The Brown Bunny

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a motocross race shot from high above the racetrack. The racers careen around the track and the sound goes in and out as the racers get further from the camera. The camera focuses on one racer in particular, number 77, as he tries to keep up in the race. He is far from first, but is still in the race.As the race sequence draws to a close, we cut to racer #77, Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo) as he puts his motorcycle into his van and catches his breath from the race. He loads the bike into his van and gets behind the wheel.He drives to a gas station, and we discover that we are in New Hampshire. He gets out to fill the tank, and we see him doing so through the window of the service station, where a young girl sits, presumably reading, behind the counter. He finishes pumping the gas and goes inside to pay. Bud notices her necklace and comments on it. The necklace says Violet on it, and she says that she made it herself. She asks him if he was in the race, and he says 'yes'. She then asks him where he's off to, and he says he's going to California for the next race on the circuit. She says that she's always wanted to see California, and he asks her to go with him. She agrees, and they head to her house so she can pack a bag to go.Outside her house, Bud and Violet they kiss and he tells her that he likes her very much. He tells her to hurry and she runs inside while he waits. After about a minute or so of waiting for her, he pulls away, without her. No explanation... he just drives away.Bud is on an interstate headed to California. Through the vantage point of two cameras we alternately see the road and Bud as he drives. Soon he has pulled off the road into a town. He drives through the town, eventually stopping at a house. He walks to the house and tells a middle aged woman who answers the door that he used to live next door, and that the woman's daughter, Daisy, lives with him in Los Angeles. The woman invites him in.Bud sits at the kitchen table with the woman and a man, presumably her husband, and they talk. He tells her that he's going back to California to see Daisy and that she (the mother) had been to visit them, but the woman does not remember Bud at all. She asks if he and Daisy have any children and he tells her that they don't. Next to the table is a brown colored rabbit in a cage. The woman says that it is Daisy's bunny, and Bud admires the bunny for several moments. Bud then says goodbye and gets back in his van and drives off.He drives a good deal more, with Gordon Lightfoot's song "Beautiful" playing over the shots of the road. He comes up on St. Louis and decides to get off the highway. He stops into a pet store and looks at the birds, the fish, he plays with a kitten and some puppies, finally leading him to the bunnies. He asks the clerk how long bunnies live for and the clerk tells him they only live for about five or six years. He takes a particular liking to a brown bunny, but does not take it with him. He just admires it for a little while.He stops into a restaurant, has some food, uses the bathroom, and then gets back on the road for more driving. He drives a little while and stops at a rest area. There is a woman (Cheryl Tiegs) seated at a picnic table near where Bud parks. She looks lonely. We see embroidered on her purse that her name is Lilly, and Bud walks past her to the Coca Cola machine. He buys a Coke, and she watches him the whole time. He walks past her to his van and she continues watching him. He stops before getting in his van and goes to sit next to her. He holds her face, lovingly, and tells her "it's okay." They begin to kiss and they both cry while doing so. After kissing her for a bit, he gets back in his van, leaving her there.More driving. A lot more driving.During his drive, he thinks of a time when he and Daisy (Chloe Sevigny) were together in the van and he cries about this. His next stop is in Utah, where he gets a room in a seedy motel and has a shower. From there he heads out to the Bonneville salt flats where he takes his bike out of the van and races for a while. The shot follows him for seemingly five minutes until he is out of sight on the horizon. We then see him back in his van heading out from the salt flats.More driving.Bud arrives in Las Vegas. He drives for a bit, and at each corner, a woman approaches him asking him if he's looking for a date and he blows them all off. The third woman to approach his van has on a necklace that says Rose. (Note: all of the women's first names that Bud has picked up is named after a particular flower). He tells her he's not looking for a date, and pulls off. He then circles the block and comes back to her. He tells her that he wasn't looking for a date, and asks her if she'd like to have lunch with him. She says that she has to make her money and steps away from the van, but the next shot we see is of her in the van with Bud, eating french fries. They drive around for a bit, and Bud pulls down a side road. He gets out and tells her to get out the van. She does, and he presumably hands her some money, gets back in the van, and leaves her there.More driving, and finally Bud arrives in Los Angeles. Bud pulls into a garage where he's greeted by three mechanics who help him get the bike out of the van. The mechanics hook the bike up to a diagnositic system and check the bike out for him. One of them asks if he's heading to where the race is tonight, and he says that he's staying in L.A. for the night.He gets a room at a local Best Western and from the hotel he gets in his van and drives to Daisy's house. He parks the van in the driveway and goes to the front door. He rings the doorbell twice and knocks, but no one answers. A next door neighbor yells, "there's nobody there!" The neighbor threatens to call the police if Bud continues hanging around. Bud gets back in his van and seems to have given up, but he grabs a piece of paper and a pen and writes Daisy a note which he puts on the door, then heads back to the hotel.At the hotel, Bud calls the front desk and tells them that he's expecting a phone call or that a woman named Daisy will be looking for him, and he tells the front desk to let her up. He goes into the bathroom, and when he comes out, Daisy is standing by the door. She says "hi" to him and talks but he has no reaction to what she is saying. She says that she has to use the bathroom and goes in leaving him on the bed. In the bathroom she smokes crack, making no attempt to hide the fact that she is. She comes out and Bud is still sitting on the bed. She asks if she should go to the store to get something to drink and he says that he doesn't drink anymore. She asks if she can sit on his lap and hold him the way they used to. After asking him several times, he agrees and sits on his lap, holding him close. She gets up to get some water and says she has to use the bathroom again, that she "Drank too much water" before coming over. In the bathroom she takes three more hits off her pipe.She returns to the room and he's seated on the other side of the bed. She asks him why he's being so cold, and not talking, and he doesn't respond. He lies on the bed and she lies next to him and talks to him about how much she's missed him and how glad she is that he's back. They kiss a little, and then a lot more. He tells her to take off her shirt, and she is reluctant at first, asking him to turn off the lights, or if she can get under the covers and he says no. She takes her shirt off, and he removes her pants and her bra. He stands up, and undoes his belt.(Warning: I'm not going to go into too much detail, because, let's face it, it is what it is. We see his manhood, she does the "deed" A full blowjob. It's graphic, but much of it is focused on his face, or on a shot from behind them, so it's not the kind of coverage you would get in say... hardcore oral sex porn. While she is doing the deed, he asks her if she's done this to any other guys, or if she's fucked other guys, and she keeps denying that she did.)When he's done, he puts his piece away and collapses on the bed, crying, sobbing, saying: "Why did you have to do it?" She lays beside him and they jointly tell the following story, which we see in flashback....Apparently there was a party at the very same house where Bud looked for Daisy. Three guys at the party offered Daisy what she thought was weed, but was more probably crack. She smoked some and Bud yells at her, that she shouldn't have done that because she is pregnant. He said that because she smoked and drank that she lost the baby, and she says that she is an addict... she couldn't help it. Eventually, the alcohol and drugs made her pass out and the three men took her into a bedroom and raped her. As they raped her, Bud saw them doing so but did nothing to stop them. She asks him why he didn't stop them, but he doesn't answer. He just says that he left, he ran away, and when he came back later that night there was an ambulance there. He asks her why there was an ambulance, and she says that... she died. She tells Bud that she vomited while she was passed out and she choked on the vomit and she died. We see Bud kissing the dead Daisy's forehead in the ambulance in the flashback. When it comes back to the hotel room, Bud is on the bed by himself, sobbing. Daisy is nowhere to be seen.The next day, Bud is driving in his van to the race, and the film ends on a freeze frame of his face driving in the desert.

Tags: romantic, avant garde, flashback

Review:
Terrible, unforgivable waste of precious celluloid.Watching a road through a dirty windshield for hours might seem a clever metaphorical statement if you're on crack, or are as delusional as the director, who probably thinks of himself as the greatest film-making entity that ever lived.Me?
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.
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'.
Gallo definitely needed to step away and let a professional editor do his/her thing and mercilessly cut scenes that didn't move the story forward.While I could see that the author wanted the audience to crawl inside the protagonist, Bud, during the road trip, it didn't take that darned long to do it.
While this may have been believable for males, I don't expect it was for very many female viewers.I watched the film largely because I wanted to see if and how graphic sex could be incorporated into a drama without lowering it to the level of "high brow pornography." I think the film did a good job on that score, although I'd have preferred the use of a realistic-looking prosthetic such as that used in Boogie Nights.
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".
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.
Out of the blue, Daisy appears in his hotel room and soon he learns why he cannot find her."The Brown Bunny" is an independent very low budget movie by Vincent Gallo.
The effect is that he doesn't know how to write and can't think of where to point his camera.Oh yeah, and the controversy, the other hook to get college students looking for a cinematic rush to rent this crap from Netflix - if a movie is controversial it must be worth seeing right?
Please come with me." felt painfully staged unrealistic, and sappy.Finally when the plot revealed itself to us during the last 20 minutes, I would like to make clear that unlike a lot of people I DID finally understand the point of this film, and what it was trying to express.
One major difference between both movies is "The Hand" shows context behind the displayed events, whereas in this film there is no context whatsoever in any scene aside from the last 15 minutes.
All the conversations in it were very engaging, very realistic and played out almost like a documentary which is what this film NEEDED to do in order to succeed in what it set out to do, and how it set out to do it, but quite simply, the people involved in this film thought they were vastly VASTLY greater than they really are to have made this, DO not know good cinema, and did not put the effort here.To be fair, the ending, when a plot was finally established was quite powerful, and the talk between Budd and Daisy IN ITSELF, was moderately well conceived which is why I gave this film a second star.
This moment would have been quite effective in its own contained capsule, as everything that happens before these 15 minutes is completely inconsequential to this scene, and moreso, when it is revealed that the scene was Budd's hallucination, so then too was everything that preceded this scene, which was the ONLY scene of the movie with any shred of value to it, though appearing rather cheap and amateurish when the best it can do is to utilize such visionary artistry as seen in Japanese porno films with the censored fellatio scene, in which Chloe Sevigny claims that the sex act was not simulated, which absolutely floors me, for since it is censored, and given that any real sex act would therefore be irrelevant to the viewer, that is basically like saying "I don't suck dick for any artistic end, I do it just for the taste of it." I find that very amusing, but nonetheless it has to be said, if this scene was its own short film, it would have been effective.I hate to use the word arrogant, but when you produce a movie that 1.
4. 50% of which is comprised of nothing but shots of driving on the open road, which have NO artistic point; if they expect the viewers to find meaning and value in illusions which essentially have no meaning or context and are not even interesting, that is pure arrogance, and this film is indeed nothing but self indulgence.
It was 90 minutes of Vincent Gallo self-aggrandizement complete with a 10 minute scene of explicit oral sex that added nothing to the movie whatsoever.
I think those that actually accept this as a valid "art film" are too wrapped up in long pauses, languid eyes, and landscape and forget a decent movie should have relevancy, real emotion, dialogue, and some semblance of reality.
At best, "Brown Bunny" was a home movie that has received far more press than it should have and Gallo knew it would get said press because of his little shocker.A movie -- Hollywood, independent, or art house -- should have rising action, a climax, and a denouement to at least achieve some type of artistic or visual credibility.
It must be ahead of its time!" That may be true but what's unsettling about the reviews is that they influenced director Vincent Gallo to cut the film in half leaving it more concise and marketable for mass audiences.
I just sense from his egocentric attitude of being the star, writer, director, producer and the fact that he's in 95% of every shot in the film, that he is just being creatively oblivious.Most artists will tell you that self-portraits are the most difficult subjects to tackle because they involve erasing your preconceived notions about who you think you are to showing how everyone knows who you are.
One day, and very soon, the critics who had anything good to say about this film will see the error of their ways; they will repent in sackcloth and ashes, and the entire production will be eternally damned and consigned to the sulphurous, unquenchable flames of cinema hell.A lot of people post comments on a lot of movies here, and quite often you read the comment, "This is the worst film I've ever seen." I don't want to be one of those people.
The plot is very simple: a motorcycle racer named Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo) begins a long cross-country journey in his van to the next racing location in California, all the while being haunted by memories of his former girlfriend Daisy (Chloë Sevigny) who he wishes to meet when arriving in his destination.
On his way to her, he also picks up other women only to drop them off soon.I wasn't bothered by the long scenes of Gallo silently driving by himself, even though the cramped mise en scène and grainy cinematography make them less easy to enjoy than such scenes in some other movies "where nothing ever happens".
The famous sex scene fits in the mood and its uncensored nature only adds to the rawness and prevents it from feeling phony.Ultimately the film is a curious exploration of feelings of guilt, regret, longing and loneliness, and while it's not as visually stunning and haunting as, say, Gus Van Sant's Last Days, it certainly doesn't deserve all the hate it gets.
I regard it as one of the more artistic honest film plays I have ever seen.(And I am not faulting the oft-cited sex seen between writer/director/cameraman Vincent Gallo and actress Chloe Sevigny.
Every nuance of his actions or lack of them, and in his sparse questions and answers with others bespeaks the loneliness I describe here, a loneliness not requited by Bud's brief contacts with anything or anyone else in the story, including Daisy herself.It probably would have been wiser of Gallo not to have engaged in a public slinging of written nastiness with Roger Ebert, the premium critic of American film.
Gallo makes the act of piloting a vehicle about as exciting as washing one.The road movie as existential quest has a long cinematic tradition, and this means that any new entry in the field needs to achieve genuine novelty or risk being trite.
Yet, with its hand-held camera shots of Gallo driving in medium closeup, most of the film comes off like a drive cross country with your uncle, complete with randomly bad song choices and fly splatters on the windshield.
What was shocking about The Brown Bunny was that it cost $10 million, or roughly the budget of Pulp Fiction, to produce a movie that looked like somebody's film school thesis project, and which was thoroughly hated by 90% of those who saw it.If the road trip really is a metaphor for the pursuit of meaning, then Gallo got nowhere because this movie is pretty much lacking it..
Even some of the worst movies up to this point had some redeeming qualities, yet The Brown Bunny wasted ninety minutes of my time and several hours of my life afterwards just thinking about it.The prestige of the independent movie has suffered a deadly blow.
Brown Lump -- er, Brown Bunny is little more than an excuse for Gallo to point the camera at himself for what seems like hours on end, until time comes to lower it to his genitals, so Chloe can perform an impressive Linda Lovelace imitation.As to the pathetic cretins who seem to enjoy this kind of garbage, what can I say, to each his own; even if it's watching narcissistic racists (read Gallo's personal website where he tried to sell his sperm; look for "not interested in women with dark skin," and "free insemination for women with Aerian features whose fathers fought for Germany in WWII".
Having just come from a 3-month film-making program in Hollywood, I can understand a director succumbing to the temptation of pointing his camera at anything hoping that it will eventually make sense in the editing suite; however, Gallo's film looks and feels like all the available footage has just been pasted together without any editorial intervention!
I watch a lot of movies, but this is the only time in my adult age that I couldn't sleep afterwards - as the few and very understated plot elements were still falling into place, I felt as if I had witnessed a train crash, and couldn't stop thinking frightening thoughts of what a fragile thing our comfort and happiness is.The movie would not have worked if it had been faster paced, dropped hints along the way, or contained more than the bare rudiments of a story.
On the other hand, while a lot of lovers of underground/experimental/artsy stuff are extremely open-minded, you'll find quite a bit of them who, pretentiously, will dismiss any new Hollywood vehicle for whatever reason -- just the fact that this film has Vincent Gallo and Chloe Sevigny in it is enough for some people to hate it.So, you've got "underground" people giving it crap, you've got "mainstream" people giving it crap, you've got people misusing the word "pretentious" endlessly.
If someone were to say that I am missing the point of the movie (what, he's depressed?) then I would have to reply, that the point should not have to be chiseled out of 4 conversations amidst 90 minutes of driving (and by the way Dr. Low Budget - feel free to clean the windshield next time you are going to make us all sit in your van.
I have not seen the original Director's cut of the film that had created so much bad press after the screening at the Cannes Film Festival and prompted Roger Ebert make the statement that "The Brown Bunny" was the worst film in the history of the festival but the 92 minutes long version that Gallo himself re-edited is certainly not the bad movie.
In exploring loss, regrets, yearning, grief, loneliness, inner numbness as the way to cope with pain caused by guilt, longing for the contact and inability to communicate, Vincent Gallo, writer/director/star/cinematographer/editor for "The Brown Bunny", definitely drove his point across (no pun intended).
They had a lot to talk about but their conversations were speechless - that's why there is so much silence in the movie and only shots of Bud's face and his eyes.Many viewers (and reviewers) mention in their comments the notorious explicit scene of oral sex between Bud Clay (Gallo) and Daisy (Chloe Sevigny), the one true love of his life.
Tedious shots of Gallo's character driving across country, punctuated by brief periods of him lying in bed.For me, the only interesting part of the film was the fellatio scene with Choe Sevigny.
It seems that when a personal little film that might not appeal to the soccer moms of America, people will not embrace it for bringing up concepts and ideas that do not make the movie going experience all the more zombie-making, but instead squash it far before even watching it..
The Brown Bunny is entirely his film("written, edited, produced and directed by Vincent Gallo" is the only opening credit - he left out "starring"), and he isn't talented enough in any of these capacities to create stirring emotion.
The most disturbing part of the film isn't the graphic oral sex scene, it's the fact that Gallo has created a 90 minute masturbation piece and he expects the viewer to sit there and share it with him.The emotion doesn't come off as realistic because Gallo is such a bad actor.He emotes like Ben Affleck in a manufactured and cheap Hollywood melodrama.The only good actor in the film (Chloe Sevigny) is given such poorly written lines and such stilted direction that even she comes off like a amateur.
Despite Roger Ebert's shockingly immature reading of this film as "the worst in Cannes' history" (and then inexplicably changed his mind after Gallo made minor edits) "The Brown Bunny" is deadly serious and not the least bit self-indulgent.
I can only hope Gallo will go on making more movies, not necessarily the same, but just as interesting.Oh and the blow job scene is indeed a bit like porn, but I don't care.
As it dawned on me and I realized I want others to know what makes this movie so special, whether you have already seen it or have yet to see it.I really didn't enjoy the first hour and fifteen minutes of the film as I was watching it.
Though certainly a point of concern as you are viewing the film for the first time, the pacing in this (US) version of the Brown Bunny ultimately is revealed to be perfect for creating the dramatic emotional effect that comes through enduring the story lead-in.
Unless you are to reject the film's conclusion as not producing this effect, which I cannot see how after watching and paying close attention to it, I see no reasonable way to vehemently criticize this work of art.I cannot remember the last time a movie has given me such a delayed and ultimately gratifying emotional response, and I hope more people will be willing to give this controversial movie a legitimate chance..
The spectator understands the cause of his feelings towards the end of the movie, when Clay's shard of glass is broken in the scene with Daisy.Vincent Gallo the director appears as an engineer of the film's unique emotional DNA, as an architect of an intricate interior of our psyche and conscience, as well as an anti material painter of America's landscape.
Vincent Gallo takes to the director's chair, as well as producing, writing and editing this pure bore for the next 90 minutes..Although, I've heard stories about this guy's film receiving poor response from the critics.
Brown Bunny, The (2004) BOMB (out of 4) Vincent Gallo's controversial film was one that I was really looking forward to but at the two minute mark of the film I really wanted to turn it off.
Vincent Gallo's THE BROWN BUNNY is a really creepy and weird film.
The major issue with the film is that it is supposed to be very minimalist in it's portrayal of the character, his environments, who he meets and basically the plot outline.Before watching Brown Bunny most people have to consider many things; when directors are making films they tend to think visually.
This is like what happens in most good movies, and Brown Bunny isn't any different...and yet, that's still a good thing in the end..
It's a road movie in its purest form, a perfect medium to express the utter loneliness our main character is experiencing.Much has been said about the last part of the film, when Bud finally meets his long lost love, Daisy (played by the wonderful Sevigny).