The World According to Gallo

When Buffalo-born filmmaker Vincent Gallo speaks, bodies drop. He says whatever's on his mind and although his listeners may not like what he has to say, he definitely knows how to draw attention to himself.

Perhaps it's his way of overcoming insecurities, or perhaps it's merely an effort to stand out amidst all the hype and and flak that surrounds the opening of every movie. Whatever his agenda, the extraordinarily-talented Gallo has no qualms about angering and outraging the very people who may be interested in his work.

Gallo was at Spot Coffee on Delaware Avenue to talk to Buffalo Beat about Buffalo '66, his directorial movie debut. There, he's the local boy who left home to find himself, and came back to make a film that he hopes will put Buffalo on the moviegoing map. The movie is about an emotionally-stunted man, alienated from his family, who takes small steps to discover who he is.

Gallo has made a movie that uses the Buffalo Bills as a major metaphor for his main character's personal despair. The analogy works in art, but not in life. Gallo's biggest problem is that he can't be gracious when graciousness is called for. Because of his brutal honesty, he finds himself standing in hot water almost every time he talks. The Bills went to four straight Super Bowls and lost each of them. Certainly, there was anger in the locker room, but publicly, team members showed a proud face. Not a quitter, though perhaps a sore loser, Gallo screened his movie at this past January's Sundance Film Festival, the Robert Redford-originated, Park City, Utah-located "Super Bowl" of showcases for independent filmmaking. After Buffalo '66 did not win a prize, Gallo drew a lot of attention to himself and to his movie with a very vocal venting of his disgust for Sundance's selection procedures and jury voting process.

Reportedly, awards judge Paul Schrader, writer-director of such films as American Gigolo, Blue Collar, and Light Sleeper, refused to allow Gallo's movie to be considered for a prize. This was not because he didn't like Buffalo '66. Supposedly, it was because Schrader hated Gallo's slash- and-burn style. Gallo had some reason to complain about the festival. The projector broke down during the showing of Buffalo '66. What director wouldn't be irate?

But Gallo takes his fierce resentment much, much further, railing against the films shown at Sundance, especially two of them. The Opposite Of Sex and Smoke Signals both generated immense interest. Buffalo Beat gave The Opposite Of Sex three stars; it's currently playing at the Amherst Theatre. The movie includes gay and straight characters and stars Christina Ricci, who also happens to star in Buffalo '66. The first commercial motion picture entirely written, directed, and acted by Native Americans, Smoke Signal highlights a young man's efforts to come to terms with his father's abandonment of his family.

"It was very unpleasant, like all the times that I went to Sundance, says Gallo. "First of all, the very basic nature of a film festival is very Socialist. It's a Socialist premise. As a person who's obsessed with the Constitution and democracy, as the strong right-wing Republican that I am, I'm very offended by politically correct, Commie, left-wing Socialists who have decided to use their little petty grievances. The homosexual contingency, the fight for the American Indians, you know, the need to portray ethnics in a certain light.

These kinds of petty sophomoric grievances that should have nothing to do with art or sensibility and evolution of art. In other words, just because a film has gay characters does not make it interesting, important, or good. Doesn't make it good cinema. Especially since, the truth is that everybody who makes films, and shows them at Sundance is really desperate to be part of the mainstream, which I'm not. The film The Opposite Of Sex, that Christina Ricci made, that has several homosexual characters is the most mainstream movie I've ever seen at a film festival. "Now that movie, if it didn't have homosexual characters, would never have shown in a film festival. But because it has the supposed, uh, subversive characters, it's put into a film festival, even though the film itself is a soap opera. It's a Sony Picture, you know. What the fuck is it doing in a film festival? That's one of the reasons that I didn't like it."

Gallo is virulently opposed to anything that panders to the public. He sees himself a rebel, an iconoclast. He's Diogenes wandering in a mainstream wilderness. He continues, "There's this concept, this pretension, about what independent cinema is. There's no such thing as independent cinema because the word is insignificant. It has no meaning anymore. Yes, there are companies that are not part of the studio system. But there are good movies and there are bad movies. Period. Just because a company is not Paramount doesn't mean that they represent anything outside of the mainstream. They're all merchants like anyone else. Matter of fact, the smaller the company, the more desperate they are to have pre-sales, which means the more controlling they are to the cast and to the package they're trying to sell."

Gay and ethnic concerns are hot button issues in filmmaking. They are big issues for Gallo as well. "I am not a homophobe in any way whatsoever. I'm on the cover of the gay magazine Genre this month talking about my deep and important relationship with homosexual men throughout my creative life. It was homosexual men that have been the kindest and most nurturing to me when I moved to New York City. I didn't have sexual relations with men. I'm not a homosexual. But I certainly recognize the importance of the community's struggle and alienation, and I related to it as another artist or somebody who felt alienated.

"But, what's happened with that community in New York is that they've been so desperate for mainstream acceptance that they've pandered to the heterosexual mainstream to the point where they've developed their own complexes.

"The homosexual community is homophobic. They're disease-phobic. They have blond, buffed-up, hairless icons on the covers of all their magazines. They all dress in designer clothes. There's no real interesting scene in that way. They've become so obsessed with their mainstream public persona that they've started to make such a strong issue out of their identity, that they've, at any cost, supported things that work for their agenda, even if they suck. Even if The Opposite Of Sex sucks, three homosexual people on the board of Sundance are going to make sure it's in the festival."

Regarding ethnic matters, like those celebrated in the Native American film, Gallo said "Same thing. It's the exact same dilemma. Exactly the same parity, if you live your life in this petty grievance, which is not a celebration. It is not a celebration. It's a resentment and it's a grievance. If you're an artist and you're obsessed with mainstream success, then you pander to the mainstream. If you're ethnic and you feel outside of the mainstream; if you work and put all your focus on being accepted by a particular group of people, it's the wrong focus. The focus should be on your own point of view. About celebrating and feeling comfortable with yourself. When you have it, that's when people want it. You know, when you feel good about it, that's when people find it attractive."

Asked for a specific instance to back up his claim of ethnic pandering, Gallo was especially combative regarding one director . "Spike Lee." he was asked, "Is he pandering?"

Gallo took Lee's name and shot it back. "Spike Lee is one of the most embarrassing artists of the 20th-century. He's been a destructive force to the Black community because he has perpetuated the concept that adults are victims. And what he has done, he has encouraged people to not be responsible adults and not to celebrate their own successes and failures. What he has done is, he's made such a commotion about minor injustices.

"I mean, I don't want the world to be homogenized. I don't want the world to be perfect. I don't want everybody in the world to be equal. I am not a Socialist. I accept that some countries are poor and some countries are rich. And some are hungry and some are full. That's part of the fascination with life. I wanna be part of the cosmos and the evolution of the planets, not someone who makes judgments between evil and good and right and wrong.

"Spike Lee is not a good filmmaker, so whatever his radical agenda is to make himself famous by creating sensationalism around a hot political topic, in the end, his films are insignificant. He is not Pasolini. He is not Bresson. He is not Ozu. He's none of the other directors who have had a political point of view, because his political point of view panders to insignificant, unsophisticated people. He incites reactions from very ordinary mainstream people. He's never tried to have a sophisticated concept and vision about the changing evolution of mankind. He is as ignorant as MTV when they run ads that say "Rock The Vote." They don't tell people to read books and be interested in politics. They just tell them to vote, ya know, and that's bullshit. He is certainly not somebody whom I admire."

Still in his verbal assault rifle mode, Gallo continued, "In my film, I try to make a modern classic. I tried to make a movie that didn't have to pander to the physical homogeny, the artistic homogeny of contemporary cinema. In other words, I didn't want to make a film that looked like a Benetton ad. I didn't want to have to use people who were, maybe, ethnically not part of the memory of this character just because I didn't have enough blacks or enough Spanish or enough Asians in my movie. I decided to do something quite the opposite. I took another extreme. There isn't anyone ethnic in the whole film except for one scene." The scene in question involves his character's appearance in court, and it includes a female judge and an Asian lawyer.

"I promise you that I am not somebody who has racist thoughts. I am just not somebody who's afraid of thinking thoughts that may be uncomfortable for other people. You can't talk to ethnics about the fact that certain men, related to certain types of crime, have a certain type of street fashion, because I was in it. I was doing that. So as the hooded guy with sneakers and baggy pants walks in with his hands in his pockets, why is it so horrible that the white store clerk gets nervous? You know what I mean? It's unfair to expect people not to be afraid of certain things. It's unfair for girls to be relentlessly subsidized for irresponsible sexual behavior just because women are so petrified that maybe the right to choose abortion might be taken away. We need more balance than that.

"I'm not against people's rights to have an abortion, but I am certainly aware of the horror of what abortion is and the tragedy of killing a baby. And the bigger tragedy of irresponsible parenting and irresponsible pregnancies. In America, you're not allowed to have a conversation like that. You're only allowed to take one extreme point of view or the other. And I'm most disappointed and uncomfortable with that kind of dialogue where you can't talk about, with any feminist, you can't talk about the fact that it isn't great that women are irresponsibly getting pregnant. They don't want to hear that conversation. They only want to know that they have the right to choose."

Gallo's reputation as an outspoken advocate of issues close to his heart is legendary. He is the same in New York and Buffalo and Los Angeles and Utah. His opinions and outbursts inevitably color some people's view of Gallo The Creative Person. When Gallo The Orator focuses on his work, he still remains an eager advocate, but the zealotry is replaced by a reasoned calm, albeit a temporary one.

One of the things of which he is most proud is that he was able to return to his hometown and shoot the movie. He wants Buffalonians to "acknowledge the fact that I went through great pains to make sure that I filmed the entire film here, that I used as many people from Buffalo as possible." Buffalo '66 cost $1.5-million to make and is distributed by the independent Lion's Gate Films, whose most recent success was Love And Death On Long Island. Gallo first wrote the screenplay for Buffalo '66 in 1989, and was satisfied with a final draft completed with Alison Bagnall in 1996. For the main characters, he got the cast he wanted including Christina Ricci, Anjelica Huston, and Ben Gazzara. "If one writes a very character-driven screenplay, it's very easy to attract actors." Gallo filled the remaining, primarily smaller roles with Buffalo actors and actresses, a task that took just a single day of open call auditions. He was greatly impressed with the local talent pool. "Three or four of the performances are the best co-acting experiences that I've ever had in my life." He said that he realized, after spending a long period of time in New York as a writer, artist, actor, and Calvin Klein fragrance model, how important his Buffalo roots were to his development as a person. For all his newfound pride in Buffalo, Gallo also has strong points to make regarding the formative years of his life.

"I was misnurtured in Buffalo by my parents. I acquired a sensibility about the city itself because of that relationship. I was embarrassed to be from Buffalo. And it took me ten years of living in New York to come to terms with that. You know, I was always proud of Rick James' success. I mean, he was a big important influence on me, as a person who was very Buffalo. He's a real Buffalonian, Rick, ya know, and his humor, and his charisma, and his performance, is very much from Buffalo. But, I was excited that he was able to make that a universal language. He became very successful. So I never felt that coming from Buffalo, because of Rick really, just because of Rick, that I could never have access, impact. But I felt ashamed of the kind of low self-esteem, the kind of lack of aesthetic, the kind of lack of sensibility and passion that I felt existed in the majority here. The style. People were not interested in style. They were not interested in fashion, they were not really interested in music, or film, or cinema. They didn't really subsidize those things as a culture here.

"I needed to be in a city that was more intense, condensed. So I left. I was embarrassed. At a certain point I realized that who I really am is, I really am this kid from Buffalo, New York. I mean, in the end, all my sensibilities are a reaction and an evolution of my growing up here: all my artistic points of view, my visual point of view. My mother owned a beauty shop. It was in our house. I grew up in a house that had no books, no records. Nothing. But she had this beauty shop. In the beauty shop she had Vogue, she had Esquire, she had the magazines. I learned everything about photography, about clothing, about art direction, about visual arts through that. Through Vogue magazine, ya know. And I didn't learn it in New York, I learned it in Buffalo."

Yet, having mentioned earlier during the interview that he frequented Hallwalls, Buffalo's renowned avant-garde performance center, Gallo's assertion that all he every learned about visual arts came from a beauty shop seemed disingenuous. "Was Hallwalls an oasis for you?" "No, it was just a place where people could understand the sophistication of the bands that I was in."

Music plays a key role in Gallo's artistic growth. He composed the musical score for Buffalo '66. He talked about how important seeing rock and roll bands were to helping him forge an identity. He enthusiastically noted some of the concerts he attended while growing up in Buffalo: David Bowie, Alice Cooper, and Sly Stone; groups like Genesis, The Ramones, Gentle Giant, and Yes. Gallo accepts that regarding music, "Buffalo was hip in that way. Buffalo is a hip city, a potent city."

In a world jammed with cinematic wannabes, Gallo's Buffalo '66 is a solid achievement. A fierce drive to succeed and a serious dedication to the craft of filmmaking are just two of the components vitally necessary for the completion of any movie. Gallo is nothing if not singled-minded about Buffalo '66. He focused all his energies on the project. "I had a successful career as a painter in the 80s. I've done music. I've acted in a lot of films."

(Palookaville and Arizona Dream are two of Gallo's credits.) "I'm a writer. I write articles for magazines. I'm an incredibly good businessman more than anything else. So producing the film was easy. I did all the negotiations with the agents, managers, and unions. All that stuff was easy. I'm a very aesthetic person, so casting was easy. Production design, ya know, my art background. I did Christina's hair. I designed all the shoes. Every shoe in the film. I never wanted to direct the film. What happened was I got so caught up in control issues that I had to direct this film. And once I got the chance to have control, I would not under any circumstances relinquish any control. The cinematographer did exactly what I set up the camera to do. He pressed the button. The production designer built the sets exactly the way I described them and drew them.

"I was not as much of a collaborator as other filmmakers that I've worked with. I designed the movie's poster. Everything. I designed the credit lines. I designed the trailer for the film (the previews). I did the credit sequences. There isn't anything in the film that was out of my creative control, even if it meant challenging legalities, union rules, agents' demands. If an agent wanted their client to have a certain credit in the film, I assured them that if they challenged me legally, I would destroy them and their client. I used any methodical persistence to get all the creative control possible."

Buffalo '66 is about a man whose identity has been partly-shaped by his mother's devotion to the Buffalo Bills. Gallo plays Billy Brown, born on a cold day in 1966 when the Bills lost a chance to go to the very first Super Bowl. Gallo commented that "Buffalo's fascination with sports really helped me because there is a melodrama in sports, especially for my generation. 1970s baseball, football, basketball, and hockey are amazing. There was an incredible cultural reference to what Johnny Unitas stood for versus what Joe Namath stood for. Those two metaphors were really important in me forming my political sensibilities."

The former Sweet Home High School student said that while growing up he "never went to museums. I never was interested in things like that. I was interested in impact. It could have been political. It could have been crime. It could have been anything. I needed impact." He's glad that he didn't go to college. "In college, ya know, education is convoluted and panders to the lowest common denominator. College is not there as a right of nature. It's a business. And I know that I could never have been as extreme and as efficient through that type of system. I know it. Because I've lectured college classes, ya know, and I know how one has to accommodate students. It has to be within a certain rhythm."

Regarding Buffalo '66, Gallo knows precisely what he wants from Buffalonians. "I want them to embrace their own cultural identity. I want them to rid themselves of the inferiority complex that they have, and they can deny it all they want, but they have it. I want them to embrace the local talent in the film and the local talent that helped technically produce the film. I'm one of the few filmmakers who wrote, produced, directed, starred in, and co-wrote the music for his film, and I'm from Buffalo. It's a very Buffalo sensibility film.

"I want them to be proud of me. I want them to be proud of the way I've portrayed the city and the city's relationship with sports and the city's relationship with its nurturing of its children. And I want it to be supported more than in any other city, more than any other thing that I've ever done in my life. I want this film to be seen by as many people from Buffalo as possible. And I want them to be proud of it."

Gallo's pride seems to come from knowing that he's appreciated, that all his efforts haven't been for nothing. The irony in all of this is that in pleading for love, he's committing the very sin he so often rails against. He's pandering to Buffalo's mainstream audience. He hasn't, however, made a mainstream movie.

And he certainly doesn't have to pander. His movie can stand on its own merits. He's made a beautifully-crafted work of art about an empty shell of a man who craves understanding and acceptance. Is it auto-biographical? Gallo intimates that it's not. But if Buffalo '66 is a breakaway independent hit, and it deserves to be one, it's because Gallo's poured his heart and soul and prodigious talent into it. Not because he irritates the hell of out of people, or that he's so rancorous in some of his public statements that it draws attention to the movie. It's a defensive, first-strike mentality.

The man should relax now. Gallo can accept the fact that he is a gifted artist who doesn't need to affect the posture of an angry, wounded animal to achieve success. Why cloud the sky when the sun is so bright and comforting? In Gallo's case, Buffalo '66 is his sun, and it's dazzling.