Article from Gioia

An irregular face enlightened by tranparent eyes, and an infinite sweetness you perceive physically, but wrapped in a surface of a diehard, the same one he shows on the screen, where he is often cast for the role of delinquent. Member of the mafia in The Funeral, bungler thief in Palookaville, unfortunate dreamer in Arizona Dream, killer in Goodbye, Lover; Vincent Gallo is not only an actor, but a successful painter, photographer, musician, snob and sought-after model and now, in Buffalo '66, lead, scriptwriter, sound-track composer, producer and director.

A man of great talent that feeds on sufferings of a life that seems the biography of a maudit artist. In Vincent's background there are unusual models, from his beloved Pasolini to Italian horror b-movies (Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci) whose inventions titillate his passion for excess and antirealism. Buffalo '66 is the semiautobiographical story of a man who has been in jail for 5 years to pay a gaming debt and is obsessed by his parents that have never loved him and whose appreciation he is continually but uselessly looking for. Going so far as to abduct a woman (Christina Ricci) and force her to play the role of his loving wife to convince his parents that their son is love worthy.

It is my story, or better, what I could have become. My father used to hit me, was cruel and went on telling me that I would never achieved anything. My mother was always stuck on TV watching football and never caressed me. I had nothing to do with my parents, I was a wrong son in a home I did not belong to.

You can't go on all your life cultivating the same mistakes we made as a child. Anjelica Houston and Ben Gazzara in the movie are named Janet and Jimmy like my parents.

My father was born in Palermo, my mother in Messina, but came to the US very young and are American to the backbone,even if, after all, they retain the Sicilian superstition.

My mother believes in God but she's not very interested in religion. My father thinks he is a little tin god. I'm in the middle.

I have an elder brother. He is ugly, but for my mother, he is the most beautiful man in the world. He is an air conditioning plants technician. My younger sister works in a pizza-restaurant. They all live in Buffalo, from where they will never move: for them the world ends there. They opened their eyes wide because I dreamt something different.

No, it was the whole. My parents took an interest in nothing, at home no books, no records. My mother and my father are the emblem of indifference, dryness and bad taste. My father is also terribly stingy, in life as well as in feelings: I have never seen him filling up the bathtub. To save, he used to put the water 4 inches from the bottom. At home everything was ugly, casual, lacking in love, from furniture to clothes, to behaviors. Instead I was obsessed by aestethics.

I have always known exactly what I like, and perhaps also what, in the ugly, could be seductive. I gave vent to all this in painting, music and nowadays in cinema. But also in everyday life: I can waste a whole afternoon looking for a pijama. Once, I was a child, my mother took me to a department store: she wanted to steal home paint. She was on the lookout and I had to act. I asked her which color she wanted. She, fed up with this work, told me to be quick and take what there was. I didn't think it was true to be invested with such a responsibility. At last I could change my horrible house a little: I took a long time to choose the color, my mother was getting angry. I wanted a neapolitan yellow like the one in a photo of my grandparents' home.

Unfortunately I didn't and so I made do with beige. Among other things, it is the one you see in the movie, because the scenes with B.Gazzara and A. Houston have been shot in the house where I lived in Buffalo with my parents, before I went away.

To be precise, it was my father who threw me out, on the day of my 16^th birthday. I had always been quarreling with him and many times I had said I should have gone. So, on that morning, he came into my room and, cold, he said: " Well, you are 16. What are you waiting for ?"

What could I do? I slept in my car for a month, in Buffalo, then I moved to New York, going on living in my car for 3 more months. Till I sold it and found home. On Elizabeth street. Where I still live. Then I decided to go to Europe. I was there for a year, travelling around France, Spain, Great Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Italy...

No, I didn't. I was doing bad things. Very bad things. I only hurt myself. After a year of such a life, I found myself in Rome, without money to go back to New York.

A homosexual architect helped me. He was very kind; he bought a drawing of mine at $200 and made a friend of his buy another one. I could buy the ticket. I wasn't 18 yet and so many things had happened to me. People cared about me, girls liked me, boys wanted me as a friend, homosexuals considered me charming: I was no more the one I was in Buffalo. In that period I met the painter Basquiat and began playing music. We didn't gain anything by it but in the underground set we were famous. Then I began to exhibit and the painting went well.

On one hand it did , but on the other hand it made me a bit of a slave. I pay very much attention to objects, too. I like the functional ones, made with an industrial logic, and those supersophisticated in design. All the rest, all that is in the middle, bothers me.

I have only the finest things, linen sheets and cashmere covers. I am a perfectionist even in household appliances and house cleaning products. I go so far as to be extravagant: I don't use a down comforter, because all that swelling doesn't go with the wrought iron bed. Better cold than ugly!

So many explanations and so many words: have you ever thought maybe you are only a bit of a nuisance?

Maybe you are right, I have to consider that point of view. Instead I have been in analysis for 11 years! Am I wrong?

When I was a boy I was always depressed and confused, now I think I'm not garbage. I don't try to prove to my parents that I am good at something anymore. But I am a failure with women. I can only be a one night lover.

To spend the night with a woman is wonderful and I am a passionate lover. But the morning after I don't know what to do anymore. I can't be open minded, I punish the others, especially when they love me.

No, it is impossible. No woman could ever hurt me, because I don't permit myself to wish for something from people. So they can't disappoint me.

In the past they helped me a lot, but now I prefer love to inspire me. All that arises from fear and grudge can perhaps make me more interesting but it is not what I want.

It is the story of a man obsessed by sex. The title is The Brown Bunny. The story looks a bit like L'occhio che uccide (Peeping Tom by Michael Powell [1960]), because it is about a man with a destroyed soul.

`The adventure of a manqué delinquent`

{Thanks to Patrizia for the terrific job translating!}