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The multitalented motormouth behind Buffalo 66 tells his story, and gets in jabs at Clooney and Tarantino in the process

By Jerry Tallmer

Once upon a time in Buffalo, N.Y., there was a rebellious 13-year-old named Vincent Gallo who led a precarious existence in what today would be called a "totally dysfunctional family." One afternoon, in an effort to fend off a beating from his father, the electronics whiz-kid set up a couple of microphones and taped the old man singing "Fools Rush In" to an old Nelson Riddle arrangement for Frank Sinatra.

Today, that kid is all grown up, and he's made a film that's just as kooky as you might expect. In Buffalo 66, written by Vincent Gallo, directed by Vincent Gallo, and starring Vincent Gallo, he plays Billy Brown, a just-released convict going to see his screwed-up parents (Ben Gazzara and Anjelica Huston) in Buffalo. He's dragged along with him a gorgeous teenager (Christina Ricci) whom he's kidnapped to prove that, yes, he has a wife. There comes a moment when Gazzara, as the surly, egomaniacal father, takes the girl aside and sings "Fools Rush In" to impress her. That is, he appears to sing it: The voice heard in the film is actually that of Gallo's father.

Now 36 years old, Gallo has come a long way since he made that recording. His blazing eyes and knife-edge face have jumped off the screen in such quality offbeat films as The Funeral, Palookaville, Angela, and Arizona Dream. And just as there is Vincent Gallo the actor, the writer, the director, there is also Vincent Gallo the musician, the composer, the painter, the model (you've seen the Calvin Klein ads), the movie nut (a collection of 5,500 videos), the free thinker, the free speaker, and so on. All these Gallos usually can be found in a tiny apartment in a turn-of-century tenement on Elizabeth Street in New York City's Little Italy—a hideaway that's been home for nearly 20 years.

That's where Mr. Showbiz found Gallo on a couple of recent sunny Sundays. On the sidewalk in front of the building the names GALLO and VINCENT GALLO are etched in big block capitals into the once-wet cement. "There are maybe a hundred of those around town," Gallo murmurs. "Seventy percent of them I did myself. Then girls started doing them, adding their names and telephone numbers." And? "Well, I'm in the phone book. I'm very open to girls calling." That's in one breath. In the next, the enigmatic artist speaks of his lone-wolf loneliness, film-industry poseurs, his favorite movies, and why he considers himself "a control freak."

Buffalo 66 is supposedly very close to your own background in Buffalo. How close?

Ten years ago I'm driving cross-country in a car with 100 of my cassettes, and at the end of the B-side of some punk-rock thing there's this old, dirty, sun-baked tape, and I hear that recording of "Fools Rush In," and I'm stunned at my father's [singing] talent and my 13-year-old engineering skills. And that's the inspiration for the whole movie—that and my feeling about Christina Ricci the moment I first saw her in Mermaids. I knew at that point, driving in that car, that one day I would make a movie, and that there would be a scene in it of the father character singing that song.

My father is also a Vincent Gallo—Vincenzo Vido Gallo, no senior, no junior. He's just the other Vincent Gallo, the one with less money now.

This is the same father who yanked you out of the back seat and smashed your face into his rearview mirror when you told him you'd just been accepted into acting school "by Stella Adler, and she taught Marlon Brando"?

Yes. It didn't mean shit to me about Marlon Brando, but I said it to impress my parents. It incensed my father to hear me speak out about myself in any favorable way, so he…readjusted my way of thinking, told me how untalented and unattractive and unspecial I was. It made me look at myself very closely. I guess there was some part of me thought he was right. That's why in the movie I say to the girl, "Why did you tell all those lies to my father about my being so handsome, and a bigshot CIA agent? My father's smart, he's smart." Incidentally, I never did raise the tuition for the Stella Adler classes, which was all for the best.

At 16 I quit Sweethome Senior High School [in Buffalo] and hitchhiked to New York. I had $22 and had known one girl here, whom I'd picked up at a rock club on a three-day trip to New York a few months earlier. I had her phone number and address, but when I buzzed her buzzer, on 53rd Street between Second and Third Avenues, me lugging this huge suitcase, there was nobody there. I spent two and a half days on the street, sleeping on stoops, and then I took the subway to Brighton Beach, big suitcase and all, and hung out there. It was lonely, isolating, and overwhelming. Then I met a young guy, a hustler, a hip kid, and he let me crash at his house, that great big building at 200 Central Park West. Finally I found this apartment, and that hustler kid introduced me to Jean-Michel Basquiat, and everything flew from there.

It wasn't like George Clooney or any other bullshit actor wants to tell you about their starving, struggling days. That's all bullshit. To me, it was fun—hanging out with some of the coolest people in all the cool clubs. It was just that nobody had money. It was wonderful, intense—really intense. And I was out of Buffalo.

The other night at a Director's Guild screening of Buffalo 66 you said a few jovial, candid things about Ben Gazzara, and some not quite so jovial about Angelica Huston. You also said a few things about Chris Hanley, the film's producer.

Well, let me say this. I have never been afraid to say anything about anyone, but all I can tell you is that Angelica Huston was a fantastic actress, once we began working well. Chris Hanley is a guy I first met in the '70s, when I was buying and selling vintage guitars. Then I met him again in the early '80s, when [as a member of Jean-Michel Basquiat's Gray band] I was scoring and recording some stuff in Hanley's Intergalactic studio. Then in the late '80s I'd seen Hanley in Christie's and Sotheby's, where he bought some of my paintings.

So we're in Cannes in, like, '93—a lot of pretty girls, a lot of very ugly men—I'm sitting there with Emil Kusturica and Johnny Depp, and here comes Hanley! He's this fantastic psychedelic goofball in my life and career, and he's produced a film—he's a producer. So I immediately start pitching him my idea for a movie—this movie—and I just keep pitching it over and over.

Chris Hanley is a fantastically bright person, but a bit spaced out, which had one advantage when it came to making the film, and one disadvantage. The disadvantage was I didn't get any support from him—I produced the movie, hired everybody, and did everything. The advantage was his lack of focus made him incapable of getting in my way.

You also told that Directors' Guild screening audience that an actor who makes, say, $100,000 a film, walks out of it with $25,000 net. Can you break that down?

Sure. Off the top, $53,000 goes to taxes; then $10,000 to an agent, who does nothing; $10,000 to a manager, who does nothing; $5,000 to a lawyer, who does one good solid day's work—which leaves you with I guess it's $22,000. That's why I love the Socialist anarchist Communists—attacking "the fat-cat rich people." Most other actors, by the way, also have publicists. As we sit here, I have no agent, no manager, no publicist.

From what I hear, you once came very close to being handed a million dollars to make a movie.

Well, there's this actor I know. We don't have to use his name. He had a friend who was a gangster from Sicily, and he had me meet his gangster friend in a room in the Plaza Hotel here in New York. The guy was going to finance a movie the actor would be in, and I would direct. There was a suitcase lying on the bed. The guy opened it. Have you ever seen a million dollars in cash? It was in $100 bills, and it was beautiful. I don't know if I ever saw anything so…well, there was one girl when I was young. [Grins.] Anyway, I went home and thought about it.

But you didn't go for it. Why?

I'm a control freak who wants control over every creative detail. I realized in that moment something really intense. I mean, it was a big moment in my life. I had always thought money was the big thing in my life. Suddenly I realized I might be dying any day, and that this other thing was important: impact. You can win the money thing and lose the impact. I still want money, but not at the risk of losing impact. I can't make a bad second film. If that happens, then Buffalo 66 is wiped out.

What I always do is go to my cabinets, look for a film, don't remember it, and then pick up the same two films over and over again. You have to remember that I've seen every Pasolini film that ever was, every Bresson, every Ozu, every Godard, every Kubrick—I've seen everything. Unlike some pretentious hipster like Quentin Tarantino or Jim Jarmusch, I could put together a 10-best list that is really my 10 best, for one reason or another—maybe just because I was in love with the actress.

So what's on the list?

Well, here goes, and it's more than 10. Scarecrow, Jerry Schatzman's first picture, a couples film with Pacino and Hackman, I must have watched it 60 times. Elaine May's A New Leaf, with her and Walter Matthau. Robert Rossen's Mickey One, with Warren Beatty—or anything else with Warren Beatty, starting with Splendor in the Grass. Rossen's Lilith, with Beatty and Jean Seberg. Rossen directed films that won 20 Academy Awards all told, and if you asked 20 hipsters today, they wouldn't know who he was. Scorsese's not on the same planet as Rossen—a good director, but not on the same planet.

The Wizard of Oz, of course. Black Sunday, the one by Mario Bava. The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, with John Travolta. Fingers, by James Toback—the Harvey Keitel film. Two for the Road, Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, directed by Stanley Donen. Ozu's Autumn Afternoon. Peckinpaugh's The Getaway, with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw. Don't ask me why. I saw it when I was 12 years old in Buffalo, and it blew me away.

Two Lane Blacktop, which has the best ending in any movie I've ever seen, where the girl, who's been flirting all through the thing with James Taylor, walks out of a cafe, sees some guy, a total stranger, sitting there on a motorcycle, gets on the cycle behind him, and buzzes off. Brilliant.

Across the Bridge, with Rod Steiger. Pasolini's Teorama and Salo, for sure. The Lords of Flatbush, with Stallone—saw it when I was 13 or 14, and it's one of the reasons I became an actor. Robby Benson's The Death of Richie, about a teenager's bad relationship with his mother and father—in the years when all my own friends were teenage drug addicts. I've never seen a film as authentic as that one, and it's the reason why Ben Gazzara, the father in that one, is the father in Buffalo 66.

Looking ahead, you're involved in a band called Bunny—

The band is me and Lukas Haas, the kid who was in Peter Weir's Witness. He's now 23, and the best friend I've ever had in my life. We both play every instrument and sing and write; we're on the Sony Work label.

And you're now looking to raise the money for a film to be called The Brown Bunny. Any connection to the band, or to Buffalo 66's Billy Brown?

None, no connection. The Brown Bunny is about two brothers who drive across the country to see a girl. I'll be one of the brothers, and that's all I can tell you. It's a really dark, tragic story.

Did it really happen?

No. But again, like Buffalo 66, it's related to my own emotional tragedy. Again, catharsis.

Article from: http://www.mrshowbiz.go.com/celebrities/interviews/421_1.html

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