Gallo quits after Brown Bunny boos

Outlandish US director Vincent Gallo is so hurt by the scathing reaction to his film The Brown Bunny that he has vowed to quit.‘‘I...

Outlandish US director Vincent Gallo is so hurt by the scathing reaction to his film The Brown Bunny that he has vowed to quit.

‘‘I’ll never make another movie again. I mean it,’’ Gallo said, after his movie had a disastrous reception at Cannes and he was booed at a press conference. ‘‘Being booed at was not much fun. It’s really not very nice that people are so nasty. I’m very disappointed,’’ he said on Friday at the star-studded AMFAR AIDS fundraiser.

Gallo, going through what he says is the worst week in his life, has also apologised to those who financed the film.

‘‘It was a disaster and a waste of time. I apologise to the financiers, but I never intended to make a pretentious film, a self-indulgent film, a useless film, an unengaging film,’’ he said. Critics guffawed openly at the screening of The Brown Bunny, which Gallo wrote, directed, produced and starred in, and groaned at the oral sex scene at the end.

Many found the long driving scenes, punctuated only by the hero stopping to pee or brush his teeth, interminable and monotonous. Industry rag Screen International has ranked the film the worst of the 20 films competing for this year’s Palme D’Or.

‘‘Vincent Gallo’s monumental folly has already become a defining moment in Cannes history. Awestruck future generations will ask: Were you there the night they screened The Brown Bunny?’’ one of the magazine’s critics wrote on Friday.

‘‘If my film is not comprehensible to people then I have failed in my purpose. I am disappointed that once again, what I like is unpopular,’’ Gallo said. (Reuters)