Some solid hoots from the Times:

Mr. Gallo argues that the whole episode was exaggerated by the press and points out that the movie received a standing ovation at its official Cannes showing. In any case, it is coming to American theaters with some of the worst advance word in recent cinematic memory, almost daring moviegoers to go see it.

Denial’s a bitch, ain’t it, Vince?

After making “Buffalo ’66” Mr. Gallo said he had all but decided to leave filmmaking because he hated working with stars (he publicly insulted his costars, Christina Ricci and Anjelica Huston, as well as Ms. Sevigny), with unions and with almost everybody else involved in the movie business.

Gallo, by the way, is 42.

A few years ago, he says, he was offered what amounted to a blank check by a Japanese distribution company to make another movie, which at that point was little more than a vague concept and a title — “The Brown Bunny.” He said he had come up with the name before envisioning any kind of story (rabbits are his favorite animals, and he has always been a little obsessed with the color brown).

Hey, Vince, I love ducks and black myself, but you don’t see me making a movie called The Black Duck.

When he explained that the movie would involve a scene of real oral sex, Ms. Sevigny said she was hesitant but eventually concluded that the scene was integral to the movie. (She also smokes crack during the scene — but that, she said, was faked.)

So in the Vincent Gallo universe, it’s an act of artistic integrity to debase Chloe Sevigny by demanding real oral sex, but it’s appropriate verisimilitude when you fake smoking crack.

“If people are sitting there watching `The Brown Bunny’ and waiting for the motel scene, then I just can’t relate to them.”

It’s the insomniacs who will be doing just that when they tune into your movie on Showtime at some ungodly hour looking for T&A. Too bad, Vince. That’s your target audience.

“I feel much better now that I’ve placed this piece of work in the world.”

Helpful hint to Vince’s publicist: “A piece of _____” often connotes something else.

(via Amy’s Robot)

We’ve relaunched the Wrestling an Alligator site. Character bios, actor bios, a revised excerpt, and a coherent design are some of the fringe benefits (no pun intended). More’s coming this week. Stay tuned. Please also note that if you’re interested in catching the show, advance tickets will be available starting on August 25.

Czeslaw Milosz has passed on. He was 93. Sam has links o’plenty.

Superfriend butting in here to say: Let’s have a Tom Shales kind of morning, shall we? He’s in rare form — and believe you me, I don’t say that lightly, still not having forgiven him for not understanding why Jon Stewart is funny.

He takes on last night’s NBC coverage of the opening ceremonies of the Athens Olympics. And he is dead on. Mostly.

He isn’t quite as impressed as I was by the pageantry of it, which is truly some of the most amazing theater I’ve ever seen on that scale. Theater managers all over the world have to be dreaming of replicating effects like the human statues and the costumed people that seemed animated through the effect of exquisite make-up and wardrobe that moved like drawings. One of the best things about it was its complete disregard for any sensibilities other than the aesthetic — you would never see anything that interesting in an American-created Olympic opening, because we would be too afraid at pissing people off by showing a glimpse of a human breast, or having a couple roll around lustily in a giant lake, or the Greek god Eros flying around in naught but a drapey loincloth. The switchboards would light up, the hands would cover the mouths and we’d be reading about it for three months. It would disintegrate our moral fabric. Right?

But incorporate some athletes at the end and some stupid commentary so people don’t feel threatened by the intellect behind it all, the symbolism (which is surely rated I for inappropriate on television), and people can deal. As long it’s happening in Greece.

Bob Costas and Katie Couric should be ashamed at their running idiocy during the entirety of the show’s majestic portion. They only seemed to get their sea-legs when the parade of athletes started. I actually turned to Mr. BondGirl at one point and said, “This is what it’s come to?”

This comment was provoked by Katie Couric’s reading off an index card that the foustanela skirts several men on one of the floats were wearing consist of 400 pleats symbolizing the years during which Greece was under Ottoman rule. To which Costas replies, “I wouldn’t want to have to press that!”

I. Wouldn’t. Want. To. Have. To. Press. That.

Bon mots singled out by Tom Shales in his column included:

The very quotable Archimedes . . . was an excitable guy,” Costas said as if talking about another of his chumpy sports chums. “But we must make allowances for genius, I guess.”

…Costas to recite the plot of “Oedipus Rex” — how he murdered his father and married his mother, with Costas adding that this was “a sequence of events that seldom turns out well.”

Once Couric and Costas shut up and put aside all the notes about Greece that NBC Sports researchers had assembled for them, the pageant had other inspired touches besides Cube Man. The huge stadium seemingly turned into a large man-made lake for costumed performers to skate on. A 9-year-old boy had the thrill of gliding around on the pond in what looked like a giant paper hat. It eventually broke into several pieces that were suspended by wires and dangled up into the stratosphere, or near it. Ever-ready with the concise acerbic remark, Couric looked at the kid and declared, “He’s so cute!”*

* Note to Shales, the kid in the paper hat actually came BEFORE Cube guy. What happened was the giant face representing early sculpture broke apart into all those more natural representations of the human form, and which then settled into the lake to represent the Greek islands. Quite awesome actually. But unfortunately, B & K still had plenty of notes and yammering to do.

I suggest you check out the Washington Post’s photo gallery, which has the only photos that come close to getting the cool stuff, such as the amazing Centaur and the columnistas. It’s here. (You’ll have to click to photo 4 or 5 to get to the good stuff.) The BBC has some decent pics here.

Perhaps if we combined a plot from Six Feet Under, where David gets carjacked and hijacks the entire rest of the episode with melodrama, with Bob and Katie, we’d have a winner. Bob and Katie carjacked outside the Olympics, the cast of Six Feet Under must narrate the opening ceremonies.