Vincent Gallo on The Brown Bunny, Winona and Spider-Girl

Vincent Gallo on The Brown Bunny, Winona and Spider-Girl

Gallo's Rumors: Aidin Vaziri | The biggest shock when Gallo arrives at a San Francisco Film Society screening of his movie at the Lumiere Theatre and smiles his way through a question-and-answer session with the kind of charm that makes it almost too easy to blank out the incredibly rude things he has to say. Wearing a brown Western shirt and corduroys, he describes the small film crew who worked alongside him as three rats. "I spent most of my time pampering them," he spits. Then he talks about the two Hollywood starlets who nearly made the cast. He dismisses Kirsten Dunst as "spider-girl" and says he wanted to kill her agent with a plastic bag. Winona Ryder, meanwhile, survived just one day on the set before she was released. "She was not in great shape at the time," Gallo says. "And she was robbing everything in sight." It's fascinating stuff, and it gets even better as he goes on. He bats away all the looming controversy around "The Brown Bunny" with little effort. Yes, 3,500 people did boo in unison when it showed at Cannes last year. Yes, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert said it was the worst film in the festival's history and started singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" out loud midway through the showing. "But I had a good time," Gallo says. "It was nice weather. There were a lot of girls on the beach who didn't have their tops on."