Vincent Gallo

Straight talk
VINCENT GALLO

Since its infamous debut at the last Cannes Film Festival, director and actor Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny has become the year’s most controversial movie, as much for its deliberately slow pacing as for the final scene, in which Gallo and Chloë Sevigny engage in an explicit, unsimulated sex act. Gallo chatted with us recently about the film, his philosophy of art, and getting hassled by Minnesota state troopers after making out with a 1970s-era supermodel at a roadside rest area.

THE RAKE: What would you say to skeptical filmgoers to convince them this is a film they should see?

GALLO: If someone is skeptical, this is a very difficult film. If you have a sense that my intentions are questionable, it’s going to be very hard to follow the multidimensional first half of the film, which on the skeptical surface is where nothing happens. I’d rather a skeptical person not go to see the film. It doesn’t play to win people over. It’s not Lost in Translation.

Your scene with Cheryl Tiegs was filmed here in Minnesota. Any interesting stories to relate about that?

We went out on I-35, no more than ten miles out of town, and shot that sequence at a roadside rest stop. The rest-stop employees called the police. The police came and I said, “I don’t understand. People walk around with their video cameras and you don’t arrest them. There’s three people here; this can’t qualify as a production. I know my rights, and good day, sir.” He asked us all for a license. They always seem to handcuff me. The cop said something extremely mean to Cheryl, and I was taken aback by it—he looked at Cheryl’s license and said “Oh, Cheryl Tiegs—you were a model, huh? Wow, you got old. Fifty-four!” She was so cool and polite. She just said “Yeah.” And then he left. I’ll never forget that. It was just so bizarre.

The Chloë Sevigny sex scene has become notorious. But how important is that scene to the film aesthetically?

There’s no film without that. Sexually graphic images are not an accessory or a selling feature or a luxury. The whole point of the film was to bring insight into pathological behavior in loss of love. To remove those graphic images would severely diminish the disturbing nature of that scene. It would be fraudulent. I am not an eroticist or a pornographer. I’ve been working for twenty-five years, and I’ve never used exhibitionism or voyeurism in any of my work. I’m not interested in those things. I’m interested in emotional hangups and how they translate into the behavior.

You have an offbeat approach to cinematography, especially when shooting yourself—often we see only the back of your head, or you’re only visible on the extreme edge of the frame.

I have a very specific aesthetic point of view and a sense of composition. When I was shooting this film, I was always looking at myself in a monitor. There’s never a scene, not even in the shower—certainly not the sex scene, where there’s ten monitors and I’m watching the whole thing—there’s never a moment where I’m not watching what I’m filming. So I can play to the camera in a way no one has ever been able to do before in cinema, because the photographer is in charge of capturing the performer but the performer is unaware of what’s going on compositionally. However, if the photographer is the performer, I can do very extreme things. Unfortunately, I hate to see myself, especially my face. I can’t bear being captured on film. That’s a problem, because I’m a filmmaker and I choose to include myself in the performance of the film. That’s why the accusations of narcissism were so painful to me. I don’t care if people say I’m a jerk, I don’t care if they say I’m ugly. I’m really controlling and bold when it comes to concepts and aesthetics, and incredibly un-self-protective when it comes to me. I’m comfortable being hated for what I am. I just don’t like being hated for what I’m not.

The Brown Bunny opens October 1 at the Uptown Theatre.