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The Brown Bunny
(2003)
Dir: Vincent Gallo
Vincent Gallo’s second feature-length film is reasonably disappointing in comparison to 1989’s Buffalo ‘66. All of the former picture’s latent sweetness and elongated character development feel absent here. His storytelling technique has the same element of subtle revelations that tweak the story--Gallo also plays a similar, damaged, little-boy character--but the movie is far more hypnotic than dramatic. It’s the tale of motorcycle racer Bud Clay (played by … Gallo), who is making a cross-country journey to L.A., in his windowless, black van.
Oral.
What?
Ahem. The movie opens very strong, with a long sequence of racing shots wherein the soundtrack slips in and out, giving the activity mystic charm and gravity. It sets the movie’s ambling tone. As Clay’s journey progresses little details about his character and story begin to slowly seep out, through brief encounters he has with random people (mostly women; one of them Cheryl Teigs) that he meets on his journey. For instance, it is revealed that he has a girlfriend, and that he is going to L.A. to see her, about a quarter of the way through a conversation with her parents. Things flutter along like this for the majority of the picture. Everything is braced by magnetic sequences of interstate driving, set to the sweet sounds of luminaries like Gordon Lightfoot. These are perhaps the most carefully constructed scenes in the film. A windshield-wiper in particular takes on a rather profound rhythm and purpose.
Blow job.
Where was I?
After Clay arrives in L.A. and gets a motel room for the night, his girlfriend appears, played by Chloe Sevigny. They rehash, make out and she gives him head. The center of much boring controversy, the scene is perhaps startling at first, but it quickly dissolves into something a tad creepy. It a scrap from the floor of the Bad Lieutenant cutting room. Bold move, no doubt. And Gallo’s direction is so assured and distinct that, contextually, charges that he’s ruined his career by filming a blow job seem as debased and puritanical as they truly are, but the movie would have been more effective without it.
I listened Gallo discuss the film with Howard Stern, and he was refuting accusations that he was a narcissist (apparently he gets that a lot), saying that no true narcissist would make themselves vulnerable the way that he did, showing his james on screen. Not so much. All of the vulnerability that Gallo seethes throughout the film largely dissolves in that scene, as Sevigny literally siphons the lion‘s share. Because at core, it’s still a man’s world, and women are forced to deal with lingering inequities of it, career wise, Sevigny is taking the bigger risk.
I don’t see Gallo as your run-of-the-mill narcissist, although in setting himself as the visual centerpiece of a film he wrote, directed, produced, shot, did the makeup for and cast, does invite the analysis. It’s almost as though he wants people to think that his neuroses and self-absorption are cool, and perfectly reasonable. His vision is direct, and in that way, maybe he is just a truly honest being. But as far as making himself susceptible to physical criticisms (another gripe he aired on Stern‘s show), maybe if he had a small, ragged or severely bent penis that would be reasonable, but it’s hard to buy his plea when what he stuffs into Sevigny’s mouth looks, ironically, like the stem of a show pony.
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