Gallo: I never apologised for Brown Bunny (Conservative filmmaker facing leftist backlash?)

The Guardian UK ^ | Tuesday June 3, 2003 | Staff and agencies

[weegee]

Actor-director Vincent Gallo has denied apologising for his derided road movie The Brown Bunny - and dismissed US film critic Roger Ebert as a "fat pig" for saying that he did. On its recent unveiling at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was a contender for the Palme d'Or, Gallo's film was greeted by hoots of derision.

The Brown Bunny stars Gallo as a brooding biker on a cross-country odyssey through the US, who finds himself haunted by memories of an ex-girlfriend (Chloe Sevigny).

Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw labelled it "the most hysterical event in Cannes history", and said that the film was "so autistic, so painfully sincere that it goes off the so-bad-it's-good scale into something else entirely".

In the wake of his film's reception, Gallo was reported to have officially apologised to journalists for having the gall to inflict it upon them. This apology was reported by Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times and by other papers around the world, including the Guardian.

Now Gallo insists that he did no such thing. "I never apologised for anything in my life," he says. "I like the movie. I had 100% creative and financial control over it, and if I didn't like it, I would have changed it.

"The only thing I am sorry about is putting a curse on Roger Ebert's colon. If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn't like my movie then I'm sorry for him."

[weegee]

I believe that Vincent Gallo maybe facing a BLACKLIST from the Hollywood Left. He made a new film that was savaged

"After its press premiere, Roger Ebert stands on the steps of the Palais and declares to a news crew that this is the worst film to have ever played in competition at Cannes."

For those who don't know, Vincent Gallo is an open conservative. He's talked politically when asked about his politics in interviews but he has remained quiet in public and on his own website about the Gulf War, President Bush, etc.

I think that this is backlash for the campaigns against Tim Sarrandon and his adoptive mother, Susan, and the Vichy Chicks, Jessica Mange, Mikey Moron, and Mr. Day-oh.

That this article comes from the Guardian is no surprise.

[weegee]

Here is a backstory article (I am still searching for a report from Mr. Ebert):

http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes/story/0,13266,962544,00.html

Contrite Gallo apologises for pretension

Fiachra Gibbons's Cannes diary

Saturday May 24, 2003
The Guardian

· It has never happened before, and we may have to wait another 40 years for it to happen again. Vincent Gallo, the outrageous actor-director who fired both Winona Ryder and Kirsten Dunst before they even stepped onto the set of his film Brown Bunny, has apologised. Not to them obviously, nor to Christina Ricci, Anjelica Huston and just about everyone else he has worked with in Hollywood whom he insulted in the space of one, short press conference - but to the critics for his interminable film.
"I accept what they say. It's a disaster and a waste of time." He apologised to his backers too. "It was never my intention to make a pretentious film, a self-indulgent film, a useless film, an unengaging film."

No wonder his co-star and former girlfriend Chloe Sevigny - whom he admitted to hating when she took up with her next bad-boy director boyfriend Harmony Korine - broke down and wept at the premiere as the cinema emptied and those remaining in their seats laughed and booed.

If it was anyone other than Gallo - who confessed he only cast Ryder when he was convinced she was going to jail for shoplifting - you would almost feel sorry for him.

"I thought I had something beautiful that I could share with other people. I can only apologise to those who feel they have wasted their time," he cried.

For him the final insult was that the French liked it. "It is almost like salt in the wound," he said.

If it's any consolation to him, a 40-minute cut would probably make it bearable. But given that Gallo has a reputation for never listening to advice, no matter how kindly meant, that's not likely.

The one crumb for him must be Sevigny's revelation that its notorious final fellatio scene was for real. "It wasn't that bad for me," she said. "I have been intimate with Vincent before."

So if you ever meet Gallo - and his handful of champions want him to bring Brown Bunny to the Edinburgh film festival in August - do the guy a favour and say you were mightily impressed.

· No such problems for Clint Eastwood, who yesterday delighted the surviving punch-drunk critics with Mystic River, his most dark, complex and morally ambiguous film since The Unforgiven.

Using a series of meaningful coughs, pregnant silences and thin, cheroot smiles, Eastwood indicted that he was feeling lucky with this story of child abuse and murder in Boston.

"This wasn't Mystic River Reload," he said, pausing for an eternity. "I'm too old to make comic books." The studios, he sighed, still want him to go back to being Dirty Harry, but he is only interested in making "adults films until I call it a day - which might be sooner than you think". Haste, however, is not in Eastwood's vocabulary. "I've been trying to retire since 1970," he confessed.

· While Ewan McGregor was eager as ever to talk about his willingness to display his light sabre on camera, Emily Mortimer - the actress who he smears with a bowl of custard and some HP Sauce in an edgy sex scene in Young Adam - turned out to be more demure.

What would her father think? Mortimer, daughter of the writer and barrister, John Mortimer, need not have worried. "He is totally unshockable," Emily proudly declared, as he has spent his career defending freedom-of-speech cases. "He spends a lot of his life defending pornography. His defence against seeing anything particularly unpleasant was to take off his glasses. He is very short sighted." The glasses, however, stayed firmly on for her.

Emily herself found grappling with McGregor exhilarating. "We had a feeling it was shocking and that was kind of exciting," she said.

No need then for a dab of Donna Crème, a new product that claims to heighten le plaisir au feminin, which has just been launched with the utmost decorum on the Croisette. Unfortunately it comes without McGregor.

· With just over 24 hours to the announcement of the Palme d'Or, "Honest" Derek Malcolm, the Guardian's film critic emeritus and former jump jockey, has closed his book on the betting. Lars von Trier's controversial Dogville is the runaway evens favourite, with Eastwood's Mystic River, Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasion and Claude Miller's La Petite Lili all at 3-1. Francois Ozon's Swimming Pool and the Brazilian film Carandiru have similar odds.

The only British hope, Peter Greenaway's The Tulse Luper Suitcases, which will be shown today, is a 50-1 outsider. One hopeful soul has even placed a euro on Gallo's aforementioned Brown Bunny at 1,000-1. Mr Malcolm invoked the bookie's sacred oath of omerta when pressed on who this might be.

Whether the jury will give the top prize to Dogville, which is seen by some critics as "anti-American", when France is trying to repair relations with the US, is another thing. The film has already lifted one prize, however, the Palme Dog for the best canine performance, which went to Dogville's eponymous mutt.

Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman was spotted having a quiet cry in the toilets after seeing her staggering performance for the first time. Given the vituperative American reaction to the film, she might well have been weeping for her Hollywood career.

[weegee]

Here is another current (yet "unrelated") article/thread on Mr. Gallo:

Hating Vincent Gallo A Right-Wing Ideologue in Bohemian Clothing (THE NEW HIP COOL REPUBS)

[Grim]

Here's the Ebert review...and a link to the original

Director's dud widely reviled--even by him

May 25, 2003

CANNES, France--The Affair of the Brown Bunny, one of the most astonishing episodes in the history of the Cannes Film Festival, took another turn Friday when director Vincent Gallo apologized for his film and said, "It is a disaster and a waste of time."

Gallo's "Brown Bunny," which screened as one of three American entries in the official competition, was the lowest-rated film in the history of Screen International, the British trade paper that tabulates votes of a panel of critics. It was booed and laughed at during its screenings, there were countless walkouts, and its inclusion as an official selection called into question the judgment, even the sanity, of the programmers. That several French critics liked it was, Gallo said, "almost like salt in the wound."

The film consists of an unendurable 90 minutes of uneventful banality, as Gallo's character travels cross-country toward a motorcycle race in California, followed by a hard-core sex scene in which he imagines he receives fellatio from his lost love, played by Chloe Sevigny. Let it be said that Sevigny, who reportedly cried during the screening, is heroic in the way she finds conviction and truth in her character, in the midst of the general catastrophe. Many minutes of the earlier scenes consist of such shots as a windshield gradually accumulating dead bugs.

Gallo is talented as an actor, and his first film as a director, "Buffalo 66" (1998), was so quirky and free-spirited you not only forgave its eccentricities but cherished them. Nothing in his previous career would predict the disaster of "Brown Bunny."

"I accept what the critics say," Gallo told Screen International, whose panel gave the bunny its record low rating. "If no one wants to see it, they are right. I apologize to the financiers of the film, but I must assure you it was never my intention to make a pretentious film, a self-indulgent film, a useless film, an unengaging film."

"L'Affaire Brown Bunny" has generated so much publicity, as the low point of a dismal year at Cannes, that it may actually find French distribution; there may be a cachet attached to seeing such a universally derided film. Some French critics specialize in defending the indefensible, to show that they alone can understand a rejected work; their explications of "Brown Bunny" may be--indeed, must inevitably be--more entertaining than the film.

Gallo might be expected to leave town quickly after the bunny debacle, but he is also an actor in Peter Greenaway's "The Tulse Luper Suitcases: The Moab Story," which plays in the official competition here over the weekend. That means he will be expected to march once again up the red carpet and into the Palais--where, he said, the "Brown Bunny" screening was "the worst feeling I ever had in my life."

Roger Ebert

[SwinneySwitch]

Isn't Cannes in france?

[weegee]

Yep, I was searching and found it (and gave it it's own thread):

Director's dud widely reviled--even by him (Roger Ebert's account of new Vincent Gallo film)

Another critic said that it was far from the worst film there (that there were worse, even on opening night) and that it never was boring.

Some people did not like Buffalo 66 either. Mr. Ebert has used his critic's seat as a pulpit to further his liberal views on numerous occasions (with increasing frequency since the early 1990s). He slammed some film because it was a drama about a man on death row trying to prove his innocence when he really was guilty; he though that the entire film was dishonest. He loved Bowling For Columbine though.

[weegee]

According to the Red Star Guardian:

For him the final insult was that the French liked it. "It is almost like salt in the wound," he said.

I wonder if the theaters in France serve CHEESE.

[Arthur McGowan]

The one crumb for him must be Sevigny's revelation that its notorious final fellatio scene was for real. "It wasn't that bad for me," she said. "I have been intimate with Vincent before."

This is a "conservative" filmmaker? Right-wing, politically, maybe, but not a "conservative"!

[tallhappy]

Why you would think this guy is a conservative filmaker is a mystery.

[weegee]

Because he has publicly declared his "conservatism" on numerous occassions. Also Johnny Ramone, another NY Reagan loving conservative, is a friend of his and believes that Vincent Gallo believes his conservatism.

I cannot say that I would agree with every point he might offer (I'd heard some views but not many, I've found that he keeps his politics out of the public except when asked). It's said that he's a supporter of Patrick Buchanan but I haven't seen a list of what issues. I don't agree with all FReepers either (and I've found some that don't agree with me, but then I've also encountered trolls here too who deny their activities but eventually are banned).

He may be more of a libertarian. Certainly there are libertarians on FR who side with conservatism but believe in things that get them brandished as libertines on FR.

[weegee]

Is Clint Eastwood a conservative filmmaker or a right wing filmmaker?

[razorback-bert]

the writer and barrister, John Mortimer

He of "she who must be obeyed".

[dfwgator]

Roger Ebert should lay off the fatty foods.

[Thoro]

I believe that Vincent Gallo maybe facing a BLACKLIST from the Hollywood Left. He made a new film that was savaged

"After its press premiere, Roger Ebert stands on the steps of the Palais and declares to a news crew that this is the worst film to have ever played in competition at Cannes."

For those who don't know, Vincent Gallo is an open conservative. He's talked politically when asked about his politics in interviews but he has remained quiet in public and on his own website about the Gulf War, President Bush, etc.

From what I've read and heard, the movie "Brown Bunny" consists of nearly two hours of Gallo driving with the camera on the road. At one point in the film, he pulls into a gas station and fuels up. This is the exciting part. He then continues his journey which ends when he meets his girlfriend who performs oral sex on him for nearly 20 minutes.

One review I've read said that it made Andy Warhol's "Sleep" look tolerable.

It's being slammed because it's a bad movie.

[weegee]

A critic from Chicago's other daily (the Tribune) liked it more. Cannes Journal- Manohla Dargis

I can easily think of a fistful of titles that are much worse, including a number of opening-night films. The fact is that for all its problems and wallowing self-indulgence, "The Brown Bunny" didn't bore me for a second, which is no small thing, especially considering this year's offerings. I love its glamorized documentary feel and look -- part Frederick Wiseman, part fashion magazine layout -- and I very much like looking at Gallo's mug, which is a good thing, because he's in nearly every shot. If nothing else, the film is unequivocally the work of a man pursuing his own path. I am already looking forward to seeing if I can stand to sit through it a second time -- that is, if anyone picks it up for U.S. distribution. I just hope that Gallo, who before his press screening was walking along the Croisette dressed in all white with his name stamped on the back of his shirt, wasn't sitting in the theater when the cheers and the jeers erupted.

[IncPen]

You should see this....