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The Brown Bunny (2003) More at IMDbPro »

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199 comments in total

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193 out of 268 people found the following comment useful :-
HAUNTING!, 4 September 2004
Author: SN51431 from Manhattan

I saw The Brown Bunny today at 12:20 at the Chelsea Cinemas in Manhattan. There were about ten other people in the audience.

When the film ended and the lights abruptly came back on, nobody moved.

I think we were somewhat dazed. I cannot discuss this film in terms of

liking or disliking it, because those feelings just do not even apply. I

was left haunted by the filmmaker's ability to bring me into his world

of despair, regret, and loneliness. There was not a lot of dialogue yet

the actor was able to still give "Bud" a truthful inner life. I am not a

hip young person. I am a 57 year old retired schoolteacher. Vincent

Gallo brought to the screen some universal emotions, which exist

regardless of one's personal life experiences. I applaud his efforts and I am glad I saw his film.

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139 out of 227 people found the following comment useful :-
The Brown Bunny is a radical American masterpiece, 27 June 2004

Author: cinefilia from Los Angeles, CA

I had heard about the controversy surrounding The Brown Bunny (who hadn't?)--the feud with Roger Ebert, the graphic sex scene--so when I received an invitation to a press screening, I jumped at the chance to see what the trailer calls "the most controversial American film ever made". What the trailer and all the hype didn't prepare me for was the fact that The Brown Bunny could also be considered one of the most original American films ever made. In a time of overblown budgets and enormous productions with endless crew lists, Vincent Gallo has almost single-handedly made a concise, well-thought out, conceptual film--a poignant, touching love story. It's not often that a director's second film is more daring than his first--money, greed and Hollywood power seem too tempting to most and sophomore efforts usually represent the big sell out. Not so The Brown Bunny, not so Gallo the iconoclast. He manages to make a second film more interesting, more intimate, more revealing and more memorable than his first. And he manages to do it outside the system.

Gallo's instincts as a director are spot-on. Not only does he pull from Chloe Sevigny the performance of her career, he also solicits from a cast of complete unknowns and non-actors (including Cheryl Tiegs) painfully believable performances. I have always thought his talents as an actor were underrated, but surely The Brown Bunny will provide him his due as Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer undergoing a breakdown while driving across the country. Simply put, Gallo as Bud is devastating. At one point during the film, I was so tense watching him fall apart that I realized that I had been holding my breath through the entire scene. When you stop to think that he is also directing himself and directing the photography, it's that much more impressive.

I don't know how someone circumvents the Hollywood system to make a movie in this day and age, but it seems that Gallo has not only done that, but done it in a way that is memorable, haunting and visually stunning. This is a truly radical film made by a very courageous filmmaker, someone willing to tell a story, tell it honestly and suffer the consequences of his convictions. Pasolini would be proud.

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109 out of 183 people found the following comment useful :-
Worked for me., 30 August 2004

Author: Rogue-32 from L A.

I saw Buffalo 66 long before I started posting reviews at imdb, so I haven't written about that film but I loved it, I give it a 10, and after seeing The Brown Bunny at the Nuart on Saturday evening, I am here to report that I give Gallo's second feature film the same rating.

A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding this movie, or just not appreciating it, or perhaps both. There are many reasons for this, none of them valid in my estimation. The biggest protests, from what I've been reading, seem to be in the 'lack of plot' and 'vanity project' areas.

I can understand how the film would be a little slow for a lot of people, since it's basically an internal study, with none of the 'usual' mainstream (or even indy film) tactics. And in fact that's what I loved the most about the movie - how Gallo has the artistic wherewithal to be true to HIS vision of what a film can be, to how a plot of a film (and there IS a plot) can be played out in a different, less recognizable way, which leads to one of the reasons I think people are calling this a vanity project (aside from the infamous scene toward the end -- which I have to say is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the film, once you find out what's really going on with our sick puppy Bud Clay) : because the movie doesn't follow a 'typical' set-up, requiring a bit more patience on the part of the viewer, a lot of people feel more comfortable dismissing this unbelievably profound piece of work as a 'vanity project'. In reality, I believe the opposite is true: Gallo is giving his audience more credit than they perhaps deserve, in presenting such a stark, uncompromising character study. The fact that a lot of this audience chooses not to accept him on his terms does not diminish his power and the power of this movie. Can't wait for the next one, Vincent.

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39 out of 48 people found the following comment useful :-
Definitely an acquired taste, 5 December 2006

Author: btb-ii from United States

If you can endure a 90 minute portrait of brooding self loathing with virtually no dialog and uninspired cinematography, this film is for you. The notorious scene with Daisy is incongruous. Perhaps, I am dense, but in my view, the emperor has no clothes. To be successful, this film should have elicited a strong interest in the lead character. But in the end, you have learned little about someone who is shallow and unappealing. This film portrays the journey of a motorcyclist tormented by demons vaguely hinted at in mysterious stops he makes in route. You see that he is attracted and repulsed by women. (Cheryl Tiegs, for those of you old enough to remember her from the 1970s is perfect in what amounts to a cameo.) But his encounters with women are so fleeting and glancing that you learn little until the end of the journey. Then, what you learn is too trite to support your having endured the trip with him. I believe Vincent Gallo had a serious idea, but the idea is unrealized.

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39 out of 55 people found the following comment useful :-
An experiment that fails, 18 March 2007

Author: Brigid O Sullivan (wisewebwoman) from Toronto, Canada

Yeah, I got it. It took a torturous 1-1/2 hours to get there but I was spared the 26 minutes more that others had to suffer through in the original cut.

Strange camera angles of pumping gas, lying in hotel rooms,urinating, eating, driving, driving, driving. Crying, hugging women wordlessly. Driving Driving Driving.

Yeah, the fellow is grieving a lost love with a flower's name, yeah, he's attracted to other women with flowers' names. Yeah he was sorta responsible for the loss of his love. B-b-b-b-ut we never know what that love was all about, was it as shallow as depicted here? You can't care about the main character, how can you. You know nothing of him.

This is one of the most self-indulgent movies I've ever seen. With a money shot at the end.

Avoid. 2 out of 10 for the Gordon Lightfoot song on the soundtrack.

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45 out of 74 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the most interesting of 2004, 6 January 2005

Author: Robyn from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I wish like hell I had never heard the brouhaha about the Brown Bunny at Cannes and all the back and forth and name-calling. I respect Roger Ebert immensely, but hearing the whole thing caused me to go into this film with the wrong mindset, that of a film historian cataloging a curiosity for future esoteric reference. I therefore did myself a disservice.

The Brown Bunny follows a motorcycle racer named Bud Clay who has lost a race on the East Coast, and is traveling back to Los Angeles to race again. He makes a series of stops, first to a gas station where he wheedles a young girl named Violet to accompany him to LA, then promptly ditches her at her home minutes later. He stops by the home of his childhood neighbors, who we learn are the parents of his live in girlfriend Daisy. They are old, and the conversation meanders a bit, but we learn that Bud and Daisy are no longer together, but not why.

The film follows Bud on his journey west. We see him stop at a picnic area and almost wordlessly comfort a forlorn woman sitting at a table. He leaves as quickly as he came. We can see her name is Lilly; it is embroidered on her purse. In Vegas he circles a block twice to pick up a young prostitute named Rose, who he feeds a fast food lunch and drops off almost as quickly. In LA, he comes to the house he shared with Daisy. She is not home, in fact the house appears abandoned, and he leaves her a note to come by his hotel room before he leaves for his race the next day. Daisy gets his note, and comes to his hotel room. They talk, a revelation occurs, and Bud leaves the next day for his race. It is during this scene that the now-infamous fellatio scene occurs.

This film is the real deal. The pacing is exquisite, building to a wave that comes crashing down on the viewer when the truth of the last scene is revealed. It's a little like a shot of pepper spray, it's something that doesn't affect you immediately, but takes a moment for the realization to sink in. Then your eyes well up, your throat constricts, and you must sit and just recover.

Now, a word about the blow job. Is it placed here strictly for its shock value? Absolutely not. Is it real? Absolutely. It is here to underline and emphasize the issues of need and control prevalent in the relationship of Bud and Daisy. He takes the act from her, one of the most intimate acts a man and woman can share, then in goes on the defensive and calls her a whore. This reaction begins the outpouring of the truth to the audience and to Bud, who knows it but has only begun to face what truly happened.

The act is akin to the sucking out of poison from a wound. A symbolic thing for her to do, since in his mind she caused the hurt, and now, with the act of fellatio, is removing it as best she can. This fantasy Bud has begins the healing process for a tragedy that he he walled up inside, and feels a great deal of anger, guilt and betrayal because of.

I recommend this film. I think it bears repeated watchings and scrutiny. Along with this, however, I must give a caveat. Please approach it with an open mind and above all, be patient with it. You must watch the whole thing to really get the intended impact.

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49 out of 84 people found the following comment useful :-
This is probably one of the worse film I have seen in the past 50 years, 3 December 2006

Author: vetapublishing from Australia

Vincent Gallo According to the credits is a man with many ( probably too many ) talents. While I haven't seen any of his other films, this one lacks a, direction. b, editing c, cinematography d, intelligent script. Vincent Gallo as an actor acts well as a depressed person, but that is all. When he brakes down with his former wife or girlfriend he utters a sound which could be credited to a whingeing cat, but hardly to a man which I suppose he represents. The repetitiousness of the scenes,his portraits in the mirrors show that as a director he admires himself as an actor, but I do not consider this as a positive.

When I watched the first scene for about 15 minutes which is a motor circle race, I thought I put in the wrong DVD about motor cycle racing. I wished that I switched it off at that point. The rest of the film I watched for curiosity only. The sex scene sticks out from the film, like his prick from his trousers. It would fit into a porno film, but not what is considered an art-house film.

Just because there is hardly an intelligent sentence in the script, and luckily there are only a few sentences in the film, it does not make it a work of art. This is probably one of the worse films I have seen in the past 50 years

Andrew Barry

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32 out of 51 people found the following comment useful :-
Saw Brown Bunny and heard Vincent Gallo speak in the East Village, 13 September 2004
Author: Lars Ericson from New York, NY

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I was impressed with the movie as an art piece.

I thought he might be pretentious but when he spoke he came off as being a very funny and down-to-earth guy, who happened to be an artist with a film he cared about. He said "Everybody calls me a lazy pretender but I spent all my money and worked 20-hour days for 3 years in a row to make this film.

How lazy is that?"

After the movie he showed Ebert's initial bashing of the film. He and Ebert have since met and he took half an hour off the Cannes version, including a suicide ending, and people (including Ebert) like the film better now -- as an art piece. Gallo said that he is not trying to be an artist as a filmmaker, rather, he understands that the core of cinema is to be entertaining -- hence the cuts. As an entertainer he is trying to tell a story, if he gets it just right, at least one person will be entertained by the story, and then he is done.

He really seemed like an accessible, funny, down-to-earth guy. His screen persona is a projection of his inner demons, but I think he is very much in control of that projection, and doesn't let it infect is day-to-day interactions with people. (At least publicly with people he doesn't know; I don't know what it was like for Chloe Sevigny to be his girlfriend.)

The BJ scene was integral to the film. Sevigny used to be his girlfriend, so it wasn't like he hadn't been there before and was using his director's position to get some action. I've seen worse on the Internet, and nobody makes a big deal about that.

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29 out of 47 people found the following comment useful :-
Narcissistic and pedant to the max..., 19 July 2006

Author: Henry Fields (kikecam@teleline.es) from Spain

In the late 90's Vincent Gallo made his debut behind the camera with "Buffalo 66" (he also wrote it and produced it). It was a bittersweet story about two losers that fall in love with each other. It was a kind and so tender. So, I was really looking forward to see Gallo's next project... and let me tell you: WHAT A DISAPPOINTING!! He's suffered sort of an involution: once he was totally honest and now he's totally narcissistic and pedantic. In his second film he shows us Vincent Gallo riding his motorbike, Vincent Gallo getting' a couple of Cokes from a drinks machine, Vincent Gallo crying because the world is too beautiful, Vinczzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

There's no story, there's no script, there's nothing... Nothing to remark except what you all were expecting: that scene in which Chloe Sevigny gives a BJ to Vincent Gallo (of course). Well, Sevigny's skills for porno are improvable. Anyway, if you sit through "The brown bunny" just to watch that scene.. Well, you really need some love in your life!!

*My rate: 2/10

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15 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Wtf?!?!?!?!?, 2 May 2006

Author: shannygoat1 from Baltimore, MD

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This is by far the worst movie I have ever seen. Driving across country by yourself is boring enough, but watching someone else drive across country alone is even more boring! There was only 10 lines of dialog in the movie. The camera angles were strange and the music was so depressing I wanted to slit my wrists. I think what bothered me more than the endless driving, was how these women seemed to think that he was a "hot boy". They would just randomly go with him although he looked and acted like a crazy person. Sane people wouldn't ask a stranger to drive across country w/ them, especially when she's like 16.

Although the "scene" was well hyped, if you've ever seen, given or received head, you've seen it before. More interesting to me was to find out that he just couldn't accept what happened and he was still w/ her in his mind. But I sat through 60 minutes of mindless driving for 10 minutes of an OK movie? So not worth it!

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