  6. ^ A b Roger Ebert: The Brown Bunny. In: Chicago Sun-Times. September 3, 2004, accessed September 22, 2010 .
  7. ↑ Quoted from: Jacques Peretti: 'You are a bad man trying to do bad things to Vincent'. In: The Guardian . November 14, 2003, accessed September 17, 2010 .
  8. ↑ The corresponding quotation from Churchill is: “ Bessie , my dear, you are ugly, and what's more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly. " (in German roughly: "Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and even more, you are ugly. Tomorrow I'll be sober again, but you are still ugly."). Quoted from: Richard Langworth (Ed.): Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations . PublicAffairs, New York 2008, ISBN 1-58648-638-1 , pp. 550 (English).
  9. ↑ Quoted from: In brief: Ebert says colonoscopy more entertaining than Gallo's Brown Bunny. In: The Guardian . June 5, 2003, accessed September 17, 2010 .
  10. ↑ In brief: Ebert says colonoscopy more entertaining than Gallo's Brown Bunny. In: The Guardian . June 5, 2003, accessed September 17, 2010 .
  11. ^ Roger Ebert: The whole truth from Vincent Gallo. In: Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on September 21, 2004 ; accessed on September 17, 2010 (English).
  12. ↑ Desson Thomson: A Bizarre 'Brown Bunny'. In: Washington Post . September 10, 2004, accessed September 22, 2010 .
  13. ↑ Manohla Dargis : The Narcissist and His Lover. In: The New York Times. August 27, 2004, accessed September 22, 2010 .
  14. ^ Owen Gleiberman: The Brown Bunny (2004). In: Entertainment Weekly . August 25, 2004, accessed September 22, 2010 .
  15. ↑ FIPRESCI price. In: Viennale. Retrieved September 22, 2010 .