I’m only seven years late, but I finally watched the controversial movie The Brown Bunny. It was in the two-for-a-dollar rental bin. The story is about an L.A.-based 250 Grand Prix racer who travels cross country and has short encounters with women along the way. Most people I talked to who saw the movie back when it came out hated it, but surprisingly it garnered some decent reviews.

The movie mainly consists of rambling road scenes from the driver’s perspective, bug splatters and all. The scary part for me was when I realized I recognized nearly all of the stretches of highway shown in the film (one is I-70 entering the downtown section of my hometown Indianapolis). There’s virtually no dialog.

It was an odd movie to say the least, but not without redeeming value. For one Chloë Sevigny is in the movie and I’d happily sit through a movie of her watching paint dry.

For racing purist a couple of things made no sense in the movie. The racer lives in L.A., but he comes all the way to Loudon, New Hampshire, for what looks to be a club race (no fans to be seen). Maybe it was one of the AMA rainout races that ran on Monday. He then has to make it to L.A., presumably Willow Springs, for another race five days later. Strangely though when he pulls out of Loudon he turns north on Highway 106.  He would’ve saved time heading south towards Concord.

Former supermodel Cheryl Tiegs makes a wonderful cameo and still looks beautiful in her 50s even without makeup.

Of course there’s the controversial explicit sex scene near the end of the movie that the movie is known for, but I think the hype was overblown.

The racing footage from Loudon was probably from a club race and was generic and unexciting. That was about it as far as racing goes. There’s another scene where the racer unloads his bike (a Honda RS250) at the Bonneville Salt Flats and runs up through the gears fairly slowly. You can hear him trying to make a shift after he’s already in sixth, but who hasn’t made that mistake. Then back in Los Angeles the bike was tested on a dyno and that about all she wrote for motorcycle scenes.

If you see the GP bike on the cover at your local DVD store and think you’re going to see a motorcycle racing movie, you’ll be disappointed.