Entertainment Insiders

An Interview with Vincent Gallo

by Warren Curry

“Do you mind if I eat?” asks Vincent Gallo, motioning to a plate of pasta salad sitting on a table in front of him, as I step into the hotel suite where we’re about to conduct our interview. After I assure him that his meal won’t be a disturbance, he responds, “Good. This is my favorite time to talk.”

Just a brief glance at the below interview will confirm that there was nothing even the tiniest bit insincere about Gallo’s comment. Ask Vincent Gallo a simple question and rest assured that the subsequent response will be anything but simple. And that complexity (or some might say difficulty) is one of the chief reasons why the writer /director /actor /editor /cinematographer /photographer /musician, etc. has become such a recognizable and infamous figure over the past few years. Gallo’s notoriety reached its peak at 2003’s Cannes Film Festival, when his latest film, “The Brown Bunny,” caused an outrageous fuss amongst the press covering the festival. Most famously, the film (at the time still a work-in-progress) was derided as the worst to ever play at Cannes by Roger Ebert, kicking off a flurry of back-and-forth insults between critic and filmmaker. The two have recently ironed out their differences.

“The Brown Bunny” is a much different and infinitely more challenging film than Gallo’s feature debut, 1998’s fantastic “Buffalo ’66.” Unconcerned with plot and traditional modes of storytelling, “The Brown Bunny” is the work of an experimentalist speaking in a unique, unfamiliar cinematic language. The film will work for some, won’t for others and will be unfairly dismissed by many who only want movies to be shaped in an already familiar pattern. While far from flawless, to rail away against the film because its script deviates from a three-act structure and the first major plot point doesn’t occur at the 30-minute mark is to largely miss the point. “The Brown Bunny” doesn’t set out to break the rules of cinema; it simply plays as if the rules never existed.

As our conversation proves, interviewing Vincent Gallo is purely a matter of asking a question and then getting out of the way. Never one to regurgitate pre-formed sound bites, Gallo is eager to attack each query as if it had never before been asked. So read on…and go see “The Brown Bunny,” which Wellspring Cinema is releasing in New York and Los Angeles on August 27 with more cities nationwide to follow.

EI: In retrospect, more than a year later, what do you think about the controversy that erupted over “The Brown Bunny” at Cannes?

VG: That’s an interesting question. It took me a long time after Cannes to finish the film, because I had techniques for the negative, the mix, the song rights, the color correction, so I didn’t really finish the film until almost December of last year (2003). Right after I finished the film, I planned on the American release of the film, which was the only thing I cared about. And so that meant preparing posters, trailers, making a deal with somebody, etc. I’ve been so engaged with that for so long that the Cannes experience seems like a million years ago.

I remember at the time I enjoyed the experience, even though most of it was -- certainly from the American side -- negativity toward the film and towards me. Most of the hoopla happened in spite of the film. In other words, there was booing, hissing and jeering before the film started -- it was a whole fiasco. But I’m a person who’s interested in the world, so being part of an event like that was interesting, even if I was the fall guy or the person at the center of a lot of negative mood. One can’t only enjoy one’s most obviously pleasurable moments. I, personally, can enjoy all of them, and that experience was interesting.

The part of it that upset me the most was some of the misrepresentation of what happened and the way that certain people revealed their basic nature. There was this creepy guy, Pierre Edelman, this French producer, who was seducing me over and over when I was at Cannes, and as soon as the film got negative response, he disappeared. Things like that, where you see mankind behaving in not the best way mankind can behave. All in all, it was an interesting experience. I would never go to a film festival before that I didn’t really want to, and I say that I’ll never go again, but that moment stands out as an interesting moment in my life.

EI: How important is it for you to maintain as much creative control over your films as possible?

VG: I’ll tell you how important it is. It’s the difference between being paid $5 million to direct a $100 million film where I go in with the support of 200 people to gallivant through a film, or working four years with no support of any kind -- no assistance, no budget, no comforts -- where I beat myself down, where I have to go to the hospital a couple of times for dehydration, for a nervous breakdown, to check out why a four inch patch of hair has fell out of my head, to massage my prostate which has enlarged to the size of a cantaloupe. To sit and nitpick every day in a chair where my body goes out of whack, my hair turns gray and I lose my friendships and relationships. That’s how important it is. It’s a choice on that level, so I’ve made it the most important thing in the world, at all costs, at any sacrifice.

Why? I don’t know. I don’t get anything out of it. The things I make are not self-glorifying. By the way, it’s not just cinema. I don’t just perfect cinema; I don’t want just control about cinema. That’s one of the least pre-occupations of my life. It’s everything -- it’s every business thing, every gardening thing, every color. As I drive down the street, I’m thinking about all the colors that I would change the houses that are painted in the neighborhood block. Why? I don’t know. And what do I get out of that? Nothing. Irritation, aggravation, constant exhaustion, but it keeps me out of my head. It gives me this false sense of balance in the world. It’s a weird thing.

I’m only hurt when people call it self-indulgent or narcissistic, because I make absolute sacrifices of my self, my popularity and my own glorification to do what I believe in. I drive my guitar collection to a repairman in North Dakota. I don’t ship the guitars, because maybe something will happen to this precious thing. It would be a disaster for the world if something happened to this 1940’s guitar, so I drive it and I carry the box in and out of the van every night because of the temperature -- I don’t want it to get too hot or too cold. I get it to North Dakota and I pay an incredible amount of money. Three months later, I get hit by a cab on my bike in New York City. I don’t take a taxi or an ambulance to the hospital, where I have six broken ribs and a broken sternum, and I don’t want to follow up with the doctor. I just sort of have this thing taped around my chest, and I limp around cleaning and fixing things in my house. I don’t know why. But it does offend me to be called a narcissist. Not an egomaniac, not a control freak, not an asshole, not difficult, not a prick, not a jerk, not a psycho -- a narcissist. That bugs me.

EI: How much does public and critical reaction to your films matter to you?

VG: Well, in the short term, it gives me impressions, surges of feelings. For a minute, if people love what I do, it feels good for a second. If they hate what I do, it feels bad for a second. It doesn’t motivate me in any way; it doesn’t augment my work in any way. I played a show in England a few months ago, and I got the best response of any show I’ve ever played in my life. I didn’t think the show was good at all, and I’ll never let a show like that happen again. With “The Brown Bunny,” I got the worst response that I’ve ever got for anything that I’ve ever done, but I feel stronger about the film, I feel more happy that I’ve made that film and more satisfied than anything else I’ve ever done. In the big picture, it means nothing. In the short term, I’m easily antagonized, but I’m not easily controlled and my opinion is not easily changed -- I’m extremely stubborn. It’s easy to say something to provoke a response from me, but it’s impossible to get me to change my opinion about something I feel strongly about.

EI: You adamantly claim that other films and filmmakers don’t influence your work. So what do you draw your filmmaking inspiration from?

VG: I always find that interesting, because it’s so far from what I’m thinking. If you look at any of my early work -- my paintings, my drawings, listen to my music, read my early screenplays, look at my early photography -- it’s all part of a very focused sensibility and aesthetic that relates directly to my past and my present and to my particular life experience and my particular nature. It has nothing to do with film history. I’m not a filmmaker in the classical sense. I didn’t train for it, I didn’t dream of doing it, I didn’t hope to do it and it’s not something that is different than the other things that I do. I’m a fanatic of everything. I’m a fanatic of furniture, architecture, clothing, music, everything. What motivates me to make something is because I think something doesn’t exist, not because I think something exists and I want to re-interpret it or put my name on it. I leave that for Quentin Tarantino. I’m making things that I think don’t exist. Imagine if you were a conceptual person and you were writing about artwork or conceptual art. How would you connect “The Brown Bunny” with “Two-Lane Blacktop” or “Vanishing Point”? Somebody said to me “Vanishing Point,” a film that I despise. With Barry Newman -- he’s not in my top trillion favorite actors. Why would people think that I’m referencing 70’s cinema? Have they been watching Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze, Darren Aronofsky and Quentin? Todd Solondz has his own point of view. If you know Todd and you see his work, it’s completely part of his idiosyncratic vision. My work is completely part of everything that I do and everything that I like, way outside of cinema. It doesn’t just translate into cinema. It translates into the interiors of my home, into the clothes. In everything I do, I put a lot of care and attention into it to get it right in the way I’ve always seen it right.

But as a creative person, I’m a futurist. I’m interested in profound vision. I’m not trying to make classic, retro cinema. I could name ten of my favorite filmmakers, none of who made my favorite film. I understand conceptually what Pasolini did, what Bresson did, what Ozu did, but none of those directors made my favorite movies. My favorite movies are so at odds with what I do, so at contrast. My favorite singer is Anita O’Day -- no one would connect me with Anita O’Day, no one would make that reference, but that’s the person I listen to all the time. I wish that I could achieve that level of intensity. I just don’t have her approach, I don’t have her sensibility, I don’t have her aesthetic, I don’t have her voice, I don’t have her talent. I have to overcome my lack of talent in other ways. It’s funny, because I don’t have very many fundamental talents, so most of my work is done in spite of my fundamental skills.

The idea of being influenced by another filmmaker is just so far from who I am and how I think. I don’t even consider film the most sophisticated form of creativity. I like the artist Robert Ryman, the Italian Futurists like Bala. I like people’s work who are way unfamiliar to the general consensus of cinema people. I don’t have any friends in cinema because I don’t consider it a very sophisticated environment, so the idea of being influenced by another filmmaker is already half-baked.

EI: Because you star in the films that you write and direct, a lot of people jump to the conclusion that they are autobiographical. Without necessarily jumping to that same conclusion, they do strike me as being personal films. What are you trying to work through, if anything, through filmmaking?

VG: Nothing. Neither one of them was a catharsis. “Buffalo ‘66” was misrepresented as an autobiographical films hundreds of times, and it is not. The only thing that I did in that film was bring two fictional characters -- highly conceptual, mythical characters -- into my family’s home, and they would have their own experiences with my family, completely at odds with my experience with my family. But it could’ve been any family; I just chose my family because it was easiest for me to write those two characters. Nothing else about the film was personal or autobiographical -- nothing. By multitasking on that film, I was able to express things in that film in a certain way that could’ve been only done by me multitasking in that way. Unfortunately, all of those multitasks were diminished in value because people assumed they were autobiographical, so I didn’t really direct, I wasn’t really acting, I didn’t really do the music for the film, I didn’t really edit it, I didn’t really write it, because it all did itself, right? Oh, but Christina Ricci, she’s a star, and the cinematographer, Lance Accord, who actually only shot half the film and was basically a button pusher -- I never let him do anything -- he’s a superstar, and Gucci Westman, who did the makeup well into the movie being shot, where I had already done Christina’s makeup on my own and designed the makeup, she’s great. But Vincent Gallo, he did that one film, it’s autobiographical, blah, blah.

In “The Brown Bunny,” the purpose was not anything like “Buffalo ‘66.” I was not looking to do a performance like “Buffalo ‘66.” I cast myself in “Buffalo ‘66” because I had that performance in me. The film was a cradle for the performance. In “Brown Bunny,” the performance was only a component of the film; the film was the star, the concept of the film of the star. The reason I acted in “Brown Bunny” is because I was doing a technique of acting with non-performers, as an improviser, a director and a photographer all at the same time. I could seduce and hypnotize people into performances and relationships with my character in the film, because I was in control of the directing, the acting and the cinematography. I filmed myself mostly from the back, because I’m looking at monitors and I’m doing things and trying to get people to repeat things in a certain way, so I have to be sort of off camera. But that was the purpose of the film. It had nothing to do with me building a film around an acting performance. The acting performance was just one of many things I needed to build to make the movie. That film, “Brown Bunny,” is not personal in any way. It is very reflective of my sensibility, my aesthetic point of view, my conceptual instincts, and it accumulates much of my experience in techniques and in composition. If you know my photos, my paintings, my music, it’s really like all of those things even more than “Buffalo ‘66.” I had special cameras for that movie, a special rig, a special type of production -- it was all to make that movie. If I made another movie again, I wouldn’t use those cameras, I wouldn’t use those lenses, I wouldn’t use that crew, I wouldn’t use that type of crew, I wouldn’t work in the same way, I wouldn’t put myself, probably, in my next film. Most likely I wouldn’t be in my next film, because I’ve already done this particular performance and I’ve already done this thing with performing with non actors where I know what’s going on. I’m in charge of this methodical script, but they don’t know anything about it, and I’m sucking them into this performance. I’ve done those two things, I had those ideas, and the next time I make a film I probably want to approach a more traditional group of actors and direct them in a more traditional type way. That said, whatever the film is, the idea will dictate what I do, just like the other films. I didn’t have a protocol before I made them. “Brown Bunny” chose the lenses, the camera, the crew, where it needed to be edited. It chose it by having a life of its own. Let’s hope that my work is 50 times more interesting than me, my petty reasons for making it and my small- minded nature.

EI: Since control is so important to you in all aspects of your life, who do you allow to get close to you? Who do you trust?

VG: Unfortunately, I don’t trust anyone and I’m not very close to anyone. I’m close to my friend Cat, who helped me with “Brown Bunny,” who I’ve known for several years. I share a lot of time with my friend Rick Rubin. We share a lot of meals together, but I don’t think he really cares for me, and I don’t rely on him for anything and he doesn’t rely on me for anything. I have a dentist that I like a lot, Dr. Glassman. I used to have a phenomenal psychiatrist, Dr. Hill, who I liked, but that’s about it. I don’t have a lot of love in my life, I don’t have a lot of close relationships, I don’t share a lot of social time and I don’t depend on anyone for anything, ever. I live a very risky life, because I don’t even really believe in God, so I live a very dangerous life in that way. I’m really the kind of guy who when I die in my apartment like an animal, no one will find me for three months until someone comes knocking on my door because they need to borrow money and eventually they find me. I’m not the kind of person that’s connected with people that way, unfortunately. I could never be as extreme as I am in my working nature and maintain those other things.

When I made “The Brown Bunny,” the first thing I did was breakup with my girlfriend. There would’ve been no way -- not just because of the scenes with Chloe or the other girls or because I’d be away for a year, but because I put myself into a highly irritable state of deep compulsion and there was no room to deal, even for a moment, with any tension or responsibility to a relationship. My best friend that I’ve probably ever had, Johnny Ramone, has been battling cancer these past four years and I’ve hardly got to spend any time with Johnny, even at his most ill moments. I haven’t seen this beautiful person that I love who might not be alive very much longer.

You know what? I’ll tell you where I learned it. When I was a kid, my parents would come to some of my sporting events, and I would drag them through the melodramas of my sporting events. If I lost the game for the team or something, I just felt responsible for them. And as they stopped coming as I got older -- they were not as devoted and stopped coming -- I liked it. I liked not having anybody there. Maybe I didn’t have anybody there rooting for me, but I didn’t have anybody there who was responsible or who would see me fail. I could go to the game on my own and after the game I could talk and meet somebody, and I could come home anytime. I got attracted to something in that isolation and I’ve never changed. But you pay a price for that. I don’t think people have any clue what my life is really like. I just punish myself all the time, put so much pressure on myself all the time. I don’t take any time out. I broke my kneecap once and taped it up with electrical tape and hobbled around on it for four days because I was very behind on finishing something. There was no way I was going to sit in an emergency room for eight hours or have a cast put on it. I just hobbled through it until I was done and eventually, in the quickest way that I could, I got it treated. I don’t know why I’m so brutal on myself.