dont forget he was a Calvin Kline model in ads about unattractive people. CK One i believe.
I wasn’t that impressed with either of his films but based on Samuryan’s analysis i will rewatch Brown Bunny. Buffalo 66 may have been marred slightly, for me, by being too similar to other indie flicks of it’s time. He is definetely someone to watch but with only 2 films i think it’s a bit early to start putting him in the pantheon of greats or anything.
are we still flaying this dead horse sandwich? lol Eraserhead — and I don’t have the impression that he smells particularly well!
i heard he was a republican.
yes, he’s a right winger and even something of a white supremacist I believe
I read everything finally.
> so let me get this right…
An Elevator to the Gallo leads us to the following conclusions >
…he’s a perverted sadhack hipster whose painting sucks, his films suck, his music sucks, his writing sucks, his acting is OK, he was a bad model, he’s probably an NRA guntoting neocon racial supremacist, he’s got an overinflated ego, and he couldn’t direct his way out of a wind tunnel, presumably because his gaseous, explosive colon is the insufferably malodorous force driving said wind tunnel— and a man cannot climb that far into his own asshole to see the light.
2 films down, and he’s a walking corpse of an auteur?
This has become an abattoir, not a thread.
I have no idea whether any of this matters, bec. his films don’t register on my radar at all, but from the outside, knowing nothing… I doubt he’d want to get caught alone in a cul de sac with any of you.
Vincent Gallo is the most influential and misunderstood public figure living today.
I may not agree with some of his personal statements… but I will stand by Mr. Gallo forever.
His music is essential.
The Brown Bunny is the best American film of this decade.
Hear, hear, Mr. Griffiths!
2 more movies in my to-watch list. damn, the list never ends….but there is bliss when I get to the end of the list or the whereabouts…
White supremacist… I heard he stoned his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat to death in a back alley in 1988!
Joking aside, what some of you are missing is Gallo’s incredible and unique sense of humor. Half the stuff he says is to confront and mock the PC culture that surrounds much of the finger wagging, patronizing Left (and/or American culture as a whole). The fact that someone on here says “I heard he was a Republican” as if to condemn or criticize the man only succeeds in making Gallo’s outbursts more humorous, providing their raison d’être. The graphic design Vincent made of Nixon, Reagan, Bush, W., and Gallo — all in a row, reminiscent of the Evolution of Man — is gold. And he places that same image alongside the words: “Vincent Gallo’s Sperm – $1,000,000.00.”
If anything we should be criticizing people who are boring and mundane, not eccentric or unique individuals. Give me a Vincent Gallo any day over 100 canned personalities. (And if we’re talking personalities, Fassbinder was a true monster… And I heard he was a leftist!)
To everyone in this thread I recommend the following interview as it addresses some of the comments, and it might help to break apart some of the preconceived notions of Gallo “the person” (not to mention the fact that it sheds light on his work) :
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8764652727689054957
As for The Brown Bunny, I’ve always found this to be insightful: “The inspiration for the film was, I was at a discotheque once and I noticed a pretty gal, but it was during a period in my life where I could never talk to a girl that I thought was smart or pretty or interesting in any way. I would just stare at them. And I stared at her and at 11 p.m., she was having fun, she was drinking a little. Three in the morning she was hammered. She was on the floor and the guys in the room were sort of moving around her. They noticed this sort of broken-winged bird or wounded animal. They were like hyena. It was one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen. I saw them eventually leave with her. And it upset me conceptually. I felt the ugliness of mankind’s basic nature can be avoided. That’s what ‘The Brown Bunny’ is about.”
I don’t know. If Gallo is the beatnik poet of our generation, so much the worse for our generation, I think. Not because he has “bad views” on specific issues but because, if you strip away all the outrageous b.s., I don’t think he has much to say, or much of a plan for leading people anywhere. Whatever bad things Fassbinder may have done, he worked hard enough to create a ton of powerful and original art, which makes up for it. If Fassbinder had been a dillettante filmmaker, his personal problems probably would be insufferable, because there would have been no other outlet for them except, like Gallo, the hit or miss public statement and the publicity stunt.
>>Vincent Gallo is the most influential and misunderstood public figure living today.<<
I’m not weighing in critically on Gallo’s work (I haven’t seen it), but exactly who is being influenced by his two films?
And if he’s misunderstood, are they copying him wrong — which kind of undercuts his unfluence, doesn’t it?
I’m just askin’ …
Gallo is inconsequential. He’s a big personality but he makes movies that are neither good nor interesting, they certainly aren’t atrocious but there’s nothing really there. No substance, I’d say.
@our theorem bow – are you Vincent Gallo?
I bet you any money he has read this thread after googling himself
@T – re: “> so let me get this right…
An Elevator to the Gallo leads us to the following conclusions >
…he’s a perverted sadhack hipster whose painting sucks, his films suck, his music sucks, his writing sucks, his acting is OK, he was a bad model, he’s probably an NRA guntoting neocon racial supremacist, he’s got an overinflated ego, and he couldn’t direct his way out of a wind tunnel, presumably because his gaseous, explosive colon is the insufferably malodorous force driving said wind tunnel— and a man cannot climb that far into his own asshole to see the light.”
how very eloquent of you :)
@Justin V: i like your points, and it’s how i feel about v gallo, also. i have only seen Buffalo 66, which i enjoyed as a film. but despite his (in my opinion) succeeding in speaking to audiences in this film, at the end of the day the film comes across as a pastiche of his personal problems, mainly due to the fact that he, unlike Fassbinder, has not succeeded in creating a body of original and profound work. that being said, his personal problems can still be considered universal in some respects: warped detachment from father-figure, angry, co-dependent relationship with detached mother-figure, falling in love in an instant despite circumstances of extreme ego-based self-destruction, and opening yourself up to a human touch in a seedy hotel room somewhere within the underbelly of human smut-culture.
since when were personal problems off-limits or unacceptable for an artist to deal with? just playing devil’s advocate. like tarantino, it feels like people are really trying to reach for things to hate on this guy for.
I think people seem to be reacting to his outrageously crafted outward persona, which, given its play in the media and Gallo’s demeanor, it appears is what Gallo wants people to be focusing on. He’s a shallow, vapid filmmaker who wants people to focus on the shallow, vapid things he does outside of the medium. I’d guess because his films are so tedious.
Justin – did you watch the interview?
I don’t think any of these points make much sense. For those excusing Fassbinder because you like his films: Plenty of people don’t like his films… Does that mean they are right in saying the same things about him that many here are saying about Gallo? Of course not. And plenty of people happen to think The Brown Bunny is a wonderful artistic achievement (including someone whose opinion is probably respected by most people on this forum – Jean-Luc Godard). Roger Ebert is clueless when it comes to the genius of Abbas Kiarostami — does that mean the rest of us are wrong? And sure, Fassbinder’s films provided an outlet for (expressing) his personal problems, but that doesn’t change the fact that Fassbinder was still an insufferable human being. His art does not change or negate this fact. We can either weigh an artists life and personality alongside their art or leave it out, but it seems silly to make excuses for one artist over another simply because one of them has been canonized (especially when the one being defended left a trail of suicides in his wake and overdosed on drugs, while the latter (who happens to be straight-edge) is, ironically, the one being criticized for lacking “much of a plan for leading people anywhere.”) Also, I don’t see what the amount of artistic output has to do with anything… The perfect enfant terrible to compare Gallo to in this instance is Harmony Korine. As for publicity stunt: Do people really think Vincent Gallo couldn’t be MUCH MORE famous if he really wanted to be?
I think Gallo hit on something when he remarked that The Brown Bunny would have been lauded and applauded if the end credits read: “Written and Directed by Chloe Sevigny.”
Harmony Korine is bad, too. Imo.
Gallo is a dillettante, a dabbler musician and a dabbler artist and a dabbler filmmaker. He is not entirely bereft of ideas. But to consider him a genius is to believe that genius lies in shock rather than substance, and in arranging rather than inventing. It’s like arguing a nickel is really worth a hundred dollars.
He’s trying to be a rebel, and now and then he makes a decent rebel, but he is basically sliding down roads that other people paved for him. He thinks that his balls are held against him — and by the way I think, no I’m certain, Sevigny has bigger balls than he does — but nothing is more idiotic than a man who thinks he is resented for being a man. Father issues indeed.
I don’t care if you hate Fassbinder or his films. I’m not here to be his lawyer or try to rehabilitate his image in your eyes. I would never presume that he needs either service, or that you would ever concede the point no matter what. Gallo’s example clearly strokes your own need to be right about everything, and the two of you can play holier than thou John-Wayne-gets-the-bad-pussies until the moon turns blue. But I’ll take Berlin Alexanderplatz over anything Gallo’s done any day of the week.
It’s hard to say Buffalo ‘66 isn’t a terrific movie.
Auteur & Douchebag
Lethal combination.
I’m a HUGE Fassbinder fan. Of course Berlin Alexanderplatz is better than anything Gallo has done! It’s better than what most people have done. You seem to be taking many false inferences from what I’ve said. Fassbinder was a template in my post, nothing more. This was not a discussion about who was a better artist but about how the same standards of judgment aren’t being applied because one artist is more favorable, and/or because we are cut off from his personality. Why is Gallo saddled with “not leading people anywhere” when Fassbinder is the one whose life was a train wreck? This was a valid point.
OK, Not Korine. Charles Laughton then. (You’re taking everything too literally. The point of this was to bring up the question of whether or not volume is important in terms of valuing artists. You stated “yes” as if it were unquestionable fact. I’m not sure I agree, but it isn’t something I’ve thought much about.)
People get unfairly judged when they do more than one thing. It was said of Cocteau: Good at many things, great at none.
Gallo is NOT trying to shock. Were you shocked? If not, why do you assume he was trying to shock you?
His comment about “written and directed by” has much more to do with sexual acts in our heterosexual culture being viewed as a form of coercion or violence, with the man as predator. Comments like “he made this film just so he could get a blow job” and “I feel sorry for Chloe” reinforce this. Like it or not, there is truth to the claim that The Brown Bunny would have been viewed differently if that’s what the credits had said.
You either think that the small moments Gallo records and put on screen are beautiful or you don’t. Gallo thinks they are. He’s NOT putting anyone on. His art is sincere. Roger Ebert wrote (paraphrasing): Imagine a film so boring that when a man finally changes his shirt, there is applause. Ebert meant this as a damnation but when I read it I thought to myself: Wow! Sounds amazing. A film that can rewire us so as to see the beauty in even the most mundane acts, turning a change of clothes into a climax! (Jeanne Dielman anyone?)
“Gallo’s example clearly strokes your own need to be right about everything, and the two of you can play holier than thou John-Wayne-gets-the-bad-pussies until the moon turns blue.” Huh? Why are you making this personal? Is this my cue to extrapolate that you dislike Gallo because he has a bigger cock or something? Let’s just go all out and bring this all the way down to the level of IMDB discourse. (You get a bit rude or personal if one happens to disagree with you and/or make good counter points? Very off putting. Perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions. Bah.)
Speaking of John Wayne: He wanted to punch Brando for the “stunt” that was played at the 1972 Academy Awards… Now, you can view this as a “stunt” if you’d like, but that won’t change the fact that Brando was sincere about it. And Brando was a great artist for sure but a dilettante if there ever was one.
If you’re not even going to take a few minutes to watch the interview then there is no point in continuing this conversation because you obviously don’t care enough about it. Gallo is dismissed in your mind, and that is that. Just remember that Cassavetes was once viewed very similarly to the way you’re viewing Gallo (and he still is by some).
I’m finished with all of this. Cheers.
Let me clarify. But do not try to bull shit a bull shitter, okay. If you need an interview to explain or redeem the art itself, then you’re already into cult of personality. Artists are often the worst explainers or promoters of their work — good artists especially. Mediocre ones can work it and sell it and give you sleight of hand.
But addressing your own comments. How was Fassbinder’s life a train wreck — all his life he had a large and devoted family of collaborators whom he gave a great deal of freedom to be themselves and express themselves, That’s respect. He was not the controlling monster, at least not usually, that people want to paint him as — mainly people who deplore a druggy faggot having power over anything, or things to say that transcend issues of petty autobiography. Fassbinder worked well up until the very end. Fassbinder understood all kinds of people, he could depict heterosexuals with tenderness and with satire. Gallo is still not that kind to types of people who make him feel inadequate — women especially, I guess. Now you say, “Some of my best friends are Fassbinders” — this bemuses me. As if you aren’t perfectly willing to throw him under the bus to beg borrow steal an extra inch for Gallo anywhere you can. You are only proving how broken and desperate and mis-managing of his career that Gallo is — only he would have taken that absurd, pathetic guest shot on Courtney Cox’s ill-fated tabloid melodrama a couple of years ago. But that too is dilletantism. And of course dilletantism is no better in Brando than anywhere else — you know most artists are rich or come from rich families, and one day they decide to be artists, because it’s cool, even if it means being artists at everyone’s else expense. That’s Gallo, too.
As far as bigger cocks, quite the opposite if you read what I said with both eyes open — it’s Gallo who complains about having his cock held against him, when I could care less. All a man has to do is display a little openness, a little tenderness, a little less attitude, and the world will usually worship from the feet up, all too happy to have found a kind, thoughtful honest man they can heroize. On the contrary, men will insist on being the misunderstood martyr, the villain — Rip Torn, Norman Mailer, sometimes Welles, von Stroheim, and Gallo — they have nowhere to go but down, down where the goblins go, hi-ho, hi-ho.
thanks, J : )
Vincent Gallo’s films suck donkey dicks.
OK enough. All you people spitballing the guy— these one liner hate bashes —-I CHALLENGE YOU TO GO MAKE A BETTER FILM > then come back and criticize. Admittedly, I’ve never seen any of his work but my curiosity has been piqued by this thread, and this I will amend. Tomorrow. I may hate his work. Who knows.
That said, I severely doubt he’s as bad (or as good) as this orgy of verbal wank suggests. yes, he appears to have something of a rep on the ego front, his sense of humor is askew, and he makes ill-conceived public statements that come back to bite him on the ass. Whoopy doo. So do 95% of human beings, and almost 100% of us on this forum— that includes you, yes YOU, safely ensconsed behind your digital window with a rack of films on DVD you didn’t make that apparently define you as a person. But here we are, fans as football managers, pronouncing either a terminal diagnosis on a career which is far from complete, or birthing him prematurely as beatnik king of the new.
Forum my ass. This thread is IMDB with grandeurs of delusion, a toothless suckling on the nipple of celebrity gossip.
“The Brown Bunny is the best American film of this decade.” Really? Then I must see.
Is he an auteur? Personally I don’t care either way but we’ll never know who’s responsible for that film as he’s listed as:Produced by Vincent Gallo
Cinematography by Vincent Gallo,
Film Editing by Vincent Gallo,
Production Design by Vincent Gallo (uncredited),
Art Direction by Vincent Gallo (uncredited),
Set Decoration by Vincent Gallo (uncredited)
Costume Design by Vincent Gallo
Makeup Department Vincent Gallo (uncredited)
Art Department Vincent Gallo
I know a crew worked on this film but he won’t admit it so regardless of whether it’s good or bad the talent is hidden.
Too bad he had to credit Chloe Sevigny because he couldn’t give himself a bj…
But really, judge the movie for itself, Gallo might be an insecure schmuck but that’s no reason to dislike his movies.
I thought Harmony Korine’s Gummo was great and who knows Brown Bunny might be good too!
I like Buffalo ‘66. I like that Gallo’s character is a complete asshole, and then had my sympathies, and the adoration of the females I was watching the film with, by the end. It is a solid film.
I still don’t like Gallo. But that could change. He is still relatively young. He may still produce several more films of that caliber, or any more films of any caliber, and be crowned an auteur. But not yet, not at two films.
The Fassbinder comparison is unfair. Fassbinder made at least 39 films in 17 years of film work. Sure, plenty of it is terrible. Some of it is blindingly great.
By comparison, Gallo has made 2 films in 12 years (i.e. “The Brown Bunny” is 6 years old now).
In this current crop of film makers, Gallo is the slowest. David O. Russell, Alexander Payne, and David Fincher are all notorious for their low outputs, and high quality. They have all lapped Gallo thrice; Payne just barely. Jarmusch, and Almodovar are also known to be very deliberate as well and have done much more with similar working spans.
If Gallo is an “influential auteur,” then all 5 of the previous directors are as well. In fact, anyone making more than two films with a distinctive style is then an auteur. Stuart Gordon, Philip Ridley, Bruce Robinson, Goerge A. Romero, and Neil Marshall are all auteurs. They may have made 2-10 films, but they are distinctive, spoke from their viewpoint, and were independent creations with some critical acclaim and an audience. Everyone gets to be an influential auteur! Yeah!
Let’s just be done with it and nominate everyone who:
1. puts their directorial style on more than 1 film
2. makes at least two films that have audiences that number in at least the low millions
3. makes at least two films that have some critical acclaim, regardless of whether than acclaim is based on actual talent or PR stunts designed to stoke controversy.
I need to go buy a camera and shoot two 90 minute pieces of film, and then goad about a million suckers into watching it. I didn’t know it was so easy to become legendary and influential. Here I come world!
Not to fan any flames here (and I’m a little amazed this thread has such long legs), but Buffalo is a very manipulative film. Of course you come to sympathize with Gallo because he makes every other character a totally evil shit or a dithering moron. It’s like the way someone with megalomania and incredibly low self esteem would depict the world. The father is a maniac, the mother is a shrill harpy, the best friend is mentally defective, and the football star is a degenerate prick. And among them is Gallo, ill at ease, trying to save face, trying to do the right thing, and looking like a saint by comparison. It’s very stacked and devious and manipulative. If he had allowed the other characters to be human, to have some good as well as unremitting bad, then his own character would have had to take his chances too — but that wasn’t a chance Gallo was willing to take.
Damola Animasaun
If anyone has watched the HBO television show Entourage, the character of ‘Billy Walsh’ is supposedly based on Gallo