Airborne Viking posted:

Toadvine posted:

Death to Smoochy is incredible comedy. gently caress that bespectacled lump what's he even doing these days?

Filthy Hans posted:

Ebert gave a negative review to Cable Guy, between that and Death To Smoochy he really seemed to dislike dark, spiteful, misanthropic humor and that's where I part ways with his opinions

Parallax Scroll posted:

he didnt like bad boys 2! can you believe it

happyhippy posted:

Didn't he like a MS3TK bad movie?
Laserblast maybe, can't remember.

Egbert Souse posted:

Ebert would usually go easy on a movie if it had a lot of tits and wasn't outright awful.

King Vidiot posted:

Can't hate that I guess.

Pink Flamingos is a loving masterpiece though.

quote:

Vincent Gallo has put a curse on my colon and a hex on my prostate.

He called me a "fat pig" in the New York Post and told the New York Observer I have "the physique of a slave-trader." He is angry at me because I said his "The Brown Bunny" was the worst movie in the history of the Cannes Film Festival. I was not alone in my judgment. Screen International, the British trade paper, convenes a panel of critics to score the official entries. "The Brown Bunny" scored 0.6 out of a possible five--the lowest score in its history, the paper said. This came as a blow to the French. Their national pride could not abide the notion that an American film was worse than any of their own, and so a few days later they countered with Bertrand Blier's "Les Cotelettes.""It actually scored even worse with our forlorn international critics," Colin Brown, editor of Screen International, told me.

"Seven zeroes, vs. Gallo's five zeroes." The "Bunny" press screening "was remarkable for the unrestrained hostility of the audience," wrote A. O. Scott in the New York Times. At the end, the audience "gave voice to that French form of abuse that sounds like a cross between the lowing of a cow and the hooting of an owl." During a scene where Gallo shares a bicycle with a young woman, I became so nostalgic for "Butch Cassidy" that I softly sang "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head." I stopped after six words when my wife jabbed me in the ribs.

I was overheard by a writer for Hollywood Reporter, who included it in his coverage about how badly the film was received, and that is another reason Gallo has put the heebie-jeebie on my colon and prostate. I am not too worried. I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than "The Brown Bunny."

"A day after the fiasco of the movie's premiere, Screen International ran a remarkable interview in which Gallo apologized for his film, calling it "a disaster and a waste of time," and adding, "I apologize to the financiers of the film, but I must assure you it was never my intention to make a pretentious film, a self-indulgent film, a useless film, an unengaging film." He added that the official screening "was the worst feeling I ever had in my life," and said he would never watch the film again.

On Monday Gallo told the New York Post's Page Six that Screen International "made up" his quotes. He added, "I'm sorry I'm not gay or Jewish, so I don't have a special interest group of journalists who support me." Such comments might seem politically incorrect, but not to Gallo, who says he is a conservative Republican, although since his film ends with a hard-core oral sex scene, he is not likely to be fielding many group bookings from the Moral Majority.

But was Gallo actually misquoted?

"Absolutely insane stuff from Gallo," editor Colin Brown assured me. "Not only is everything we wrote in Cannes exactly as he spewed out, word for word, it was all recorded on audio tape." He added, "It makes me wonder whether this is not all some great marketing ploy on his part. I have actually come across people who say 'Brown Bunny' is top of their list of films they most want to see out of Cannes this year."

Fionnuala Halligan, who wrote the Screen International piece, says she quoted Gallo accurately and sent me a copy of his transcript.

"By the end he is shouting and spitting, and his invective is so unpleasant, I feel quite shaken listening to it again," she told me. "I don't think it was a good day for him to meet the press, as he was obviously extremely upset. He was very late, and all the interviews that had previously been arranged got lumped into one group, which is fortunate for me, as he probably would have thumped me otherwise."

Gallo all but wept in a Cannes interview as he described the pain of "growing up ugly," but empathy has its limits, and he had no tears for a fat pig and slave-trader such as myself. It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of "The Brown Bunny."

Egbert Souse posted:

I'm waiting on it from Netflix. I'm a John Waters virgin.

Uncle at Nintendo posted:

What? This movie owns. Yeah it gets a little corny near the end with the Dan Ackroyd evil businessman stuff but I watch the whole movie in full any time I catch it. If Ebert (or Evert as the OP calls him) didn't laugh at the scene when Farley is petting the piece of bread then I don't know why he was reviewing comedies.

SilvergunSuperman posted:

Physique of a slave-trader is one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Hector Beerlioz posted:

Jawdropping

quote:

O: How did the six-city road trip you recently took with The Brown Bunny turn out? Did anything interesting happen along the way?

VG: I drive across the country all the time, and any road trip is interesting for me. There's always some geography I've never seen, or some weather that's unusual. But really, the only highlight of the trip for me was my encounter with Roger Ebert.

O: How did that go?

VG: It was a big surprise. He and I had sort of lashed out at one another publicly, but I had a sense that it was partly humorous for him, and I hope he understood that it was at least partly humorous for me. That said, he and [Richard] Roeper did give my film the most crude, aggressive review that I've ever seen of a film in my life. There was one comment where Ebert said, "I think Vincent Gallo should simply bill this as 'the worst movie ever made.' This way people might want to see it." And Roeper said, "Well, I understand your point. If you told me that over in the corner there was a hot, steaming pile of excrement, I'd want to go over and take a look, but I'd be glad I didn't make it." It was that kind of review.

Maneki Neko posted:

People hate saving Silverman?

Howard Beale posted:

the brown bunny is basically vincent gallo telling his friends "hey I bet you fifty bucks I can get chloe sevigny to suck me off on camera" and his friends saying "oh no way vincent you're on"

VikingSkull posted:

don't worry Jenny, it's me, Casper

ephori posted:

Didn't Ebert re-review The Brown Bunny after a massive edit by Gallo and they came to some kind of understanding? Or did I imagine this? I feel like he came away much more positive.

JnnyThndrs posted:

I remember this happening as well.

quote:

Gallo went back into the editing room and cut 26 minutes of his 118-minute film, or almost a quarter of the running time. And in the process he transformed it. The film's form and purpose now emerge from the miasma of the original cut, and are quietly, sadly, effective. It is said that editing is the soul of the cinema; in the case of The Brown Bunny, it is its salvation.