Retro Review by Reece Beckett
Warning: Spoilers for both Buffalo ‘66 and The Brown Bunny
Vincent Gallo is certainly a director known for his ego. Whether it’s the scene in which he plays himself in Julie Delpy’s 2 Days In New York and buys Delpy’s soul only to keep it in a pouch on his groin, his appearance as ‘Flying Christ’ in the hilariously titled Vincent Gallo as Flying Christ or just his website (particularly the merchandising section – there is some real gold there!), he’s definitely earned that reputation. But his work as an actor and a director often also show a dedication to artistry that knows no bounds.
Five years after Vincent Gallo released his debut feature length film Buffalo ’66 (to a middling reception – the film has become something of a cult classic since), the outcast director returned with his second outing, The Brown Bunny. This one was instantly reviled by almost everybody. It was completely torn apart, most infamously by Roger Ebert who landed himself in quite the verbal boxing match with Gallo. According to Ebert, the two were able to get past the insult of “I will one day be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny” and the wishing of colon cancer upon Ebert by Gallo – but by then it was too little and too late. Vincent Gallo was twice as outcast within Hollywood as he was before, never to return… or at least, not yet.
If the moment of clear emotional success in Gallo’s previous feature Buffalo ’66 told his audience anything, it was that Gallo ultimately believed that hope was more beneficial than nihilism and anger. The entire film builds towards this release of anger and an endorsement of hope and love, a loss of insecurity in a trade off for a fresh slate. Unexpectedly, The Brown Bunny teaches us the exact opposite – or, at the very least, it warns the audience about the darkest moments of insecurity and mental anguish by outright presenting them without holding much back. With a tagline that very frankly states “I’m not going to be okay, Bud,” it can’t be said that Gallo didn’t at the very least try to warn us of what was coming. However, there’s no way to properly prepare for The Brown Bunny – a harshly detached film about the modern American man.
This film follows Bud Clay, a motorcyclist who seems able to have anything he wants – he has a successful racing career, he is able to convince practically any woman to see his appeal and money never seems to be any problem either – and yet, something in his life is clearly missing. Gallo makes this clear from the opening shot, one that builds a huge distance between the audience/camera and the characters as they circle a racing track, the only noise being that of the bike engines roaring. The film maintains a great distance from landscapes throughout, with them all being quite sparse and empty and the camera seeming to hold back from them as much as possible. When it comes to the characters, the camera is frequently uncomfortably close, often cutting parts of faces out of the frame and focusing on specific parts (typically the eyes), and this seems to only add to a disturbingly distant feeling that pervades the entirety of the film. Gallo’s voyeuristic approach is quite different to his more direct style adopted in Buffalo ’66, and this only makes the distance stand out all the more.
This distinct feeling of detachment and loneliness is expanded on when Gallo interacts with a young woman at a petrol station, desperately persuading her to come with him on his travels but then, after convincing her to come, ditching her. At this point, the audience doesn’t understand Bud Clay’s character enough to empathize with this decision, but it soon becomes clear that Clay carries with him an inescapable fear of attachment or responsibility. The only mystery that remains is what led to this. Bud Clay appears to represent what Billy Brown of Buffalo ’66 may have become: a man completely crippled by insecurities, mental trauma and his past to the point that his interactions with others have become devoid of care and only really fueled by these very brief but completely overwhelming desires for attachment that quickly become too much to deal with. Bud Clay is able to get most anything he wants, but he is unable to escape his fear of intimacy despite the fact that it may be what is needed to “fix” him, which only makes his story all the more painful for his helpless audience.
As Clay follows the road, this detachment becomes more and more apparent and increasingly painful. Whilst Buffalo ’66’s portrait of modern America was undoubtedly sleazy and cheap, Gallo steps things up for The Brown Bunny and doubles down on the anger towards his country as every character he comes across is struggling with something just as much as he is and every scene location feels desolate or even abandoned. This portrait of an America in decay doubles down on the influence (also quite clear in Buffalo) from the New Hollywood Wave as well as the independent films of the late 60s.
Considering that the majority of people become familiar with this film based solely on its climactic scene (pardon the pun), which sees Chloe Sevigny give her then-boyfriend Gallo an unsimulated blowjob for… quite some time, it’s not exactly difficult to see why so many would discard it as pornographic or egotistic filmmaking. However, those who see the film in full and know what comes after that scene will know exactly why such a long and intimate scene is put in the film; it’s for the sake of reducing Bud Clay to nothing once more. Knowing that the scene is an imagined moment between Clay and his dead wife/girlfriend Daisy (brought to life by Clay’s lonely fantasies) only goes to prove the impenetrable sadness that Bud is unable to move past, and the reveal that he could have helped but wasn’t able to with Daisy’s (and the baby she was carrying at the time’s) death only makes the moment all the more shocking and depressing. The emptiness that leads to the finale pays off, and the sexual scene that precedes it becomes ugly, degrading and vulnerable as it becomes clear that Clay still holds on to the same desire, unable to come to terms with his actions (or lack thereof) in any real way.
It’s strange to stumble across a hopelessly lonely road trip movie that quietly crawls through a decaying America with no real destination in mind, but Gallo manages to make the film stand out in such a way that very few others are able to match. With his first two films, he was able to create two works with intense contrast that are both incredible, both deeply moving and both fueled by these wonderfully unique stylistic traits.