Blue, Bunny Trailer #2

Sometime last week, YouTube removed a trailer for a movie called Blue, Bunny, in response to a request from Vincent Gallo, who apparently complained that the clip violates his copyright on his directorial effort, The Brown Bunny. As you are probably aware, The Brown Bunny is an experimental art film in which Chloe Sevingy famously administers real live oral sex on the fearless director himself. Blue, Bunny is apparently a sunny comedy that takes place on the set of an independent film in which the director/lead actor attempts to convince his blonde starlet that filming her administering real live oral sex on the fearless director is, in fact, necessary.

But aside from the obvious inspiration for its parody, Blue doesn’t look much like Brown at all, nor does it directly reference Vincent Gallo. And perhaps rightly, its makers are somewhat puzzled as to how/why Gallo was able to justify its removal from YouTube. “Frankly, we’re stunned that the trailer tickled Gallo’s radar,” reads a blurb on Blue, Bunny’s website. “Surely a celebrity of his stature doesn’t have the time to scan the internet for every obscure reference to his name.”

It’s also not entirely clear which trailer Gallo demanded YouTube remove. Two are currently available on MySpace. The first barely explicates its narrative connection to The Brown Bunny before the title appears. The second trailer, embedded above, is a little more explicit, but it also directly references the copyright act protecting fair use, indicating that it might have been put together in response to Gallo.

Regardless: not only does Gallo come out of this looking like a trigger-happy ass, but is YouTube so lawsuit-scared that they’re now removing every clip they get a complaint on without bothering to consider actionable validity? You be the judge.