Roger Ebert’s criticism of “The Brown Bunny” launched a fiery back-and-forth with Vincent Gallo. The filmmaker responded by calling Ebert a “fat pig with the physique of a slave trader” (via Far Out Magazine). Ebert clapped back with a mic drop of his own. “It is true that I am fat,” he wrote, “but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of ‘The Brown Bunny.'”
The barbs didn’t stop there. When Gallo jokingly put a hex on Ebert’s colon, implying he hoped the critic got cancer, Ebert clapped back, “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.'”
Ebert wasn’t alone in his critiques of the film. Variety called it “this year’s definition of navel-gazing cinema,” and A.O. Scott remarked upon the Cannes crowd’s “unrestrained hostility” in the New York Times. However, others lauded the film. Les Cahiers du Cinéma named “The Brown Bunny” one of the top 10 movies of the year, and Jean-Luc Godard, John Waters, and Werner Herzog praised it.
Even Ebert came around on “The Brown Bunny.” When Gallo made edits to the film, cutting 26 minutes from its runtime, the critic reevaluated it and gave it a three-star review. “Make no mistake: The Cannes version was a bad film,” he wrote in his 2004 reassessment. “But now Gallo’s editing has set free the good film inside.”
