The Brown Bunny & My Blueberry Nights (with Alex Kolpan)

Rotten Rewind

In 2003, Vincent Gallo brought his second feature "The Brown Bunny" to the Cannes Film Festival. The rest is history.

The so-called controversy surrounding Gallo's film became bigger than the film itself. It was called indulgent. Embarrassingly sincere. Most famously, in the words of Roger Ebert, it was "the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival." And that didn't even touch on the infamous unsimulated blowjob. But what qualifies a failure? Is indulgence always a bad thing? Is the blowjob even the most disturbing part of Gallo's sophomore feature? And more importantly, in the age of PornHub, is an unsimulated blowjob that crazy to see on screen?

Critic and filmmaker Alex Kolpan joins us for an in-depth look back at Gallo's deeply personal and disturbing meditation on loneliness, trauma, and the fractured male psyche. After that, we'll be switching gears for a different kind of road trip romance for Wong Kar-wai's first and only American film, "My Blueberry Nights." Starring a beautiful ensemble of stars like Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Rachel Weisz, the film sees Kar-wai meshing his signature style with the twee sensibilities infused in American indie films of the mid-2000s. Is the film a forgotten gem or more of a curiosity for Wong Kar-wai completists? Are both of these films tailor-made for this podcast? Is Vincent Gallo trolling all of us, or is he far more sincere in his convictions than modern day shit stirrers like Kanye West and Bret Easton Ellis? Find out right here on America's #1 podcast.

You can watch Alex's short film "Voice Male" co-directed by the late, great Eli Hayes right here!