I didn’t call you a narcissist.
No, but that’s what is said all the time and that’s what’s meant when people ask me why I need the sex scene. I don’t need the sex scene in the film, because I didn’t need to make the film. But that film includes that sex scene. That film as a whole includes that sex scene. It’s not a separate part. It’s not a choice. Does Robert Redford wear the mustache in “Butch Cassidy,” or doesn’t he? That’s a choice. This film exists as a whole. I don’t compartmentalize the movie like that.
The whole scene involves hyper-intimacy, hyper-focus. You can barely hear them talk sometimes. They’re barely whispering. You’re constantly left feeling that you’re left watching something that you shouldn’t be watching, because you’re not supposed to watch sexuality, really, in a sense. Because you’re supposed to fill your mind with sexuality when you’re having sex. My character in “The Brown Bunny” cannot fill his mind with sexuality. He cannot because he’s filled with fear, grief, anger, and resentment, and that’s a very unusual portrayal of male sexuality. I’ve never seen it before. It’s not influenced by “Two Lane Blacktop” or some other stupid movie because it had a car in it. It’s insight that I felt that I had into pathological behavior that I think is common now.
People are extremely compulsive-addictive in the way that they get together. They act out in these ways in grief that I think are extreme. My character seems like a sociopath in this film but he’s very ordinary, and his experience is very ordinary. And I’m sorry that there’s so much focus at arriving at this scene. It was not my intention. I didn’t think that people would go see the movie and be so enthusiastic to see a blow job that they would ignore a whole film. I didn’t want the film ever to be presented that way because I thought we would just release it in another quieter way. Once it blew up…
I made that billboard on Sunset Blvd. I thought that billboard was the most beautiful billboard I’d ever seen in my life. I thought it was unique billboard in the fact that it wasn’t done in the conventional protocol of advertising where a whole bunch of people come in and put their name, and you have to make everybody happy in the film. It was just nice to see something where one person was able to create a more stark, bold billboard. I’m disappointed that I never actually got to see it in person. Very disappointed because they f***ing took it down before I got here.
You never saw it?
No. I was in New York when the billboard went up.
Who took it down?
Regency. The people at Regency, without saying anything. And the publicist had said to me that the controversy had started coming around the billboard. I thought people would freak out at the billboard – I didn’t see it as a smut thing – I thought they would freak out by the style. I’m always in my own…I’m thinking, “Wow, this is so beautiful. I mean, look it. No company names, just this big thing. I hope other actors and directors get off this billing block and this crap. It’s so great to see graphic design without all these things that you have to pander to.”
And then, you know, the publicist calls me, “The New York Times saw the billboard and they want to talk to you about it.” I’m like, “Oh no.” And I said to her, I said, “Listen. Let’s not talk to anybody because they’re going to wind up taking it down.” “Oh no, they can’t take it down because you have a contract.” I said, “I’m just afraid they’re going to take it down. Please, I want to get to LA. I want to see my billboard. I want to see my billboard before it gets taken down.” Then when I was in Chicago, going from Chicago to Minneapolis, somebody calls me and says, “Your billboard’s down.” I found out the billboard had been taken down without any explanation. There [were] no riots. You couldn’t see anything.
Look at advertisements now. Look at CK, look at Gucci, I mean, please! People like porn and eroticism. They don’t like black and white duotones. They want to see clean, healthy, young flesh. Do you think if you were a porno connoisseur that billboard would have turned you on? There wasn’t enough there. It looked like a romance novel cover more than anything else. There was clear hints of sexuality. The postures were clearly dramatic and clearly intimate. It was suggestive that the film was sophisticated in another way. And that’s all. That was the point.
The people who responded to it the most, the people who called me up who have the most evolved taste of my friends, liked that more than anything that I’ve ever done. But they didn’t like it in that way. They liked the boldness of it. They liked the whole odd nature.
