"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
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AN INTERVIEW WITH:
VINCENT GALLO
by Peter Sobczynski

September 3, 2004

If you pay attention to the world of film, you have no doubt heard about Vincent Gallo and his film "The Brown Bunny", which has been at the center of controversy since its now-legendary premiere at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival-partly because of the virulent reaction that the rough cut (which was shown as a contractual obligation to Gallo’s producers) received was so overwhelming (many-most famously Roger Ebert-called it the worst film to ever play at the festival) and partly because of the graphic oral-sex sequence involving Gallo and Chloe Sevigny that concludes the film. As it turns out, in this slightly shorter version (not that this is the kind of film where the running time would make that much of a difference), the hype was wrong in both instances. "The Brown Bunny" is a strange, beautifully shot and strangely moving about a man (Gallo) trying to come to terms with a traumatic past incident while on a cross-country road trip-the kind of quiet, personal film that used to be made more frequently in the 1970’s. As for that final scene, it is a memorable one and not just because of the graphic nature of what is seen-what is striking is the intensity of the scene, which is far more striking than any of the body parts on display.

Of course, the other reason why Gallo’s film has become so well-known before its release is because of the post-Cannes war of words that he fought in public with Ebert-complete with cancer curses and the like. Therefore, it is surprising to find that Gallo would actually come to Chicago to do press for the film as well as a post-screening Q&A after a preview-not only that, he also apparently buried the hatchet with Ebert. The day after these events, I sat down with Gallo, who is far quieter and calmer than his persona might suggest, to discuss "The Brown Bunny" and the long and strange trip it has undergone to get to theaters.

THE INTERVIEW

How did the Q&A last night go for you?

It was okay. I enjoy Q&A’s because it helps me put my work in the past, which is my favorite thing to do. I don’t like to continue being involved in the work for such a long time and the way that I put it in the past in terms of cinema is that way. In the art world, I do it with an exhibition and in the music world, I do it when I release something. It is out to the public but you feel like the archival relic finally exists. In cinema, I have attached this Q&A thing to the print of the film-they both need to exist and then it is in the past. In cinema, people respond and write about and react to the project in a more exaggerated way. There is a broader response-with a record, there are music fans who have a sense of what they like or don’t like, but there isn’t a general public buying every record because there are millions of records. There is a limited amount of cinema out there and a lot of people who go to movies have no prior experience with the people involved in the creation of the films and so they have these interpretations.

With this particular film, which has been scrutinized in extreme ways and which has a lot of hearsay around it, those things can distort the film for the first-time viewer and they can even distort it for the cinephile or the Vincent Gallo fan. If somebody tells you about the film- "Oh, that greasy right-wing Republican egomaniac made some weird film where nothing happens and he wrote it and directed it and put himself in it and gets blown in it"-how are you going to watch the first 60 minutes of the film or have a relationship with it or understand my motivations for making the film, the sensibilities or the language or the point-of-view of the script? You are so distorted that all you can do is micromanage each thing that you see that you think is supposed to be funny or ridiculous or a disaster. People booed it at the Cannes Film Festival before the film started-they booed the opening credits and they jeered and heckled shortly into the film! What could I have possibly done that would make people vocally react to a film only two minutes into it unless they went in with their pistols cocked and loaded. The opening scene is just a racing sequence-a real race shot in a traditional and classical way-so how can you boo that? How could you jeer so quickly unless you have been set up for that? That is the nature of film festivals-I don’t like festivals because there is this sense that each film is an event and each event represent something that people have chosen over another event. I prefer the honest general market of the entertainment industry to put my film out. I don’t pander to that and I am not thinking of that when I am making my movies but that is where my films belong. I don’t want them in other places.

There was a gap of over five years between your first effort as a filmmaker, "Buffalo 66", and "The Brown Bunny". Was that the only project as a director that you worked on during that time or were there others that didn’t come off to explain the long break between films?

I had wanted to make "The Brown Bunny" long before "Buffalo 66". The ideas and motivations-insight is probably a better word-that I had that I wanted to articulate was something I thought about a long time ago. The sensibility of the film-the aesthetics-are more reflective of my sensibilities and work and my point-of-view than "Buffalo 66". In a sense, I wanted to make "The Brown Bunny" because I knew it would represent the things that I wanted to put forward more than "Buffalo 66". After I made "Buffalo 66", I spent over three years building a recording studio and working on one small record for a British label and that took an incredible amount of time. During the period just before and just after that, I made a couple of short films-I made a film called "Honey Bunny" which went with one of the songs on the record and I did some with John Frusciante, a short film for every song on a record that he had done-and I agreed to act as a performer in a few movies. After "Buffalo 66", I was not offered any film roles in any real capacity-I wasn’t offered to write or do the music or act in any substantial movies. None of my contemporaries have ever offered me a part in a film and the parts that I had done were for films that were done by productions in desperation. That was all I got-I didn’t have the fortune of the people that I brought into "Buffalo 66" that got a launch for their careers. I stayed pretty much focused on the music thing.

Once I was done with the record, then I started the production of "The Brown Bunny" and that took a long time because, just like the music thing where I spent 2 1/2 years building the studio and a week recording the music, I did a similar thing with the movie. I spent a year and a half getting the camera package ready and then shot it very quickly and then spent over a year in post-production figuring out how to blow it up from 16mm to 35mm with this new system you can do. I had songs that I needed to get approval for-one piece of music took a year and a half for that miserable bastard from that company to send me the paperwork. There was some extreme effort before and after the shooting of the film.

Can you talk about the visual strategy of "The Brown Bunny". When "Buffalo 66" came out, many people talked about the unique look of the film and "The Brown Bunny", while completely different, also has a very distinct style to it.

I come to cinema in a different way-when I thought about "The Brown Bunny" years ago, I was thinking about the ideas and I didn’t know how it would translate into a movie. I thought about the story but I thought about it in terms of what I thought philosophically about the world. I don’t think directly in terms of cinema-I’m not a filmmaker like that. Wes Anderson probably imagines himself as a filmmaker with film history and will do whatever he has to do to put himself in that film history. I came to movies reluctantly-once I am there, my visual sensibility is sort of naive. If I said to you that you could make a film, which is how it happened with me with "Buffalo 66", you would then have an understanding of how you would represent the film visually-unless you hired a cinematographer. If you did it yourself, you would articulate your voice in a peculiar way because you would connect your visual representation of the film with all the other elements-they would all work together as one-if you were authentic and if you really gave of yourself to the project. The visual representations of "Buffalo 66" and "The Brown Bunny" are connected directly to the films as a whole-they are not a separate idea or style.

It is funny to me that Lance Acord, who was the official cameraman on "Buffalo 66", only worked for a portion of the movie. He had nothing to do with the visual style or the lighting and he didn’t really operate the camera very much because I used mostly lock-off and his job was pretty much to press the buttons. Yet a young filmmaker will see "Buffalo 66" and want to hire Lance Acord because they think that will bring something from the film. I remember hearing a story from a guy who used to produce Pasolini’s films-I asked about Pasolini’s cinematographer, because I used to think like that, and he said that he was just a TV photographer and he was the friend of a friend. The work either connects together as a whole or it doesn’t-you can’t take someone with a style and bring them in because it never connects. People hire photographers as if it is some form of collage cinema-you take notes on what is the best thing out there like a wedding. Cinema isn’t like that-it has a life of its own and it is more interesting than the filmmaker or the cinematographer because it transcends all those things.

Watching the film, I was surprised about how sincere it felt. Take the early scene where your character is in the convenience store asking the clerk to go away with him. The first time when he says "Please", it comes off as funny but as it goes on, the continued begging stops being funny and it starts becoming completely sincere and without any trace of humor or irony. A lot of films today seem removed in a way from the stories they are telling...

As if the filmmakers are bystanders of nature...

...whereas this feels a lot more direct.

I’m just a person-a small-minded person-and whatever objectivity my films have, they have to happen in spite of me. When you think you can control it on that level, there is so much arrogance to that. Even when people talk about the environment as if human beings are just a bystander to nature-we are a part of nature and we are a part to the evolution of the cosmos. We can’t sit back and judge it like that. We can make choices for our survival but we can’t make judgment on the cosmos like that because we are part of that. When filmmakers and writers give that impression, I am generally turned off.

This film may be hyper-sincere and it is funny that you should mention that scene because I had the biggest struggle in editing the movie over that scene. What I am doing is so hyper-sincere that it was even uncomfortable for me to cut that scene. It was uncomfortable for me to act in it and uncomfortable for me to cut it. The character is really being authentic in that scene and he really needs something bad and he appeals to the girl in a very direct way. I feel that the film begins emotionally even before that-I feel that if you watch the opening of the race, it looks nice and it is right up my aesthetic alley. It is my favorite sport in the world-I’ve raced for 14 years and I finally got to shoot myself in a race. What could be more beautiful? Then, after the first couple of turns, the sound fades down and we are looking at this motorcycle without any sound. When I see that, I become emotional immediately because I feel that something is up. Why are we focusing on this one person? He didn’t win-he didn’t even crash and nothing happened. It says something psychologically about that character and to me, it is one of the most emotional things in the film. It is insight into the complexity of the individual.

Along those lines, I wanted to ask you about the much-discussed final scene of the film between you and Chloe Sevigny. Not only is it the longest scene in the film between you and another person but it is also the most intense, not just in terms of the graphicness of the sexual material, but in terms of the emotional content as well as the staging.

The graphicness is used to enhance the emotion.

When the oral-sex part begin, there is a shock value for a few seconds but it is the intimate nature that is the most intriguing thing about it-possibly one of the reasons that people couldn’t deal with it. To me, it felt like a motel-room door had been opened and you were watching two people in the middle of this strange, intimate moment and it is uncomfortable to watch.

That is even why they are whispering a little and you can’t hear them completely. You don’t need to hear everything they say-you need to know that what they are saying is private and close and intimate and they are having difficulties. The level of intimacy portrayed in a non-sexual way is so extreme that to not combine it with the sexual images would have been weird. Instead, to use graphic images that we associate with sexual enhancement or sexual fantasy that is free of enhancement-to use those images and put them together with something that is not erotic and more complex and personal and private and realistic has a disturbing effect. Why people would think that scene was gratuitous or that it was a manipulation or self-indulgent or unnecessary-that all goes back to what I was saying about hearsay and prejudice. If you saw the film, would you say that. Would say that it was a film where nothing happens for 70 minutes and then you are waiting for this blow-job that didn’t need to be there and which wasn’t very good anyway?

It is a little like the ear-slicing in "Reservoir Dogs" in that one scene has completely overwhelmed the discussion of the entire film. On the one hand, that can be helpful because it call attention to the film and will presumably attract an audience that will come in out of curiosity. On the other hand, a lot of them are going to be sitting there and ignoring the rest of the film while waiting for Chloe to show up.

That is what I meant. It sort of distorts the first half of the movie. If we were going to take our children to an amusement park and we told them, "We’re taking you to Fantasy Island-its this incredible place with cotton candy and big Ferris Wheels. Let’s get in the car because its an hour’s drive." They aren’t going to be looking outside the window and noticing the world or thinking thoughts on what they are seeing-they are focused on where they are going. It takes people out of the picture to create this false sense of anticipation for this event that is misrepresented and poorly described. It is part of the reason that the film tumbled down at Cannes. Twenty minutes into that trip with the kids, they will be going "When are we gonna get there?" and you have already created unrest and disappointment and doubt.

The version of "The Brown Bunny" that is playing now is different from the one that premiered at Cannes...

The Cannes version was unfinished but it wasn’t that remarkably different. I talked to Roger Ebert yesterday, who seemed to feel that the film was greatly improved. Roger is a remarkable and interesting person-I liked him and his wife very much-and he seemed to respond to the film much better now that it is finished. That said, will some people like the film better now that it is finished? Well, everyone likes a film better when it is finished. There is a better mix and a tighter cut and a better print-that was a blow-up off of a Beta tape. Yes, it is better but is that why people hated it at Cannes? No. That is the real important point. Is it better to me when it is finished? It is so much better when it is finished that when I accidentally saw a version of "Buffalo 66" that was ten seconds longer than my finished version, I was in agony watching it. But, if the ten-second-longer version had been released to the public, it wouldn’t have changed whether they liked it or not.

The point is, what antagonized people at Cannes to hate the movie other than the movie itself? Even if we say that part of it was the movie, what else was it. That is what I am curious about and what I still don’t understand. I still don’t understand why people would think that a person like me, who has done everything I could to do the best work I could and nothing to make myself labeled a "winner" or glorified myself in any way, would spend 3 1/2 years on a film-at tremendous financial, physical and emotional sacrifice-to show myself getting blown by somebody-you wanna see me get blown, I’ll walk ten blocks-or to glorify myself. I was in 30 movies before "The Brown Bunny"-was I a narcissist because I appeared in those movies or is it because I am appearing in my own movie?

You would think that a place like Cannes would embrace a film along those lines.

I have never been embraced well at a film festival. "Buffalo 66" was booed and heckled at Sundance. I’ve never won or been nominated for an Independent Spirit award or won an IFC award. I have never been supported by the film-festival culture ever but it is not a place where I feel comfortable anyway. My films don’t belong there-I’m not interested in people going to see a movie like that. Cannes was a disappointment because the American and British press did everything they could to disrupt, disorganize and damage my film, my personal reputation and my career. Fortunately, film is archival and in the end, no one cares. Here we are, a year later, and no one cares. In fifty years, no one will care what was said at Cannes. It won’t mean anything-it will only enhance the pleasure for people who liked the film and give them the satisfaction that they looked past that.

It is the same way when I find a movie that I love and then I read in the film encyclopedia that they were panned. I have 7500 films on tape-could you imagine some of the great films that I have that were trashed when they first came out and were career-destroying. George Stevens’ film "The Only Game in Town", which is one of my top films of all time, was the biggest financial disaster in film history to this day-it starred Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor and it makes "Gigli" look like a success story and it is a masterpiece.

I always get a little confused when movies are criticized for being self-indulgent because art, by definition, is generally self-indulgent.

You have to let your ego exist because it is you who get to decide what is beautiful. I get to set the table and it takes ego and confidence to think that you can set the table beautifully. I can set the table beautifully but I didn’t make the table and I didn’t make the things. The aesthetics exist in the world but I get to choose and put them together. They are way more interesting than myself and my life but that compulsive focus and ego-that is what it is. But why is it worse for me than anyone else?

"Dogville", which played at the same Cannes as "The Brown Bunny" and which I didn’t like at all, seemed to be a lot more deserving of the kinds of notices that your film received.

Well, that took a cynical view of the United States and that was the mood at the time-people were open to that mood and supporting it at that time. Watching that film was excruciating for me-I could watch "Gigli" four times in a row before I could watch that again. To me, watching "Dogville" was like watching paint dry. I’m glad I saw and I’m interested in what he was doing but it was the pretension behind it. There was no pretension behind "The Brown Bunny"-I don’t consider it a piece of art. He is sort of like one of the original avant-garde artists who are trying to create historic reference and they have a aura of doom around their work. I am not avant-garde in that tradition-I am more interested in poetic metaphors.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
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