Some movie viewings are a rite of passage — long, drawn out and nearly as painful as a bris. But you have to admire the filmgoer for surviving to tell the tale, and often the amount of numb ass is proportional to how good the story/review is. Case in point, Aaron Out of Focus's detailed posting on Vincent Gallo's controversial Toronto Film Fest entry Brown Bunny. We highly recommend spending the time to read the entire thing — especially since Aaron saves you the trouble of actually seeing the thing but still arms you with enough details about most of the scenes to talk about it at cocktail parties — but we'll reprint the following quote because we can't help ourselves. Heh. Vincent Gallo is like a stupider version of Salvador Dalì and Luis Buñuel; he's so surprised the audience liked his film, he forgot to throw the rocks at them that he brought to the screening.
"I suppose the most important thing I learned from watching The Brown Bunny is that I now understand Gallo's purpose as a filmmaker. He wants to antagonize his audience. He wants people to hate him and his films. It's really the only explanation. In fact, I'd bet that he was shocked at how warmly so many indie film folks received Buffalo 66. Maybe he is really intelligent after all. Maybe he said to himself, "Well, if that piece of crap couldn't get the audience to hate me, maybe I'll go one better and show my erect penis on screen. Or better yet, I won't show that much of it because it will be gagging my good friend Chloe at the time." He did a magnificent job of antagonizing me and plenty of other audience members (at least two left about 30 minutes in … and this was a press screening, I believe), although I would by no means speak for everyone, and I did overhear one woman say, "I really liked it."Posted by karen at July 12, 2004 7:38 AM