Roger Ebert called the film "the worst in the history of Cannes." He posted on his website "The audience was loud and scornful in its dislike for the movie; hundreds walked out, and many of those who remained only stayed because they wanted to boo." Vincent Gallo responded that Ebert was a "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader." Ebert paraphrased a remark of Sir Winston Churchill and responded that "Although I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of 'The Brown Bunny.'" Gallo then put a hex on Ebert's colon, to which Ebert responded that "even my colonoscopy was more entertaining than his film." (It should be noted that the version screened at Cannes was much longer than the final version.)
Chloë Sevigny claimed in interviews that the fellatio scene was not simulated. She said "It was tough, the toughest thing I've ever done, but Vincent was very sensitive to my needs, very gentle. . . . And we'd been intimate in the past."
The oral sex scene was filmed using remote cameras with only Vincent Gallo and Chloë Sevigny in the room.
The opening scene of Vincent Gallo driving was originally almost 20 minutes of him just driving until it was cut down because it was too long.
When Roger Ebert first viewed the movie in May 2003, he stated that he thought it was the worst movie in the history of the Cannes Film Festival. In August 2004, after watching an edited-down, shorted version of the film, Ebert gave it a thumbs up on Vanity Fair/Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid/Hero/Suspect Zero/The Brown Bunny (2004), stating that the editing changed the film.