In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. Look out haters because there's another dick coming your way this week, and it's a big one.
Last week, I eased you into the world of partially erect penises with Wild Things, and much to at least two guys' chagrin, this week, we're going all the way to completion with one of the biggest dicks—literally and metaphorically—in Hollywood: Vincent Gallo. I will happily admit to being an acolyte of Gallo's following his brilliant 1998 debut Buffalo '66, I adored that film and still do. It made me excited for whatever he was going to do next behind the camera, and when he announced he'd be bringing his follow-up, The Brown Bunny, to Cannes in 2003, that excitement went through the roof.
Then word came down that the film was a disaster. American critics, most notably Roger Ebert, lambasted the film at its world premiere, which was by Gallo's own admission a work in progress. The element of the film that most critics understandably latched on to was the graphic scene near the film's end where Chloë Sevigny performed oral sex on Gallo, the film's writer, producer, director, and star. Without having seen the scene, or more importantly the film in question, you could see from where these complaints were coming.
It sounded like the ultimate act of vanity from a narcissistic personality, who made audiences suffer an hour and a half of endless self-indulgence, culminating in a blowjob that no narrative could possibly justify. Gallo spent some time tinkering with the film and delivered a 93 minute cut for theatrical release in the late summer of 2004. Ebert saw the film again and admitted that in a tighter form—the Cannes cut was over two hours—the film came together for him. In an interview with the AV Club shortly thereafter, Gallo had this to say about Ebert's about face...
I felt like, on a certain level, he wanted to remove himself from calling [The Brown Bunny] the worst film ever made. And the new version gave him an opportunity, because it was different from when he saw it. So he could say, "The film got a lot better. You made some really important changes." The truth is, those changes could not possibly take the film from that extreme to another extreme. It just couldn't. And to claim it did is suspect to me. I feel disappointed that he never took any responsibility for the change in his feelings, that he pinned it all completely on the change in the movie. I don't believe that. I believe that, on some level, either he didn't get it, he wasn't prepared for it, he saw it in the wrong environment, he wasn't adjusted to the continuity, he let his suspicions about why I made the film interfere… I don't know exactly. I just don't believe it was this adjustment, this final tweaking of the film, that warmed him up to it.
When the film opened at the Landmark Century Centre here in Chicago that September, I just had to see it for myself. My initial reaction while watching the film was mostly bafflement.For the 81 minutes prior to the beej, we're kept in close quarters with Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer embarking on a cross-country trip to his next race. As played by Gallo, Clay comes off as a whiny, petulant child who just wants every woman around him to comfort him, only so that he can abandon them just as they begin to develop any feelings for him. He repeats this pattern with many women across his trip, stopping off at a rest area for a make-out session with a crying Cheryl Tiegs.
The film isn't subtle, often resorting to Clay basically begging women to even give him the time of day. The time spent in between these are long stretches of silence over shots of the open road. Gordon Lightfoot's "Beautiful" plays and we're left to wonder what Gallo, the writer/director, is trying to say. He arrives, mercifully, in California and rings up his old flame Daisy (Chloë Sevigny) to come and meet him at his hotel.
Now, the whole time I've been wondering how in god's name he was going to justify a hardcore blowjob at the end of this quiet, subdued, internal character study about a man who hardly talks because he's almost always alone? In what way could he possibly transition from one film into another, and the answer is that he doesn't really. 81 minutes into the film, he opens his pants for Sevigny and she does her duty as an artist...
Sevigny told The Sunday Times in 2003 thatthe scene came naturally for her...
I've done it in everyday life. Everybody's done it, or had it done to them. It was tough, the toughest thing I've ever done, but Vincent was very sensitized to my needs, very gentle. It was one take. It was funny and awkward—we both laughed quite a bit. And we'd been intimate in the past, so it wasn't so weird. If you're not challenging yourself and taking risks, then what's the point of being an artist?
The scene itself is as aggressively, noxiously masculine as a scene can get, mostly because of Gallo's dialogue throughout. This includes him asking her if she has been thinking about his dick and making herself cum while he was away. He then becomes very jealous, telling her she can't do this with anyone else, and it is clear he's deriving pleasure from her constant agreement that she won't go down on any other guys. He then finishes violently in her mouth while he tells her that he saw herhaving sex with two other guys.
We come to discover that a pregnant Daisy actually died months ago, while being assaulted by two men after overdosing on crack at a party, adding another, far more disturbing layer to an already disturbing scene. Bud has misplaced his aggression on Daisy in a move that has become much more prominent in the wake of the MeToo movement, and that is victim blaming. Bud has spent this time harboring aggressive anger toward Daisy, which manifests itself in a highly sexual way as she performs the act most associated with a woman's submission.
It takes this act, and the subsequent explanation of the truth behind the whole situation from the obviously imaginary Daisy, to help Bud come to terms with everything. He very clearly loved Daisy and was hurt by what he saw as her betrayal, but it's her monologue post-blowjob that allows him to see how much he was hurting himself by blaming her instead of the two men who gave her the crack and assaulted her.
Bear in mind, the audience has to come to this conclusion on their own. There's nothing in The Brown Bunny to act as a guide or hold your hand, it's all up to your own interpretation, and I'm certain other people have their own feelings about what it all means.As for Chloë, there were still plenty of mixedfeelings for hersurrounding her participation in the film as she told Playboy back in 2011...
What's happened with that is all very complicated. There are a lot of emotions. I'll probably have to go to therapy at some point. But I love Vincent. The film is tragic and beautiful, and I'm proud of it and my performance. I'm sad that people think one way of the movie, but what can you do? I've done many explicit sex scenes, but I'm not that interested in doing any more. I'm more self-aware now and wouldn't be able to be as free, so why even do it?
It's interesting to note that Chloë recently did some of the best nudity of her career just last year in Lizzie, so maybe her position on all of that is constantly evolving...
Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy...
—The "Real Sex" ofDon't Look Now
—Scarlett Johansson's Nude Debut inUnder the Skin
—The 2 Very Different Sex ScenesofBasic Instinct
—How Halle Berry's Nude Debut Led Her toMonster's Ball
—HowMulholland Dr.'s Legendary Lesbian Scenes Deepen the Film's Mystery
—Showgirlsand the Dangers of High Camp
—Rosario Dawson Laid Bare for Danny Boyle'sTrance
—Katie Holmes MakesThe GiftWorth Remembering
—Jennifer Connelly Comes of Age inThe Hot Spot
—Lisa Bonet's Bloody Nude Debut inAngel Heart
—Monica Bellucci Gets Brutalized in Gaspar Noé'sIrréversible
—Stanley Kubrick, The William Tell Overture, and A Clockwork Orange
—Wild Things Presents Every Man with His Dream Threesome
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Header image via IMDb
