Vincent Gallo’s “The Brown Bunny”, due out on DVD on August 16, is a film that features no shortage of shocks: on-screen fellatio, an egomaniacal storyline, and the first screen appearance by Cheryl Tiegs. But perhaps the biggest surprise to most who followed the movie as it was booed in Cannes and became the source of a media shouting match between the creator and critic Roger Ebert, was that the film’s star-director-writer-producer-cameraman-set-designer, Vincent Gallo, is a registered Republican. That a person who puts out such a provocative piece would be voting alongside conservative Christians, buttoned-down corporations and others who would more than likely call for banning motion pictures like “The Brown Bunny” from being made, let alone seen, is indeed startling.
However, it is not unprecedented. Vincent Gallo belongs to a decidedly small, but noticeable, cadre of “blood-red state” filmmakers.The most famous of these, of course, is Mel Gibson. As most people, the aging Hollywood heartthrob personally financed and distributed “The Passion of the Christ”, an ode to old-school Catholicism, family values and the Son of God that featured more spilled blood, ripped flesh, broken limbs and spilled entrails than a Tobe Hooper film festival.
In the world of the avant-garde, Paul Morrissey, the director of “Trash”, “Heat”, “Flesh” and other graphic depictions of libidinous living inspired by Andy Warhol is, and has always been, a right-wing, devoutly Catholic Republican. Those who ask the director how he can reconcile his beliefs with films featuring actors blissfully engaging in (apparently real) heroin use, gay sex and transvestitism are answered with a statement like the one Morrissey gave writer Maurice Yacower: 'Without institutionalized religion as the basis, a society can't exist. All the sensible values of a solid education and a moral foundation have been flushed down the liberal toilet in order to sell sex, drugs, and rock and roll.'
Less well known, but no less startling, are the works of devoutly Catholic, and deeply conservative, filmmaker Jon Springer. His short movies include “Heaven 17” a treatise against abortion featuring full frontal nudity and naked virgins having milky white fluid drained from their midsections, and “Heterosapiens” a fearful premonition of a world in which gay sex is the norm and heterosexuality is out that throws in anal sex and completely nude vixens to bring home the point. Springer justifies his use of graphic sex and violence to promote conservative, Fundamentalist values thusly: “I try to speak the language of an audience completely desensitized to sex and violence, and then attach a different meaning than they're used to.'
As mentioned, “blood-red staters” like Gallo, Gibson, Morrissey and Springer are a small and relatively select breed, quite different from the many conservative “indies” featured in American Film Renaissance. That festival, whose aim is to provide a conservative alternative to the primarily liberal stance of the vast majority of film festivals in the nation, focuses on relatively mainstream, PG-13 works like Michael Wilson’s “Michael Moore Hates America.” The cinema of auteurs like Vincent Gallo, who also wrote and directed, the intensely violent and sadistic “Buffalo ‘66”, contain enough elements of sexual libertarianism and “alternative lifestyles” to have James Dobson and his Focus on the Family crusade shouting for their necks.
This leads to the big question: why would apparently sincere conservatives like these want to engage the audience in some of the most depraved acts ever depicted on screen? Perhaps the question can be answered by the fact that so many outspoken conservatives have an innate fascination with the carnal, chemical and sinful human failings they so deride - at times, to the point of being active participants. The list of examples that have turned up in the last two years alone is enough to make one’s spin: Bush Food and Drug Administration appointee W. David Hager, who has stridently criticized today’s sexual mores, was charged by his ex-wife with having performed forced anal sex on her; antiabortion activist Neal Horsely admitted to FOX TV commentator Alan Colmes to having had sex with animals; Spokane, WA Mayor James E. West, a long time advocate of removing gays from most aspects of employment and public life, was caught by The Spokesman-Review trolling for male sex partners on gay web sites and was accused of having molested troops during his tenure as a Boy Scout; and, lets not forget Rush Limbaugh’s secret love affair with Oxycontin and Bill O’Reilly’s taste for obscene phone calls and vibrators.
The fact that an independent filmmaker’s (not to say Hollywood’s) best friend is publicity, and nothing raises eyebrows like a satyr who says he’s a family man of God at heart, could lead a cynic to presume these gentlemen are simply saying their values are dipped in red wine, when what’s flowing in their veins is as blue as a Michael Moore sky. After all, there is no way anyone can prove whom they voted for or what causes and campaigns they gave money to. Still, it is best to assume these directors are for real in their devotion to marriage, family, heterosexuality, fetuses and stem cells. And it is entirely conceivable by that Vincent Gallo, Mel Gibson, Paul Morrissey and Jon Springer would be found among the cheering, beer-swigging throngs at NASCAR. At least, Gallo should be found at that red neck cavalcade, as “The Brown Bunny” concerns a pro motorcycle racer who rides his prized cycle - named “Brown Bunny” - across country following the death of his girlfriend.
But will he and his fellow “blood-red staters” ever truly be accepted by the born-again conservatives they court? The answer can probably be found in Vincent Gallo’s reply to the New York Times Magazine last year when asked in an interview if he would be attending the Republican National Convention, held in his home turf of New York City, no less. His reply: “I don’t know. They haven’t invited me.”
