Why Vincent Gallo?

GQ Germany - January 2012

2012-01-21T07:44:00.000-08:00

Surprise - even though he wasn't on the cover, Vincent Gallo was featured in the German GQ :) He got a page under the header of "Heroes" which I think is actually quite fitting. It was basically about his style and things he likes, no new pics or anything.

Here's the translation:

Vincent Gallo

German Rock, Vintage Music Systems and Driving in Los Angeles: This is What the 50 Year Old Artist Likes

American Psycho or American Beauty? Vincent Gallo often portrays freaks in his movies - soon he will play the mystical Kaspar Hauser - and likes to work as a model. He told us, what he likes:

>> In the 70s, Klaus Nomi told me all I know about style today. Not that I'd copy his way to dress. But his attention to details and the way he always used to express his personality, no matter what, impress me until today.

>> Klaus Werner Fassbinder is one of my favorite directors. I had the honor to meet him in New York in the early 80s when he presented his movie "Querelle de Brest", which is a very poetic movie. I could easily identify with the gay subculture because I always felt like an alien in my hometown Buffalo.

>> I had a terrible childhood. I shared a room with my two siblings, my grandfather and his wooden leg. My mother always kept everything very clean and painted all the walls in various colors. Until today I can't stand colored walls. My apartment in downtown Los Angeles is painted completely in white.

>> There were two reasons to do the current G-Star-Raw-Campaign. First: The money. Second: The photographer, Anton Corbjin, already took pictures of half of my friends. He is a very nice guy.

>> I know how tough it is to survive without money. When I escaped from Buffalo as a teenager, I had to survive in New York. I hooked up with women in clubs just to have a place to sleep. I finally found a new family at the Studio 54. I own my career to the people I met there.

>> I try hard to avoid doing the whole red carpet thing. I don't even own a smoking.

>> I'm fascinated by subcultures in authoritarian systems ever since I visited East-Berlin in the early 80s. I traveled to the East several times with my German girlfriend, Anna. One time when we were on the way back to the West, we heard loud music coming from Checkpoint Charlie - an illegal party. When we went in and I took a bottle of Coca Cola out of my bag and they freaked out - it was almost as if I'd brought illegal drugs along.

>> I have a huge collection of old Hi-Fi equipment. Especially German preision engineering by Siemens, Telefunken und Braun from the 50s and 60s.

>> I can't stand hip hop bands from california. I rather prefer German rock by Cluster, Popol Vuh and Neu! at the moment.

>> Jean-Michel Basquiat and I were close friends but I don't own a single painting he did. I started collecting art quite late. At the moment, I but a lot by Jess, a young artist from San Francisco who does wonderful collages.

>> Los Angeles is the best place in the world. Provided you like having to go everywhere by car. To me, that's a bit like yoga.

>> I don't have an assistant, a lawyer, a spokesperson or a stylist. I also don't have a housekeeper, a gardener or anything like that. The only thing I have is a dentist.

G Star Behind the Scenes

2012-01-21T07:08:00.000-08:00

Yay! Thanks to the always adorable Kacha2, I can now post a link to the G Star Behind the Scenes Video :)

Enjoy...he looks great, don't you think? Just weird seeing him model jeans as I recall him once saying that he HATES jeans and people who wear then - but then again, in Gallo-World, it does make sense ;)

It's Kaspar Hauser

2012-01-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

The Kaspar Hauser movie is coming somewhat closer :)

You can find a - slighty strange trailer on youtube (nice ass ;)):

And a mention of the film here.

Once in a while, something happens...

2011-11-18T00:28:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Kacha2, a new "article" about Mr Gallo can be found here

In the middle of New York Fashion Week, I headed New York's G-Star showroom to interview Vincent Gallo. The director/artist/actor/musician/everything is the face of the Dutch brand's autumn/winter men's campaign, and seeing his image blown up in black-and-white inside their building, you were reminded just how many different faces he's had in his 50 years.

Not just campaigns past with YSL and Calvin Klein (back when he, like Kate Moss, was accused of being the face of heroin chic), or any of the rest - this is also the guy caught on film with fellow artist onetime bandmate Jean-Michel Basquiat, and somehow documented breakdancing at the dawn of hip hop too. Richard Avedon, no less, said Gallo had the most unique face he had ever photographed. Whatever your view of what he actually does, Gallo's got an authentic patina of downtown cool few, if any, can match.

Waiting, alone, for our interview, in jeans and jean jacket just like the posters, he seemed to be inhabiting his latest role with enthusiasm. And perhaps he was, in a way, by being a most unlikely spokesperson - by being Vincent Gallo. He said that I'd have to follow certain conditions for our conversation to continue: not record anything, not quote him on anything, sign a contract guaranteeing I wouldn't reuse anything elsewhere, and allow him to record everything so he wasn't misrepresented.

After that, everything was easy. I put my pencil down, turned off my recorder and decided to just have a conversation with him for the 15 minutes that were alotted.

He saw my cup of Jamba Juice and asked me what the smoothie brand was about. He then recommended a raw fruit juice place in the East Village (rather than quote him on the name, I'll leave you to find it yourself). He also spoke to me in some detail about the optimum temperatures for preserving such drinks' nutrients.

Next, he asked me where I was from, which led to a story about his experience in Montreal in the 1980s. Falling in love and motorcycle racing were both involved. Serious, Grand Prix bike racing was one of Gallo's early jobs in a trajectory that has seen him do almost every other one going. For all the attention his numerous exploits have got since, one thing that seems to have passed many people by is that, in the last couple of years, in films like Essential Killing and Coppola's Teatro, he's done some of the most acclaimed (and awarded) acting of his life.

Being interviewed, especially by the UK press, was one performance he said he just didn't want to go through. (I had asked him, as time ran out, what was behind his approach to our interview). That didn't mean he didn't like working with good people and nice clothes. It just meant that, once he'd done what they wanted, he liked to use his earnings to go on and do the things he wanted to. If I could even pretend to guess what on earth those things might be, he wouldn't have been Vincent Gallo.

Credits:

Text by Caroline Issa
Portrait by Anton Corbjin

Loosies Trailer

2011-09-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

The trailer for "Loosies" is out:

Vincent Gallo - On a Bus. Seriously.

2011-09-10T12:04:00.001-07:00

Huge Billboard on the side of a bus featuring Vincent :) Thanks to Kacha2 for the hint and the link:

http://evgrieve.com/2011/09/and-now-photo-of-vincent-gallo-on-side.html

GStar Video

2011-07-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Kacha2 - there also is a vide for the new G Star Ads :)
http://www.gq-magazin.de/gq-tv/channels/419194/1416195/gq-onsite/vincent-gallo-fur-gstar-raw

Pictures from an Interview with Vincent by Patrick Hoelck

2011-07-10T06:10:00.000-07:00

...more here: http://patrickhoelck.com/wordpress/?p=6657

Still looking for the actual interview...

G-Star Ads

2011-07-10T03:45:00.000-07:00

Vincent Gallo "did" something at last :) He posed for some G-Star Ads, being the model he has always been and showing us he still looks quite good.

Curious to see more?

www.vogue.it/en/uomo-vogue/latest-on-fashion/2011/07/vincent-gallo-g-star

As there is almost nothing happening...

2011-05-28T15:28:00.001-07:00

...it's probably worth mentioning that Jason Barr thinks Vincent Gallo writes his own Netflix reviews.

I think Jason Barr has too much time on his hands, but anyway...here is the piece of brilliance he came up with:

http://barrrheaven.com/2011/05/vincent-gallo-writes-his-own-netflix-reviews/

And what's that? A Picture from "Loosies"!

2011-03-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a kind but anonymous poster, I stumbled upon this one and it's too important to get lost in the comment thread to here it is, a picture from "Loosies"

More pics from the film can be found here: http://www.celebuzz.com/photos/exclusive-photos-from-peter-facinellis-new-movie-loosies/loosies-2/

Ten Reasons Why Vincent Gallo is the Coolest Actor Around

2011-03-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

Yep. Someone wrote down those reasons and, as it's rare that there is something positive written about Mister Gallo, I really want to include it here :)

Please also go and look at the complete thing - the writer has some nice clips and links included in the article :)

http://www.sabotagetimes.com/tv-film/ten-reasons-why-vincent-gallo-is-the-coolest-actor-around/

Ten Reasons Why Vincent Gallo Is The Coolest Actor Around

By Richard Luck
Posted: 26 March 2011

From doing his bit for Hip Hop to slapping up the son of a mafia boss to recover a $5 debt. There aren't many around like Vincent Gallo

His new film Essential Killing’s kick-ass, but then so do a lot of things about this enigmatic, idiosyncratic artist

1) He’s in GoodFellas. Check out the scenes featuring Henry Hill’s 1970s crew and you’ll spy a young Vinnie Gallo, as he was known back then.

2) He’s a real trooper. During what he described as an “undisciplined” improvisation on the set of Abel Ferrara’s gangster film The Funeral, an extra set about Gallo, knocking him unconscious, breaking his nose and loosening two of his teeth. A real pro, Vince didn’t have his wounds dressed until after the film had wrapped.

3) He used to play in a band with modern art superstar Jean Michel Basquiat. An acclaimed avant-garde musician, Gallo – who is himself a gifted artist – guested on a number of tracks recorded by Basquiat and his band Gray. HerE for your listening pleasure is I Wanna Go Back:

4) He helped put hip hop on the map. In 1984, using the moniker Prince Vince, the future star of Arizona Dream and Palookaville threw himself into B-boy culture, eventually earning the respect of the initially sceptical African-American community.

5) His directorial debut is a real piece of work. Gallo’s intensely autobiographical Buffalo ‘66 features a career-best performance from Christina Ricci. The film also showcases great work from Anjelica Huston and Ben Gazara (Anatomy Of A Murder, The Big Lebowski), playing approximations of Gallo’s real parents, and notable cameos from Jan-Michael Vincent (Big Wednesday, Airwolf) and the then all but forgotten Mickey Rourke. Here’s what Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert (who later had a notable falling out with Vincent) said about the picture on its theatrical release:

6) He’s front and centre in one of the greatest of all movie scenes. In Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream, Gallo’s character Paul goes to the cinema to make out with his girl. While Paul explains to his woman why he won’t let her touch his face, Johnny Depp’s Axel occupies a seat behind the couple. “Think anybody fucking touches Johnny Depp’s face?” barks Paul from out of nowhere. Ever the consummate professional, Depp doesn’t so much as flinch.

7) He once had a cracking idea for a magazine feature. Asked by a British film publication what he thought might make for an entertaining feature, Vincent Gallo suggested the periodical find the worst journalist in London and then send them to New York to interview him. Secretly taping the conversation himself, Gallo would be as rude as he could, certain that the writer would twist his words. Then, when the journalist submitted their story, the actor would mail across his version of events, thus allowing the magazine to run the stories side by side. Alas, nothing ever came of this idea – here’s hoping someone eventually gives it the green light.

8 ) He was once asked to compile the coolest/creepiest of all top 10 lists. If you’re old enough to remember the late, lamented Neon, you might recall the time Vincent Gallo was asked to list the 10 women he’d most like to kiss. Besides Charlotte Gainsbourg (“She’s super special – a miracle”), Patricia Arquette (“She seems wild and kinky”) and Steffi Graf (“She had the best sweaty panties I’d ever seen in my life”), our man spoke at great length about his passion for the then 52-year-old Charlotte Rampling: “I sat next to her on a plane once from Berlin to Paris and I think it’s the only time I’ve ever been excited to see a celebrity in person. She looked beautiful. If she ever wanted to, I would like to just make out with her.”

9) He’s no shrinking violet. As he told Neon in May 1997, “I’ve walked into a Mafia club where the son of the big shot owed me five bucks and slapped him up in front of his father.”

10) He’s still pushing the boundaries. In his new film Essential Killing, Gallo plays a Taliban soldier who’s sent to Europe for interrogation. Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski whose Moonlighting helped make Jeremy Irons a star, Essential Killing is a fine film made extraordinary by Gallo’s compelling, near-silent performance.

Anyone interested in buying some real estate...?

2011-03-19T11:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, the Gallo-Loft-Sales deserves a thread of it's own (after all, it brought us so damn much fun!)

So...if you think about buying it (maybe we can all chip in and share...? Anyone?) here are the details:

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/03/vincent_gallo_unloading_in_downtowns_toy_factory_lofts.php

And, more seriously:

http://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Angeles/1855-Industrial-St-90021/unit-112/home/17239406

I'll go counting the suits now...

Could it be? A new Gallo song

2011-02-11T00:16:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYyWo0JL62g&feature=youtube_gdata

Watch it while it's there :)

Tidbits during the calm days...

2011-01-27T00:51:00.000-08:00

It's been calm, so calm about the man recently but let's just be sure that there soon will be more news (at least I hope so!)

Anyway, some collected tidbits from here and there:

The Associated Press and several more list Vincent as a contributor to the soundtrack of a documentary about autism. Well - I'll believe it when it's out, especially when you look at the other people listed as involved. More here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQfxBZIOwbBLK2A_gcQxlXd79rVw?docId=ff449ba74a9b4462a31ef2dc987486a2

This guy here was in Portland these days and apparently they saw Vincent there - no photos or further information though http://www.air-debonair.com/2011/01/portland-part-2.html

And, because we always love interviews with Vincent no matter how old - Noisepop has a nice one up, even though it's old, it's still a nice read: http://portable-infinite.blogspot.com/2006/12/vincent-gallo.html

Twitter me this, twitter me that...

2010-12-03T01:22:00.000-08:00

I personally don't really like Twitter to begin with. It's sort of weird and people either use it to exchange as if they were talking on an instant messenger (which is annoying to everyone else following them) or they only post links to articles, blogs and so on.

Anyway, the funny part about Twitter is probably that some stars do tweet. Others don't. Vincent, as you all might know by now, might.

In times of veryfied accounts and so on it's normally easy to tell if a star is twittering or not. There is one account, claiming to be le Gallo. Or being le Gallo. I personally thought it's not him, but after recent controversy I think it might be. Weird? Well, let's start at the beginning.

This account (http://twitter.com/vincent_gallo) started quite a while ago and even though I followed it, I wasn't too sure if it was Vincent or not, actually I thought it's rather not.

Then, as I thought, Mr Gallo confirmed these thoughts by telling the New York Post he wanted this "fake twitter account" to be shut down. The weird thing is, the Post "interview" that is quoted (http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/vincent_gallo_wants_twitter_impostors_I8qFYPxtERpXn3Wlu7OmBP) sounds...odd. Can't quite grasp it, but there are only a few quotes directly by him and if you put together what he actually SAID it could - and I say could, not must! - also be simply irony or his kind of humour. Plus, if we remember - the Post and Vincent Gallo don't really share a close and kind relation so why would he tell them?

Even weirder, the Twitter Account still exists and still claims it's the real deal. There even is an interview with him to be found here http://www.theawl.com/2010/11/an-interview-with-vincent_gallo that does sound a bit like Gallo to be honest.

Well, we'll probably never know the truth but in times of slow news, I'm interested to hear all your opinions on the matter - if you even care ;)

Some pics

2010-11-09T04:41:00.001-08:00

Finally something new - seems like there are no reviews of the showas so far...

http://lifeofmyrick.com/post/1523401376/vincent-gallo-david-myrick

Muse Productions...

2010-10-14T03:13:00.000-07:00

And, an explanation from the man himself on why he didn't talk to the press in Venice

2010-10-11T06:02:00.001-07:00

Gallo began shooting this highly conceptual film without following any traditional program of production or pre-production, and instead began filming without any preparation or a traditional script, never allowing anyone from his cast or crew in on the film’s ultimate vision.

Vincent Gallo has forever rejected any explanation of the concept, story, process, or rumors surrounding the making of his new film, stating, “None of it would fit easily into tabloid format, and so writers and journalists would be forced into simplistic interpretations to avoid their own shortcomings and the shortcomings of the press in general.”

Though Gallo understands his silence may excite journalists and bloggers into easy brush-offs and perpetuate unsubstantiated rumors and hearsay, he still chooses to disconnect from the low frequency exchange required to communicate with the press.

Movieline on Essential Killing and, especially, Monsieur Gallo

2010-10-11T06:01:00.000-07:00

Essential Killing: Dear Vincent Gallo, Why Do You Torment Me So?

Oh, Vincent Gallo! There’s no escaping you. You follow me from continent to continent, from festival to festival. Last week, in Venice, I saw your strange little picture Promises Written in Water (also playing here in Toronto), and while I wasn’t wowed, I couldn’t quite dismiss it, either. But while in Venice, I missed Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing, which netted you the Best Actor award there — in fact, you’ve got pretty much the only role, aside from Emmanuelle Seigner, who appears very late in the picture. So today in Toronto, I decided to check out Essential Killing. I needed to see for myself if you really deserved that award, you scalawag, you.

The answer is yes. Essential Killing is virtually a silent film, and Gallo gives a wordless performance as a Taliban or Al Qaeda tribal soldier (the picture spells out none of the details, only the essentials) who’s captured by U.S. troops. He’s stripped of his clothes, beaten and tortured. As he’s being transported with some other prisoners to another location, the truck in which the group is traveling crashes, and they’re no longer in the desert: They appear to have been transported to somewhere in Eastern Europe, or perhaps Russia. Gallo’s character scrambles away from the crash, now finding himself in a snowy landscape that’s completely foreign to him, and his captors pursue him as if he were an animal.

In this role, Gallo looks gaunt and haunted, even more so than usual. Skolimowski shapes the filmmaking around him quietly, the way you’d settle a blanket over a sleeping child. These snow landscapes, often replete with lonely or angry barking dogs, aren’t exactly becalming, considering that Gallo’s character is on the run for his life: Dressed in a bloodied white camouflage outfit — his wounds are numerous, including a bleeding cut on his foot incurred when he steps into a steel-jawed trap — he trudges, limps and, when he’s able, sprints through this dazzling white-tipped forest terrain.

What makes this performance so mesmerizing when — face it — so much of what Gallo does is just patently annoying? His character does some extreme things to survive: He claws at tree bark and chomps on it; he scoops some ants from a dirt hole and shoves them into his mouth; and, most shockingly, he holds a nursing mother at gunpoint so he can suckle here. Frankly, if you described these things to me before I’d seen the picture, I’d say that Gallo is the last person I’d want to see doing them.

And yet for once, Gallo — who I sometimes do like as an actor and as a filmmaker — shows no affectation. Perhaps because he doesn’t speak in the film, much of his energy is forced into his limbs and into the trunk of his body, and it has a lot to say, even in the context of its dogged exhaustion. This is a striking, primal performance, and maybe it’s an example of what can happen when a filmmaker takes one of an actor’s essential tools — his voice — away and pushes his focus elsewhere. Gallo has a reputation for being self-aggrandizing and annoying as a personality, but this performance overrides and whites out any personality quirks. In Essential Killing, he’s confounding and surprising, challenging everything we think we know about Vincent Gallo. In other words, he does what we always say we want actors to do, and what we don’t always allow them to do.

...and a little summary of the one we're all waiting for...

2010-09-06T03:57:00.000-07:00

...which is, "Promises Written in Water": Summary

Sounds intertesting and reminds me a bit of a short story I once read and had my final exams at university on but can't remember the title of anymore.

Essential Killing - A Review

2010-09-06T03:54:00.001-07:00

Time Out London as a quite interesting (sadly not too detailed) review of "Essential Killing":

http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/89026/essential-killing.html

Essential Killing - some pics

2010-08-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.daemonsmovies.com/2010/08/27/essential-killing-movie-photos-with-vincent-gallo/

Some more pics/stills from Essential Killing - I personally don't like the beard too much but that is just my superficial, girly opinion. Klick on them to see them full size :)

Another Pic

2010-08-04T02:16:00.000-07:00

And another one, thanks to the power of Twitter (and a user called robdefranco) and another Anonymous poster :)

Pic from the Set of Loosies

2010-07-30T00:05:00.001-07:00

Beard = Gone :)

Taken from Peter Facinelli's Twitter (http://twitpic.com/29vr1i)

Promises Written in Water at Venice Film Festival

2010-07-29T07:08:00.001-07:00

Do I need to say more?

Sources: Many. Official Lineup has been announced. So that means it will be shown, right? Right.

On a Serious Note

2010-07-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

There has been more and more hatred on here in the last weeks. First I ignored it, but now I feel like I just can't and shouldn't. I never ever opened this blog in order to deal with haters and if there are people who have nothing better to do but to come here and freak around over an actor they hate or over the way I deal with this blog, I really wonder if they have nothing better to do with their time.

Anyway - I thought about turning the blog into a purely private blog as this is what it was intended to be first. I never thought so many of you would find the blog and like it and participate. But then again, I also really like the interaction, I like most of you people here and I don't want to just close it all and never ever hear from you again. After all, the interaction makes it much more fun.

There is an option on Blogspot that would be sort of "in the middle" - I could close the blog from public viewing and make it viewable only for "invited users". That would mean I could allow those of you who want to to keep on reading the blog in the futuer and at the same time keep away Anonymous Posters who just come here to bash everything without any reason at all.

Before I do this, I'd like to know what you guys think about it because I feel a bit like this is not a decision I have to make on my own but rather together with all of you, the "good people" I've met on here and I've really started to like.

Prince Vince in 1984

2010-07-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Be fast, my Dears...

2010-06-26T05:14:00.000-07:00

Some youtbe clips have surfaced of Gallo, Sean & Yoko at the 2005 ATP End Jam.

As always, better be fast watching them :)

A short interview on Tetro

2010-06-26T04:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.list.co.uk/article/26510-tetro-vincent-gallo-interview/

Filmmaker, actor, musician, artist and arch Reagan Republican, Vincent Gallo is a contrary soul and now he has a fan in Francis Ford Coppola. Kaleem Aftab meets him

‘I’m a person with more flaws than most people because I am maybe a little more ridiculous’ says Vincent Gallo with typical understatement. The man of many clothes – actor, director, painter, singer, songwriter and internet entrepreneur has always been a Marmite figure, but whether he’s loved or reviled, it seems it’s impossible not to take notice of the 47-year-old.

Gallo has such a reputation for being difficult that Tetro director Francis Ford Coppola went out of his way to speak about how wonderful Gallo was as an actor. Although it would have been fun to be a fly on the wall when Gallo broke his leg just before the film went into production. He complains that these days he’s becoming a walking ailment: ‘I’ve gotten much older now and I think I’m noticing it because I’ve worked my whole life on the floor and worked a lot fixing things and making things, I don’t know if it’s tendonitis or arthritis but the hardest thing for me is opening things.’

Gallo just doesn’t do normal. Even today he sports a beard that looks like it was borrowed off the set of The Life of Brian. Trying to get him to talk about one topic or respond directly to a question is problematic. He goes off on tangents but every so often he’ll say or do something surprising, even interesting.

He was born in Buffalo, New York in 1961, the son of Sicilian emigrants. Aged 17 he moved to New York City to study acting, and once there he started a musical collaboration with artist Jean Michel Basquiat and worked as a painter. In 1981, he appeared in the cult classic New York Beat Movie (recently rediscovered and recut as Downtown 81). In addition to playing a small role Gallo also appeared on the soundtrack. And so started a remarkable career that reached its high point with his remarkable directorial debut Buffalo ‘66 in 1998.

Gallo’s follow up The Brown Bunny was unfairly derided and his career as an actor has never really fulfilled it’s potential, he’s been at his best playing dark mysterious characters in The Funeral and Trouble Every Day. But he’s not complaining, ‘I’ve got a lot going on, my life is full, and I have a lot of energy for everything, but I don’t have an agent, I don’t have a personal assistant, I don’t have a gardener and I don’t have an intern.’

Even when he speaks about Tetro, the conversation is not about Coppola or the role but about what he was doing when the camera was not rolling. Gallo claims that he’s working on a new film, although it’s experimental and has no budget. ‘I’ve done a new movie, so I produce my own films, I edit my own films – and not like Robert Rodriguez, where I have 400 slaves working for me and put my name on it, I mean really I have my Avid and sit in a room alone and cut my movie. I took my G5 to Buenos Aires and every night after shooting I’m just looking at footage.’

Vincent in a new movie - is it any good?

2010-06-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

According to like a million sources around the internet, Vincent Gallo will star in the indie flick "Loosies". Also linked to the project is Michael Madsen whom you might know from...well, nothing really (just kidding - he did do some movies and apparently was in "24" as well).

The play, which evolves around a pickpocket in New York City who is confronted by a pregnant woman with whom he had a one night stand, was written by "that guy from Twilight" Peter Facinelly, who will also play a role in this masterpiece.

The plot sounds like it's either going to be one of those films Vincent only did for the money or, there might be at least a small amount of hope that it is sooooooo well done and so different and surreal (even though I have no clue how that plot would offer any of that...) that it's actually a good movie.

Fingers. Crossed.

Something new from The Independent

2010-06-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

Who on earth does Vincent Gallo think he is? James Mottram meets Hollywood's most outspoken star

Saturday, 5 June 2010

Most celebrity websites offer little more than a few photos, cuttings and the occasional message from the star. Not so at vincentgallo.com. Take the merchandising section, fronted by a picture of Gallo dressed in a sailor suit and grabbing his crotch. Among the usual CDs, T-shirts and posters, you can buy such rarities as a Charles Manson artwork (given to Gallo by Johnny Ramone on his 33rd birthday) or the helmet he used when he once raced motorbikes professionally. There's even a section marked "Personal Services". Yes, for $50,000, Gallo has made himself "available to all women – all women who can afford me, that is". You too can spend an evening with Vincent.

In truth, you'd probably get value for money. A self-confessed "strong right-wing Republican" (he doesn't "support extreme leftist concepts"), Gallo may have an ego the size of a hot-air balloon, but even an hour in his company is wildly entertaining. Indeed, who else would have the guts to offer up, on the same website, their own sperm for the princely sum of $1 million? Painter, hip-hop impresario, breakdancer, bass player, male model, actor, film-maker, architect... it's little wonder a cult exists around this self-styled legend in his own lifetime. "Credit where it's due," says Chloë Sevigny, the actress who famously performed fellatio on Gallo in his much-reviled sophomore film The Brown Bunny, "he's a Renaissance man".

When The Brown Bunny, a virtually plotless road movie, was unveiled in 2003, the reviews were savage. Esteemed US critic Roger Ebert called the film "the worst in the history of Cannes", to which Gallo responded that Ebert was a "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader". Nevertheless, he retreated like a wounded animal, cutting 30 minutes from the film before scuttling for shelter, away from the public eye. Since then, he's barely been seen on screen – until now. This month heralds Gallo's triumphant return in the title role of Tetro, the new film from Francis Ford Coppola, one of the greatest directors of all. It's a classic Gallo turn: full of anger, childishness, bile and beauty – just like the character Billy Brown he played in Buffalo '66, his 1998 directorial debut.

I interviewed Gallo for that film. When we meet again, sitting in an airy room in a Venetian villa, he claims to have a dim recollection of the event. "I think it was the first piece of European press that I'd ever done," he says, in that high-speed East Coast whine of his. "And I thought, 'Oh wow, that felt really good.'" He then proceeds to tell me that nothing good ever came of the press he's done over here. "It's gotten me into a lot of trouble, especially in England. If I gain support, the support doesn't seem to mean anything. It's not like anyone really cares about me. It's not like I've developed a real friend, a relationship that's going to be around for a long time." It sums Gallo up – underneath all the bluster, he's a complex mixture of sensitivity and pain.

At first glance, it seems he hasn't changed much since our last encounter. Now aged 49, he's as fragile and as fuck-you as he ever was. Today he's wearing red-and-white dogtooth-patterned trousers and a plain white T-shirt – thankfully free from self-promotion (in Cannes, he was seen to stride around with "Gallo" emblazoned on his chest). His brown hair is what you might call scarecrow-chic while his bushy beard makes you think of late period Jim Morrison. What with those manic blue eyes of his, he would've made a good Charles Manson, a role he was once mooted for in a biopic that never materialised. Then there's his wiry body, with not an ounce of fat on it. "I'm very into food again," he tells me. "I eat a lot of raw things."

While he's not vegetarian, Gallo's lately been shopping for food at outlets he calls "very focused and fanatical", a phrase that could easily describe himself. "I drive out to this quail farm, where I get a lot of these incredible quail eggs, which I eat all day long," he says. "And [I eat] a lot of superfoods like goji, cacao and chia seeds, things like that. And I like unpasteurised milk of the goat and the sheep. They send it once a week from Pennsylvania, from the Amish farms, and I get it in Los Angeles." A health zealot, Gallo hasn't drunk alcohol or taken drugs since he was 14. "I feel that it's mainstream behaviour. I'm repulsed by any mainstream behaviour. And this kind is the most unattractive to me."

In the world of celebrity journalism, where actors are media-trained to be bland, Gallo is like a walking truth serum: put him in front of a captive audience and he unleashes a torrent of invective against all those who've crossed him. When we met before, it was the British actor Tim Roth who was winding him up because he didn't want to star in a movie with him. "Tim fucked me! Tim fucked me," he cried. "And I'm unfuckable." In Cannes, with The Brown Bunny, the whole world was against him. Kirsten Dunst's agent was a "nasty, lunatic woman" while Winona Ryder, who was due to be in the film, proved impossible to get to the set on time. "At 9 o'clock in the morning, she was sleeping with a mask on and earplugs in and no one could get her out of the room. She had some tablets which seemed to have impacted on her behaviour."

For all this, there's a dark humour to Gallo's words, as he lifts the lid, with unflinching honesty, on the Hollywood underbelly. Back in 1997, he famously penned an article for Grand Royal magazine, the in-house publication of the Beastie Boys. In it, he interviewed himself, using the opportunity to slight everyone from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Abel Ferrara, who, he alleged, was too high on crack to direct him properly in the 1996 gangster film The Funeral. It would almost be pointless to try and count the enemies Gallo has since accumulated. "I've never been a popular person, but it doesn't matter," he says. "I have everything in my life that I want. I'm not a walking publicity stunt. I'm not an anarchist, or bitter. I'm not trying to be subversive. I just try to remain unguarded, unprotected by fear, and agents and publicists, and I feel comfortable that way."

While today's conversation shows Gallo has mellowed a little, he still can't help himself. "I'm easily antagonised and easily upset," he says. This time it's Lance Acord, the acclaimed cinematographer who has worked with Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola, as well as shooting Gallo's own debut. "Lance Acord could run around Hollywood telling people that he shot Buffalo '66 but Lance Acord pressed the button when I said, 'Press the button'," says Gallo, beginning to foam at the mouth slightly. Yet despite this one-man siege mentality he seems to exhibit, Gallo is kind to those he loves. Meryl Streep, with whom he starred in The House of the Spirits, is "incredible – sexy, goofy, funny". Likewise his LA Without a Map co-star Julie Delpy – "the funniest, sweetest girl in the world".

Right now, it's all about Coppola. Gallo seems made up that the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now came calling for him to play in the most autobiographical film of his career. "If Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick or Alfred Hitchcock asked me to be in a film, I wouldn't have been more excited than I was when Francis called me," he says, breathlessly. "Not even close. It didn't even matter what we made. To tell you the truth, I didn't really like the script. It's not really my cup of tea. You know my taste probably a little. Tetro wouldn't be my cup of tea. It didn't matter. I knew I was in the company of a very special person, and I adjusted to his world, which was very difficult."

While Coppola initially wrote the role with Matt Dillon in mind, he turned to Gallo when it became clear Dillon was unable to make the film, due to scheduling conflicts. "Everyone said, 'You can't work with him. He's terrible. He's a nightmare. He's a monster!'" says Coppola. "But I just called him up and I said, 'Will you come and spend a week with me and just get to know each other?' I went to pick him up at the airport and when I saw him, I just felt he had the right mystery... though he was covered in hair. It took me five haircuts to get his hair down! But I must say he was very intelligent and a pleasure to work with. He was there on time, he worked hard and he always tried to be truthful."

In the film, beautifully shot in black-and-white in Buenos Aires, Gallo's Tetro is a would-be novelist living in the bohemian La Boca district. The meat of the film is his relationship with his younger sibling Bennie (Alden

Ehrenreich), who comes to seek him out a decade after Tetro left home with the unfulfilled promise that he would return. It's a mirror of Coppola's relationship with his late elder brother August (the father of the actor Nicolas Cage). As Gallo puts it: "His brother was older than him. His brother knew all about movies. He taught him about films. He showed him how to write. He taught him everything. And then his younger brother becomes the most successful film-maker in history! So then where is Augie after that in the family?"

The film is almost as personal to Gallo as it is to Coppola, and the actor's own family history is equally troubled. Growing up in Buffalo, New Jersey, where his mother ran a beauty salon, he was not encouraged to pursue a career in the arts. The parents visited by Billy Brown in Buffalo '66 were, to some extent, modelled on his own. "My mother and father are exactly like that, but more painful," he says, as he tells a story of how they once collected him from the airport, when he was 16. Back then, the young Gallo excitedly told them he'd been accepted to study acting under the tutelage of Stella Adler, the famed teacher of Marlon Brando and Harvey Keitel among many others. His father, he says, "slams on the brakes to the car. The car goes skidding into a snow-bank. And he grabs my ear, and he pulls me by my ear from the back seat to the front seat, into the rear-view mirror and he pushes my face, five or six times, into the mirror. The rear-view mirror breaks off from the windshield. And he tells me, 'Look at your face, you retard. You look like Paul Newman? You look like Robert Redford? Those are actors. You look like an idiot. Get a job. Stop telling your mother lies, because she believes you. When you get a job as a plumber or in a gas station, give us a call and we'll come and visit you.' And then he threw me in the back seat." Like all of his anecdotes, it's twisted, shocking and told with all the power of a force-10 gale.

By this time, Gallo was living in New York, hanging out with musicians and artists. He formed the band Gray, with his artist friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, and after a time racing bikes and managing the hip-hop crew New York City Breakers, in 1983, he held his first solo art show in Manhattan. Just 21 at the time, he went on to become one of the most successful American painters of the decade, with Vanity Fair even running an article on his work back in 1990 (the same year he won a bit-part in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas). He quit painting after that, and his screen appearances ever since have been never less than memorable – whether it be as the face of Calvin Klein in a stunning collaboration with the great photographer Richard Avedon, or his Mexican transvestite in Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby.

Yet as Gallo emerges once more into the crosshairs of the critics, I wonder whether he was scarred by his experience in Cannes with The Brown Bunny. "No, I had a wonderful time!" he says, defiantly. "I'm from Buffalo and I'm in the South of France; 3,500 people are hooting and hollering during my movie. That was a high. It was not a provocative film, regardless of what anyone thinks. But they booed from 'A film by Vincent Gallo'. They booed at 'A Vincent Gallo Production'. It didn't take the movie to get them to boo! They booed the opening credits! It would've been nice if I had a more gentle response. It would've been nice if it wasn't a Kafka-esque [experience], if it wasn't The Trial. It didn't matter why I made the film, I had already been accused of why I made the film."

It certainly hasn't put him off directing for life. Among other projects since that fateful Cannes – including designing a house and overseeing the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in 2005 – he has found time to make a third film, the ultra-low-budget Promises Written in Water. Gallo's cagey about the details, but it's the story of a terminally ill girl. Rather lamely, I ask if it was nice getting back behind the camera. "Well nice is perhaps the wrong word," he smiles, politely. "What makes you go back into being uncomfortable and giving that kind of attention to something? No, I wouldn't say 'nice'. When you decide to go into your basement and clean it all out and reorganise it, is it nice to get back out there and clean it up? Nice is not the word but it feels good when it's done."

Gallo used to be in the rock band Bunny with fellow actor Lukas Haas, and later put out his own well-received CD, When. He says he may return to Europe to play live, but "if there isn't [interest], then cool, I can live with that". Following Tetro, there are already some other acting roles in the can, not least voicing the hero in the Swedish animated movie Metropia, in which his bald character looks suspiciously like his friend, the similarly provocative director Gaspar Noé. "My least favourite face is Gaspar Noé's!" he giggles. "Meaning, if God said you could be anyone, I would pick Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. If God said you're going to be Gaspar Noé, I'd go to the nearest bridge and jump."

One suspects that he won't. Such are his powers of self-belief, Vincent Gallo probably feels immortal.

T-Shirts. And they don't cost a fortune.

2010-04-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

Good news today - sort of.

According to This is London, there has been a collaboration between Uniqlo and Vincent, resulting in six T-shirts with different logos and stills from his "most celebrated works".

The good news: They only cost £12.99 and the Pound is quite weak at the moment ;)

The bad news: I couldn't find them anywhere on www.uniqlo.co.uk (who only ship to the UK, which makes it even worse for anyone not living there).

The already infamous Beer-Commercial

2010-04-25T01:39:00.000-07:00

Mono Rousseau, thanks a lot for the link :)

Here you can have a look at the already famous beer commercial that Vincent has done in New Zealand.

And I have to say - yes, nicely done for a commercial but now that I saw it and saw his role in it, I even less understand what all the fucking fuss was about. I mean, please....! "Could a kiwi actor have done just as well?" Any actor could have done that. It was just a choice to pick Vincent. But then again, with all the media attention they (the beer people) got because of that - maybe that also made them quite happy altogether. I mean, when does the shooting of an ad get such a big deal of attention?

Just wish he'd finally chop off that beard...

More on "Red Sky" from Movieline

2010-04-16T02:37:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in my opinion...

You can find it here

EXCLUSIVE: How Vincent Gallo Staged a Coup on the Set of His Next Film

Written by Kyle Buchanan | 15 Apr 2010, 5:00 AM

In 2008, mercurial actor Vincent Gallo signed on to star in The Funeral Director, an independent film written and directed by Pete Red Sky. Now, in 2010, Gallo is touting his own Promises Written in Water, the first film he’s written and directed since The Brown Bunny.

There’s just one thing: they’re the same movie. How did this happen?

Let’s start from the beginning. In late 2007, Gallo and actress Allison Lohman (Drag Me to Hell) attached themselves to The Funeral Director, a pet project set up by Red Sky (who has one other feature credit to his name, the indie film The White Horse is Dead). Though Lohman fell out of the film shortly after, Gallo stayed aboard and even wrangled a producer credit. Under Gallo’s watch, the cast was filled out using non-actors, Sage Stallone, and European fashion models Delfine Bafort and Esther de Jong.

The Funeral Director may have been a small film almost wholly financed by Red Sky, but its premise was quirky enough to merit some attention when shooting commenced in January 2008:

“A broken-hearted man, Kevin, finds company in a pet cricket. After ditching a lucrative advertising job, he signs on as an apprentice in a funeral home and finds himself not only working for a sexually starved pre-menopausal funeral director, but also rooming with her free spirited nymphomaniac niece. In a strange way, Kevin becomes like one of the old Renaissance masters by taking the dead corpses to study and advance his art by photographing them. While the nymphomaniac becomes addicted to the idea of helping him win back his ex-girlfriend they find themselves exploring loss, death, and resurrection. In a dark romanticism, Kevin attempts to artistically reincarnate the dead people by dressing them up in elaborate costumes and makeup, trying to recapture the memory of their best human quality and to defy the tragedy of their death.”

It’s a story that would require a firm hand to keep from tipping into absurdity, and according to those on the Los Angeles set, that’s where the problems began. The less-practiced Red Sky was a passive presence in the directorial chair, which frustrated his lead actor. “From day one, the director was showing signs of his inexperience on set and lack of confidence in handling a fiercely unpredictable talent like Gallo,” said one source. “Vincent would come to set and ask where his mark was, and the director would have to sit and think about it for ten minutes.”

After bringing production to a halt on a daily basis to give “film production 101” lectures to cast and crew members, Gallo finally called for a meeting with the producers and director halfway through the shoot. His ultimatum: he’d walk if he wasn’t made director.

“From that point on,” said the source, “Gallo took over and assumed all rights to the project. He was now the director of the film and treated like so by cast and crew.” Meanwhile, Red Sky — usurped of his passion project by the star he’d cast — was left with little to do but follow Gallo around on set. Unfortunately, letting Gallo have his way didn’t calm him. Screaming fits were common, and Gallo harangued the script coordinator so much that she quit before filming was completed.

Then again, that initial shoot was only the beginning. After filming finished on The Funeral Director that February, Gallo headed to Buenos Aires to shoot Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro. (By all accounts, those two had a much improved actor-director relationship.) When Gallo returned his attentions to the messy project he’d left behind, it wasn’t Pete Red Sky’s The Funeral Director anymore. Now, going forward, it would be Promises Written in Water, written and directed by Vincent Gallo.

Last year, as Tetro was released, Gallo began to talk about Promises, though he notably omitted its origins when The Independent synopsized the effort:

The film is about a beautiful young girl who is terminally ill. She decides not to go to the hospital or have treatment but to wait until the pain becomes unbearable - and then to end her life. Her one fear is what is going to happen to her body when she is dead. She wants to be cremated. She reaches out to a photographer she meets, asking him to make sure that her wish is fulfilled. He takes a job in a funeral home so that he has the experience to perform the cremation. It sounds morbid in the extreme. “What I have tried to do in this movie is to make choices as if this was the first movie ever made and not to buy into the story of what cinema should be,” explains Gallo. This means making the film on the hoof, without much in the way of preparation.

“I shoot a bunch of stuff - improvs, things when people don’t know they’re being filmed. I look at the footage and separate it into filters. The first category is anything that is beautiful, photographically … beautiful could be out of focus, it could be a mistake. Beautiful can be intentional. It can be just luck, it can be because the film is processed a little funnily … Now, I take the film and start to look at the people in the film and I want them to be beautiful. Again, beauty is relative. Beauty can be beautiful ugly. It can be the back of their heads.” […]

Whether we’ll ever get the chance to see Promises Written in Water is a moot point. Gallo made it for himself, not for the world at large. “I have no intention of expecting anyone to see it. I am so tuned into it that I can’t imagine if it will have the same impact for someone else who doesn’t know all the things I know.”

As long as Gallo is satisfied with the film himself, he says that will be enough. “Don’t take this the wrong way if you’re going to write about it. I am giving zero attention to what the audience thinks. It’s not that I resent them or don’t care about them. I feel that if I am going to make my best work, I have to take that attitude … I don’t care if it ever gets released, I don’t care if anyone ever likes it.”

Then again, if Gallo had no plans to release it, would he have included its presumed 2010 release in the biography he submitted to the Tetro press notes, or spent a sizable chunk of his own money on reshoots? Cannes announcements will be coming fast and furious over the next week and Promises has been rumored for a sidebar berth; we’ll see if the strange saga of this film will be revealing a new chapter soon.

Fancy a Painting?

2010-04-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

If any of you have $ 25.000 and want to spend them, here's your chance!

Vincent Gallo is selling a portrait of himself by Julian Schnabel on eBay for $25,000, explaining, "I don't want it, and it's too valuable to give away. I'd rather buy shoes."

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/04/vincent_gallo_would_rather_hav.html

Hikari Takano Interview with Vincent Gallo

2010-04-11T05:05:00.000-07:00

Hikari Takano did an interview with Vincent Gallo - don't know exactly when though...

You can find the audio file of the really good interview & listen to it here:

Interview

Seems like it happened during a conversation close to a rather busy street though ;)

A birthday, a birthday!

2010-04-11T04:45:00.000-07:00

It's Vincent's birthday today - instead of doing the whole "congratulations" thing, I thought - why not play a little game? Please use the comments to write down your own personal ending to the sentence:

"Vincent Gallo is..."

You can do a longer one, explain what you've written and so on or just use a few words (e.g. "Vincent Gallo is a genius") Everything is allowed :-)

Gallo Runs to Avoid Close Up Story

2010-04-05T01:57:00.001-07:00

Thanks Tim :-)

Some scandalous news ;)

http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/gallo-runs-avoid-story-3440995/video

"Gallo runs to avoid close up story" - enjoy the clip. My favourite quote from it is: "Gallo, we're told, has to concentrate on filming the advertisement."

Isn't it weird how these kind of things only make me respect and like him more? I smiled all the way through the clip.

And the discussion in the end - the big deal it is that they brought in a "Foreign actor". You could think it's about something seriously important and not about an advertisement for beer...chill, people, chill. World peace doesn't depend on this one.

Promises Written in...Cannes??

2010-03-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

Promises written in Water (remember? The film we were never supposed to see because he just made it for himself.) has a Wiki page now.

The interesting part - it says the following:

Promises Written in Water is a self-financed 16-millimeter black-and-white Snuff Film and is due in 2010 at The 63rd edition of Cannes Film Festival.

Oh, really?

Small News

2010-03-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

Still working on the essay from the book - until then:

Causing trouble again

Vogue Party

2010-03-08T03:57:00.000-08:00

He's been Oscar-Partying with the important people it seems - visit the link (thanks to M for the find) for some pictures that are mainly blurry but at least it's a sign of life.

Here

Lapo Elkann took exclusive pictures of the US Vanity Fair Oscar Lunch, a party for very few people, which was held in Diane von Fürstenberg's villa on the hills of Hollywood. Among the guests were Steve Martin, Victoria Beckham, Edward Norton, Ron Howard, Quincy Jones, Rupert Murdoch and Vincent Gallo

Diane von Fürstenberg and her husband Barry Diller warmly welcomed the Hollywood star system, personalities from the music and the internet worlds and the Vip jet set. While in the morning Los Angeles was hit by a torrential rain, around midday the sun reappeared, maybe called back by the party. Guests could therefore relax in a convivial and informal atmosphere, as Diane has this innate instinct to welcome and put at ease her visitors. Powerful people, Vips, Stars and Voguettes made themselves comfortable on cushions and carpets, lying on the grass, as if they were in a Casbah in Morocco.

In that sunny atmosphere, surrounded by hundred-year-old trees and sumptuously laid tables there were Victoria Beckham with her children, Edward Norton, Ron Howard, Quincy Jones, Bob Colacello, Bryan Lourd, famous agent of Tom Cruise, George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Steve Martin, before co-hosting the Oscar show with Alec Baldwin, had a chat with Rupert Murdoch. And even the Blues Brother Dan Aykroyd and the actor Paul Sorvino, father of the Oscar prize Mira Sorvino, really enjoyed the party. There was also Vincent Gallo, looking almost unrecognizable with his thick long beard, probably due to his filming of Essence of Killing, a thriller about a political prisoner. A party characterised by informality for the Oscar celebrities.

He's Alive and at Fashion Week...!

2010-02-17T08:38:00.001-08:00

http://www.celebnewswire.com/archives/vincent-gallo-and-a-pair-of-bushes.html even have a picture.

Anyone sure if that was really this year? Somehow it feels a bit older to me but that might just be me mistaking it for something else.

Motion Trio

2010-02-16T02:08:00.000-08:00

A band called MotionTrio is apparently doing the music für "The Essence of Killing". Apart from that finally being some news on that film, they also posted a picture of them with Mr Gallo on their homepage :-)

Find it here: http://www.motiontrio.com/en,news

Or, simply take a look:

Kevin Corrigan on working with Gallo

2010-02-02T00:30:00.000-08:00

Kevin Corrigan, who acted in Buffalo '66, gave an interview talking basically about several of the roles he's played so far. It's quite interesting and can be found Here (Yes, I learned how to do hyperlinks ;-)

This however is the excerpt on Buffalo '66 and on Vincent (even though he mentiones him and his style of filming in several other parts of the interview)

Buffalo ’66 (1998)—“Rocky the Goon”

KC: I met Vincent Gallo through a friend of mine, an actress named Bianca. We were both visiting her. She was in the hospital. She got sick. By the time I went to see her, she had bounced back, made a complete recovery. I walked in the room and Vincent Gallo was already there, visiting with her and telling stories. And I went, “Oh. This is the guy Bianca’s always told me about.” He’s a very entertaining, very interesting guy. And that’s where I met him. Then, three years later, I met him again at the Sundance festival, and he had seen me in something, and he liked me as an actor, and he said, “We could be brothers.” He put his face next to my face and got someone’s attention and said “Don’t you think we could be brothers?” And I reminded him that we had met before, and then he remembered me, remembered the clothes I had been wearing. Then he said, “I want us to work together, so I’m going to send you this script. We’ll play brothers.”

A year later, I got a script from him and there was no brother in the movie. He had offered me the part of Goon. Not his brother, but his friend. I thought maybe I had gotten it wrong. Maybe he’d said “I want you to play my friend in a movie.” But he confirmed it. He said, “That thing where I wanted you to play my brother, that’s a different movie. I’m not going to make that movie. I’m going to make this movie. And I want you to play Goon.” I didn’t want to play Goon. I didn’t feel comfortable playing that part. I don’t know why. I was kind of afraid to play it. I saw the character as being really, really vulnerable, and I guess I was just a coward at the time. I didn’t see the opportunity to play a great part. It just looked like a dangerous job that I was too chicken to accept. I turned it down. The story of how I got the part back…

I got nominated for an Independent Spirit Award [for Kicked In The Head] and didn’t win. I went to the awards ceremony, and I thought “It’s great just to be nominated. If I don’t win, I don’t care.” But I did care. First of all, I got drunk. Then, when I didn’t win, something happened to me. I felt very disappointed. I started to feel self-loathing. I started to have a really bad time. I left feeling really horrible. I had a lot of other things going on at the time that probably contributed to that. I went back to my hotel, and I really needed some company. I really needed some kind of validation. I was having a breakdown. I was mad at myself for being disappointed about not winning. I thought I could handle that. I couldn’t. I just felt like a piece of shit. I thought “I’ve got to get out of feeling this way. I’m going to call someone who really believes in me.” I called Vincent Gallo, because I still had his number. And I said, “Vincent, I really want to play that part now. I would be honored to play that.” And he said, “You want to play that part now?” “Yeah, I don’t know, I’m sorry I passed on it. I’d really like to do it now.” He said, “Well, I’ve already offered it to someone else.” “Oh shit. All right, I’m sorry.” “Listen, I’ll get it back. I really want you to be in it.”

So apparently he had given the part to someone else, and then fired that person and gave the part back to me. This did nothing to help me. Now I felt guilty that I’d taken the food out of somebody’s mouth. Working on that movie was as trepidatious as I thought it was going to be when I passed on it, because I internalized all of these things about it. But you know what? Vincent once said to me “You are this character.” I said, “I know. I know I’m this character. I don’t want anybody to know that I’m this character. If I play this part, everybody’s going to know that that’s really me.” But then once I was onboard, that was it. I had to go there. I had to expose myself or whatever. That’s where acting can get really weird.

I can watch that movie now, and that’s not me at all. And yet on another level, it is. I was very close to it. Once we shot it and it was over with, it wasn’t something that I looked forward to seeing. That was a new experience for me, because every time you’re in a movie, you can’t wait to see it. But not with that movie. I wanted to bury it. I felt like it was an act of penance. Like the way Harvey Keitel makes up for his sins in the streets in Mean Streets. I make up for my sins in my work sometimes. So I wasn’t even curious to see how that movie was going to come out. Well, my parts of it, anyway. I remember having this conversation with my agent at the time who was telling me, “I can get you out of this. You don’t have to do this movie.” But I said, “No, I have to, because I gave Vincent my word. I have to do it. I want to do it.” “Well, you don’t have to have your name on the credits.” So, if you notice, I’m not credited. My name isn’t on the movie. That’s because my agent at the time was able to have my name removed from the credits. Now I did sign off on that, thinking that if my name wasn’t on the credits, then no one would know I was in the movie. That’s kind of like a baby putting its hands over its eyes thinking that no one will see him.

When Vincent heard about… He didn’t know this until he was going to lock picture, then he found I didn’t want my name on the credits, and he called me, too. He was really hurt by that. I didn’t talk to him at that time. I got the message and was, “God, I don’t know what to say about that.” I justified it later on. “Well, that’s part of my performance. The conceptual performance. It’s just going to be me as this character, uncredited. I’m there, but I’m not there.” I don’t know. I finally went to see the movie, because Vincent called me again when it was going to play at the New Directors festival at the Museum Of Modern Art. He told me that I was really good in it, and he hoped that I would want to see it someday. Then I started to feel bad, because I really respect him as an artist. I think the first time I saw it, some of those ghosts came back and prevented me from seeing it objectively. But then the second time I watched it… I watched it on videotape a few years after it came out, and I laughed like crazy. I thought it was really funny. In the years after that, I got recognized from that movie a lot. Just like Vincent Gallo said I would. “People are going to remember you from this.” “No! I don’t want anybody to know I was in that.” “It’s going to be the thing people remember you for.” “Oh, great.” I’m proud of it now.

Night of Pan

2010-01-21T04:27:00.000-08:00

Sorry for posting this so belated but I've been (and still am) without internet most of the time.

Brian Butler's 'Night of Pan' with Kenneth Anger and Vincent Gallo gets L.A. premier at Projections festival

Filmmaker, artist and musician Brian Butler will premier his short film, “Night of Pan,” at the Roberts & Tilton Gallery in Los Angeles on Jan. 16 at 7:30 p.m. at the opening of Projections, a festival of rarely seen films by the likes of Spike Jonze, Harmony Korine, Jean-Luc Goddard and Miranda July. "Night of Pan" depicts Kenneth Anger, Vincent Gallo and the director himself performing a dark occult ritual that "symbolizes the stage of ego death in the process of spiritual attainment."

Projections was curated by Aaron Rose, co-curator of the successful museum exhibition (and book) "Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art & Street Culture," which toured the world through 2008. In addition to screening on Jan.16, “Night of Pan” will be screened in a loop at the gallery on Feb. 18.
Roberts & Tilton Gallery, 5801 Washington Boulevard, Culver City, Jan. 16 – Feb. 20

That article is taken from: http://www.thisisbrandx.com/2010/01/brian-butlers-night-of-pan-with-kenneth-anger-and-vincent-gallo-gets-la-premier-at-projections-festi.html

Pictures and a preview can be seen there as well :-)

Merchandise + Vincent Gallo = Unique

2010-01-07T02:41:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Scorpio Rising, a little story about the merchandise - a good one that doesn't only focus on sperm.

As there are so many pics coming along with the article (and the pics are really a vital part of the whole thing) I decided to only post the link here so you can all go and have a look:

http://www.fecalface.com/SF/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=159&Itemid=52

Did you know?

2010-01-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

I don't like lists. I really hate limiting down something like music to my personal top 5 or top whatever of the decade/year/day/summer whatever. I just know and love too many songs/albums or films to pick a few precious one without feeeling bad about leaving out at least 20 others. Anyway, everyone does their best of the decade lists now because it is the thing to do and according to metrotimes, a certain album is on their number 8.

What does it have to do with Vincent? Well, if you read their reason for picking that album, you'll know.

"PJ Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (Island): The great Patti Smith pop-rock album that Patti never actually made. Who'd have ever thought we'd get a happy, almost celebratory love album from — of all people — PJ Harvey? (Of course, it wasn't long before she returned to a darkness that was deeper than the one she exhibited earlier in her career ... but maybe that's what happens when one falls in love with and writes an album in tribute to someone as seemingly creepy as Vincent Gallo.)"

I didn't know that and as news are slow, I thought I'd post it.

I could have Vincent Gallo's baby

2010-01-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

The first really funny article on the sperm-offer at Vincent Gallo's official homepage. Even though it's quite evil in some places, I came to like the way it's written.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/jan/04/vincent-gallo-sperm

I could have Vincent Gallo's baby

Well, if I was female and had $1m. Yes, according to his website, Vincent Gallo is hawking not only T-shirts but his sperm, too. If only I'd known before Christmas

We may only be four days into the new year, but resolutions are already being tested. If you planned to give up smoking, you may have already buckled. If you planned to join a gym, you may have been put off by all the sweat and mirrors. But if you planned to get pregnant with the baby of a skinny, independent cinema darling with a ratty-looking beard, you're in luck. Vincent Gallo is selling his sperm online. For $1m.

It all sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? You simply log on to vgmerchandise.com, fork out $1m and in return you get the chance to become the mother of a child who – if it follows in its father's footsteps – will grow up to form several bad bands, star in a number of films that nobody really watches and direct films that nobody really likes. Imagine the pride that will swell up in your heart as you sit little Jimmy or little Susan down to watch the blowjob scene from The Brown Bunny.

There are caveats of course and, since this is Vincent Gallo, it's hard to tell if they are genuine or an attempt at tedious, deliberately provocative, "betcha didn't think I'd say that" shtick. As the website states: "Mr Gallo maintains the right to refuse sale of his sperm to those of extremely dark complexions. Though a fan of Franco Harris, Derek Jeter, Lenny Kravitz and Lena Horne, Mr Gallo does not want to be part of that type of integration."

It's not all bad news, though – if you're naturally blonde or the relative of a mid-century German soldier, Gallo is kind enough to offer you a $50,000 discount. And it helps if you're Jewish, too – since a "connection to the Jewish faith would guarantee his offspring a better chance at good reviews and maybe even a prize at the Sundance film festival or an Oscar". Very droll. Or slightly bitter and heavy-handed. The jury's out.

But what if you don't want to spend a million dollars to have Vincent Gallo's baby? What if you simply want him to fulfill your deepest fantasy? Well, for the knock-down price of $50,000, you can do exactly that. And this time there are no such limitations. You can do whatever you desire. Personally, I think it'd be quite nice to sit him down and spend an evening forcing him to read a book on how to make films that aren't terrible but, as a male, I'm not the market he's pitching to.

Even if you are among the, frankly, short-sighted minority who wouldn't want to shell out an inordinate amount of cash to spend some intimate time with the star of Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby, you still have a chance to own a piece of Gallo. For $2,000 you can have a tatty bit of cloth with some small flowers drawn on it; $1,500 buys you a photograph of Gallo standing in a bowling alley; and $150 buys you a T-shirt with the words Vincent Gallo written across the front in marker pen. The point is that, even in these times of severe recession, you can't not afford to have some Vincent Gallo in your life.

Or, you know, you could just get Mr Belding from Saved By the Bell to phone you up for $20 instead. That's probably just as good.

An Announcement...sort of.

2009-12-31T16:18:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year to all of you who enjoy this blog as much as I do and who come up with the best discussions and topics ever in the comments :)

And another one about the new film

2009-12-31T16:17:00.000-08:00

Playing Fugitive Taliban Member in New Jerzy Skolimowski Film

Posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 by Brendon Connelly

Read more: Vincent Gallo Playing Fugitive Taliban Member in New Jerzy Skolimowski Film

Jerzy Skolimowski’s best known films are likely those he was a writer on and of these none is better known than Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water, a great thriller that was like Dead Calm but 27 years earlier and not actually rubbish. Amongst his work as director are two films from the 70s that I found quite lastingly disturbing since my youth, the supernatural horror film The Shout and obsession thriller Deep End. More recently, you likely saw him acting in Eastern Promises, where he played Stepan, or Mars Attacks or Before Night Falls where he had smaller roles.

I’m glad to report that Jerzy Skolimowski is back on location in director mode and shooting his next film right now. The Essence of Killing “follows the story of a Taliban member who lives in Afghanistan, kills three American soldiers and then is taken captive by the Americans. He is transferred to Europe for interrogation but manages to escape from his captors and becomes an escaped convict on a continent he does not know”.

And who has Skolimowski cast as this Taliban member? Why, none other than Vincent Vito Gallo, perhaps the most head-scratch/shake inducing character in modern cinema. Just like a great one-liner, every little move Gallo makes is structured as a intriguing set-up followed by confounding pay off. When Gallo signs on to appear in a film, my ears prick up.

Reporting on the film’s production in their native Israel, Haaretz tell us that Gallo is appearing in the film alongside “two Israeli actors, Zach Cohen and Yiftach Ofir… and a third Israeli actor is currently being sought… After shooting in the Dead Sea area, the rest of the movie will be filmed in Norway and Poland”.

Further details on the film are pretty thin on the ground. Indeed, Quiet Earth have only a cut-and-paste portion of the Haaretz story and nothing else, and there’s barely another word about the picture out there. It will be interesting to see what kind of reception a film about a Taliban murderer of American soldiers receives, doubly interesting to see how Gallo reacts to any controversy.

Read more: Vincent Gallo Playing Fugitive Taliban Member in New Jerzy Skolimowski Film

Link: http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/12/31/vincent-gallo-playing-fugitive-taliban-member-in-new-jerzy-skolimowski-film/

To Quote someone in the replies: "Whoa Israel!"

2009-12-28T02:36:00.000-08:00

A new film, a new film a new film! What better christmas present (belated) could there be?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1138105.html

Dead Sea region doubling as Taliban home for new movie starring Vincent Gallo
By Nirit Anderman

American actor, director and screenwriter Vincent Gallo will portray a Taliban member in a film being shot around the Dead Sea by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, who once wrote the script for "Knife in the Water" with Roman Polanski.

Gallo arrived in Israel last week for the shooting of the film, called "The Essence of Killing." The plot follows the story of a Taliban member (Gallo) who lives in Afghanistan, kills three American soldiers and then is taken captive by the Americans. He is transferred to Europe for interrogation but manages to escape from his captors and becomes an escaped convict on a continent he does not know.
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Gallo has appeared in Martin Scorsese's film "GoodFellas", Emir Kusturica's "Arizona Dream" and Francis Ford Coppola's, "Tetro," but he is mainly identified with indie American cinema, thanks to two films that he wrote, produced and starred in - "Buffalo 66" which participated in the official competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998, and "the Brown Bunny" which participated in the official competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

The film was received at the festival with loud cries of "boo" and created a stir because of its pornographic motifs.

Gallo is expected to remain in Israel until the end of shooting, at the beginning of January. After shooting in the Dead Sea area, the rest of the movie will be filmed in Norway and Poland. According to Mark Rosenbaum of Transfax Film Productions, who is providing the production services for the Israeli part of the film, two Israeli actors, Zach Cohen and Yiftach Ofir, will participate in "The Essence of Killing" and a third Israeli actor is currently being sought.

Skolimowski is best known for two scripts he wrote at the start of his career - one for Polish director Andrzej Wajda's classic film "Innocent Sorcerers" (1960) and "Knife in the Water" (1962) which was a candidate for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.

Last year, his film "Four Nights with Anna" was released after 17 years of gathering dust.

Forgetabout Amps!

2009-12-23T03:17:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Quaids - an oldie but Goldie. And as it's so quiet today, I thought it deserves a post of its own and shouldn't get lost in the comments :-)

Forgetabout Amps!
Article By Vincent Gallo
From Sound Practices Issue 3, Early 1993

I just finished reading a copy of the famous new magazine Sound Practices Number 2. I got my copy yesterday, the same day my agent informed me that I brown nosed myself another job acting in a Hollywood movie. She told me I was cast along with Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glen Close, and Wynona Rider — so I figured I deserved MILLIONS. I had to spend the whole day on the phone with my agent and their lawyer. I told them The Gallo doesn't work for less than a million a film. They offered 10,000. I took 15 K-that's $2,985,000 less than each of the other actors was getting. With all this Hollywood-style schmoozing to do, I couldn't just relax and sit around reading my new SP #2.

The thing is that as soon as I got the job I started to worry. I've worked as an actor for 12 years but I still get it in my mind that I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and I probably don't. I always imagine all the other actors are going to think that I stink and that they will hate me. So I begin hating myself, a little more than usual. I start to feel like I deserved the ten thousand beatings I got from my father and that my mother was right when she said that I wasn't at all handsome enough to be an actor and that I should learn a trade instead, maybe plumbing.

I looked into the mirror. Ohmyg-d, she was right. I hate my greasy guinea skin, I hate my hair, my big ugly nose. I started feeling like the talentless greasy, slimy little piece of shit that I am. However, in the past I worked with some big stars like Faye Dunaway, Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Johnny Depp and other jerks like that. None of them were intimidating to work with and usually within minutes of starting a new film, I can slip back into my judgmental arrogant cocky self. THANK G-D!

Unfortunately, shooting wouldn't begin for 28 days so I had 28 days of rampant self disgust and giant fears ahead of me. Audio was the last thing on my mind. Sad because my usual neurotic obsession with Hi-Fi helps me kill some of my spare time. Maybe I should get a friend? Anyway, why wasn't I out with some chick celebrating? Why can't I enjoy the whole thing instead of worrying over and over about how much Meryl Streep will hate me?

Anyway, that night I couldn't close my eyes. I flipped on the light and began reading Number 2 to take my mind off Meryl Streep. Suddenly, a miracle! I fell into a deep, deep sleep — deeper than I have ever known. You see, Sound Practices #2 was so boring and dull that it put me out like a light. Thank G-d for Number 2 and thanks to all you unemployed clowns for those rehashed schematics. Otherwise, I wouldn't have slept for 28 days without the help of a cheap hooker or some big pills.

Yeah, Number 2 was a real snoozer. Number 1 with MY classic article on Mono was much better. Could you believe that Joe Roberts wrote an article on that $60,000 Ongaku amp? For all of you who don't know this, Joe Roberts is the cheapest, penny pinchin', food stampin', pricetag switchin', welfare check cashin', pull out your teeth and nickel and dime you to death Hi-Fi nut in America. If Joe can't trade even for something he found in a dumpster, or buy it outright for a penny, then it just don't go home with Joe. I mean the guy is too cheap to do a glossy cover for the magazine, but he will use up column space to write about a $60,000 amp he never listened to.

Joe, you bottom trawler, you cheap Bacalao, you cheap chiseler, how dare you alienate the working man!!! You have one claim to fame-you are the king of great Hi-Fi sound for under a buck. If you're too cheap to buy it, Joe, don't write about it. Leave the Ongaku column for The Absolute Sound so all those jerks can go trade in their Cello and Krell junk for it.

Joyce is my favorite writer so I read the magazine starting from the back, Japanese style. Herb Reichert's article was next and not bad either. Herb is sentimental with techno wiz thrown in. His article shed some new light on my childhood memory of the first time I hooked up my Marantz Model 2s in triode. Yes, yes, they did sound a little better — but not by that much. The second I tasted one sip of real triodes (WE 43 with 211 tubes) I shipped those beautiful brown Model 2s off to some brownholed neurotic Marantz collector who had me on the phone for hours discussing the condition of the power cord. I had to guesstimate the number of times it was plugged in and pulled out. The Bastard.

I had to deal with him though because the Japanese would only buy the big overpriced shitty sounding Model 9s. So much for the Japanese paying the most for the best sound. I can still hear echoes of Japanese accents asking for Model 9s. Model 9s stink, period.

Anyway, by the time I read through to the thorazine laced column "Art at the Edge of Science," I was sick of amps and amp talk. It's the same old Audiophile bull crapola-amps, amps, amps, this amp design, that amp, design, bigger, fatter, more this, more that, and more and more expensive. Too much amp talk. You're giving me adjida. What about horns, drivers, crossovers, preamps, phono sections, cartridges, records, speaker box design? How about classic turntables and arms, huh? How about some tape machine talk? Listen, you brown stained techno macho audio drag queen fairies, enough is enough!!! Ya hear me?

Amps are not that interesting to talk about; they don't make or break your system by themselves, and choosing an amp is a relatively easy thing to do. So stop aggravating yourself 'cause I'm gonna make the choice simple for you, but I'm gonna tell you just one time, and after this I don't want to hear the word "amp" again, Capisci?

PENTODE - Thank G-d for pentode amps otherwise you big cornholes wouldn't have all that big POWER pentodes were designed to give you, so all you retards could drive your inefficient speakers. Now, I have actually liked a few inefficient speakers in my life. I said liked not loved-DQ-10s weren't bad. My classic AR-1 with Janszen tweeter setup was good for a few records, but they are all very forgettable. All the GREAT speakers I've heard we're ultra efficient so to compromise amp sound quality for high power design fundamentally makes no sense.

However, if you must have or are stuck with inefficient speakers (or speaker if you’re hip enough to be in mono), there art a few good ones to choose from. If you like brown (and I do love brown), the Marantz Model 2 is neat. The Western Electric 142A is good. But the best pentode amp I’ve heard is the WE 124C — the early silver ones (not the gray) with the engraved (not ink stamped) number 171 C transformers. They are pretty good and I really loved mine but I yelled out "YES” in two seconds when my idol Walt Bender asked to buy them from me. I think he still uses them. He has some of the best ears on the planet (and his checks always clear). So the silver 124s can't be all that bad.

OTL - I listened to every Futterman piece, the Atmospheres, a home brew 6336 amp and an 80s German thing called a Diffenbacher. They all give me an image of what it would be like to drive a car with a 64 cylinder engine. Most are below average. The best OTLs are not bad but they are usually expensive and need frequent adjustment. And for what? You only get “not bad.’ Big deal, I say OTL, schmo-TL.

SOLID STATE - I don’t want to be heavy handed and declare that all solid state amps suck. But I have no choice because they do all suck. They are over priced over designed, unreliable, hard to fix, age horribly, and never not in a billion trillion years will they sound as good as the best tube stuff Although if you’re into the whole grunge look 70’s thing I get yourself a polyester shirt and go out and hunt down a big bad SAE, or Son of Ampzilla, or a really not too bad Bedini 10/10.

HYBRID - Ha, HA, HA 1/2 tube, 1/2 solid state. This here nor there sensibility doesn’t appeal to me. Its mediocre thinking. Its a half-assed compromise. Just say NO!

TRIODES - Ahhh, Triodes. Che bella triodes. Wonderful wonderful triodes. Beautiful triodes. Okay you get the point they’re simple and they sound great. Choosing a triode amp will let you forget about the amp part of your system. All you basically need to know is that the tube type and the output transformer are mostly responsible for the sound. But here are some tips anyway since I know you all really need to obsess on amps.

First, you have to choose between push pull and single ended. Both types can sound great. Suite the SE types only use one tube they are simpler but usually air very low output. They only work well with real efficient speakers — 100dB/W/m and up. They absolutely GLOW when hooked up to horns. It’s shocking how good they can sound.

My absolute favorite factory builts are the WE 91As (see SP #1). They are super good looking but they usually need some work to get set up and running quietly. All I can say technically is that I had better luck using single ended types without feedback. I took the feedback out of my 91s. Unfortunately 91s are expensive, hard to find, and hard to match up. So maybe this is the “mono mo-ment”...

Push pull triode amps sound great too. They will give you a little more power without sacrificing sound like the pentode. This extra crumb of power can broaden your speaker choices. I love my WE 86C amps. To my ears, these amps make more speakers sound good than any other amp. They can bring an average speaker to life.

Another way to go is to buy a pair of Magnequest transformers and build a pair of amps or get someone to do it for you. I’ve heard Mike’s latest transformers and they are untouchable. Maybe as good as the WE 171A from the 91. Can’t believe you did it, Mike. Good work. Anyway, here’s a chance for good sound a heck of a lot cheaper than the 91s. If you really want to save money use 6A3 tubes. In my 91s they sound as good as 300Bs. So all you cut throat, price bumping scumbags trying to hawk me your trashpicked 300Bs for top dollar, think again. Even in Japan, you can buy late 300Bs for $275. Actually, WE tubes don’t necessarily sound better than other companies’ versions of the same tube type, especially the rectifiers. They are only cool to have if you own the original WE amps and you are anal about things — like me and the Japanese. The tubes used in the popular WE amps go for big bucks. Don’t build around them. If you’re really into Western tubes, try the odd numbers like the 275. Use whatever is cheap and available. By the way, the Chinese 300B copies are not bad at all.

So the word from the Cafe is just get a triode amp, any triode amp. Shoot for WE 91s or 86s if you’re into classics, Or buy some transformers and get some amps built. Or talk to Don Garber or JC Morrison at Fi in NYC. They understand. There are a million tubes to try like 10s, 50s, and all the 2A3 family. Just do it and forget about it. Worry about the rest of the system. Move on to the fun stuff.

Alright, to get a discussion on speakers underway, I figured I’d throw you cheap lazy Hi-Fi nuts a home. I, Vinny GaIlo, that’s right, The Gallo. Me — Vinny C, Vincent Gallo spent $96,329 dollars, drove over 16,238 miles and yapped on the phone for hours to chisel away gear from some of the biggest bunch of money grubbing, Hi-Fi pimpin’, mis-representing, slick conniving, back stabbing, solid state listening Hi-Fi dealing jerks in the USA just so I could generate some interest and discussion on ANYTHING BUT AMPS.

I managed to collect Western Electric 12A, 13A, 15A, 16A, 22A/B, 24A/B, 25A/B, and 26 horns. I’ll be listening to these with 555, 555W, 594, and 713C drivers and 596 and 597 tweeters. Plan to set these up in a huge loft in Soho, NYC. Me and my super pal Mark Lyons will sit there like two big assholes for hours listening and A/B'ing while all you Hi-Fi pimps are sitting around watching prime-time TV and rating chips while waiting for the phone to ring so you could make another quick buck selling off some antique gear you finagled off some blind widows. That’s right Rick, Larry, Vernon, Scott, Sumner, Hitochi and Joel. Stay tuned For #4.

Chew the fat shoot the breeze mull it over, think about it, and please, please forgetahout amps. Love, Vincent.

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/sound_practices/3/forgetabout_amps2.htm

Watch it while it's there

2009-11-09T22:43:00.000-08:00

Anyone in Los Angeles...

2009-11-04T04:42:00.000-08:00

...you get the chance to view "Tetro" tomorrow (if you havent's already seen it):

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=166051501023&ref=nf

Heads up TETRO is playing LA tonight and tomorrow at the new beverly cinema.

Thanks to the Anonymous poster for the hint :-) I am still waiting for the chance to see it, especially now that I couldn't make it to the Viennale this year.

Pics from the 5th Annual Johnny Ramone Tribute

2009-10-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

That took place on October 3rd.

The Gall of Gallo

2009-10-16T05:27:00.000-07:00

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-gall-of-gallo-talking-to-the-press-is-sort-of-beneath-me-now-1802719.html. Includes information on the plot of his new movie :-)

The gall of Gallo: 'Talking to the press is sort of beneath me now'

His last movie was booed at the Cannes Film Festival and pilloried by the critics. Little wonder that Vincent Gallo is wary of interviewers

By Geoffrey Macnab

Thursday, 15 October 2009

To sceptics, there's a mismatch between the attention Vincent Gallo has attracted over the years and his actual achievements. He has directed a couple of films, worked as a character actor in a number of independent movies and released a handful of albums without becoming a major star in any of the fields in which he has been active. However, critics who try to dismiss or cariciature Gallo are frequently wrong-footed by his humour and his flair for philosophical one-liners. He can even occasionally be mildly self-deprecating.

"I came to New York to be a legend, and within five minutes of realising I was an interesting kid and other people thought so, I had given myself a nervous breakdown. I was 26-years-old before I knew what it was like to have an ordinary day," he once remarked of the journey that took him from his home town of Buffalo to New York City where he became a male model, dancer, hustler and eventually a respected musician and painter.

He gives interviews very rarely, but has agreed to talk to promote the new dystopian sci-fi cartoon feature Metropia, directed by little-known Swede Tarik Saleh, in which he voices the lead character, Roger – a Josef K-like everyman adrift in a grim futuristic world. The film screens this month/week in the London Film Festival where it has been shortlisted for The Sutherland Trophy, the festival's award for "most original and imaginative first feature".

If you are a British journalist, Gallo is likely to eye you with particular suspicion. He remembers vividly just how "mean" the British press have been to him over the years. This reached a nadir with the release of Gallo's 2003 road movie, The Brown Bunny, which was booed during its press preview in Cannes and earned instant notoriety for a graphic scene of Chloe Sevigny's ghost performing fellatio on Gallo.

He re-edited the film after Cannes and received respectful notices from critics who had hated it in its first incarnation. Even so, the filmmaker is still smarting at the British journalists who (he says) twisted and wilfully misinterpreted his words after interviewing him in Cannes – and he makes it clear from the outset that he doesn't have high hopes of how I will treat him in print. "He'll say he will [be friendly] but then he'll turn it around even deeper against me, in the British tradition," Gallo whispers to the publicist as the interview begins. "I don't mean to sound arrogant but [talking to the press] is sort of beneath me now. I am operating in a different frequency now. I am trying to grow in a different way," he declares.

With his lean features, beard and shock of hair, Gallo looks a little like a hunger striker or a martyr from some old Renaissance painting. (It's no surprise, either, that he was once in the running to play Charles Manson.) His old persecution complex hasn't gone away altogether but he is mellower than his reputation suggests.

"A lot of people think I am a lot darker than I really am. I am not a depressive person. I am a little nervous and a little easy to throw into unbalance but I am basically a happy person."

Born in 1961 in Buffalo, New York, Gallo came to prominence in the 1980s. His work philosophy is straightforward – prospective patrons or employers should give him complete creative control or pay him lots of money.

"If you want me to work 20 hours a day, seven days a week for free for you, all you have to do is give me 100 per cent control ... but if you fucking tell me [to do] one thing, you had better fucking pay me up the wazoo, because otherwise there's nothing in it for me! If you pay me up the wazoo, I'll do anything."

One of Gallo's most recent roles is as the star of Francis Ford Coppola's new feature Tetro, a drama about the fraught relationship between two brothers. He doesn't reveal whether or not he was paid up the wazoo for his services but clearly relished working with Coppola.

"If I could wave a wand and have gotten to work with Francis Ford Coppola at any period in his career – it would have been at any period in his career!" Gallo reflects. "I just wanted him to know me. I wanted him to be around me and give me some attention. If I could say I could have been in any Coppola film, I would have probably wanted to star in The Rain People. If I could say the period when I would really have liked to see what he was like, it would have loved to have seen him in his biggest, most powerful Cotton Club, Dracula period."

He suggests that he is even more "stubborn" as a filmmaker than Coppola. He won't make a movie unless he gets his own way. Three features (one as yet unreleased) in 10 years doesn't seem like much of a haul for a director who has been acclaimed as one of the most distinctive independent filmmakers in the US. Yet he seems unbothered by his low productivity.

When he is not discussing his work, Gallo talks in sometimes baffling fashion about transcendence, consciousness and good vibrations. He attributes his new-found openness to his experiences in analysis. "I went for many years to a very classical psychiatrist. Together in that relationship, I had some growth ... not a lot because it's a very slow process, 20th century psychoanalysis. After 12 years, there was some insight, some consciousness, some reflection and some growth."

The psychiatrist died around the time of the premiere of Buffalo '66 (1998), At this point, Gallo's behaviour changed. "I felt I was disconnected again. I didn't have one day a week when I was checking in and reflecting on myself – so I developed a lot of unconsciousness. A lot of that was reflected in my behaviour in the press, socially and with girls."

Unpick the gobbledegook and what Gallo seems to be saying is that this was when he was at his most erratic. He calmed down after beginning to visit another psychiatrist. "He was not so caught up in psychoanalysis. He was connecting in another way. I told him the story of my past. He seemed to have a real compassion."

Six years after The Brown Bunny, Gallo is now close to completing a new film, Promises Written in Water. The work is self-financed. "It's only a few hundred thousand dollars. It's not a lot of money ... it's a lot but it's not unbearable," he says.

The film is about a beautiful young girl who is terminally ill. She decides not to go to the hospital or have treatment but to wait until the pain becomes unbearable – and then to end her life. Her one fear is what is going to happen to her body when she is dead. She wants to be cremated. She reaches out to a photographer she meets, asking him to make sure that her wish is fulfilled. He takes a job in a funeral home so that he has the experience to perform the cremation. It sounds morbid in the extreme. "What I have tried to do in this movie is to make choices as if this was the first movie ever made and not to buy into the story of what cinema should be," explains Gallo. This means making the film on the hoof, without much in the way of preparation.

"I shoot a bunch of stuff – improvs, things when people don't know they're being filmed. I look at the footage and separate it into filters. The first category is anything that is beautiful, photographically ... beautiful could be out of focus, it could be a mistake. Beautiful can be intentional. It can be just luck, it can be because the film is processed a little funnily ... Now, I take the film and start to look at the people in the film and I want them to be beautiful. Again, beauty is relative. Beauty can be beautiful ugly. It can be the back of their heads ... "

Continuity editing is deliberately askance. Characters don't wear the same costumes from scene to scene. The director wanted the film to be "honest". He didn't want his cast to "perform" but instead demanded that they behaved naturally on camera. They are mainly unknowns, although Sylvester Stallone's son, Sage, appears.

"He was awful!" Gallo gasps. "I was off camera, screaming at him at the top of my lungs. Then afterward, I just cut out my voice and what was left was him answering these screaming questions – pick the phone up, put it down! – and what is left is this performance that is number one in cinema history. It opens the movie. It's four minutes long – it's just a miracle I have this scene."

Whether we'll ever get the chance to see Promises Written in Water is a moot point. Gallo made it for himself, not for the world at large. "I have no intention of expecting anyone to see it. I am so tuned into it that I can't imagine if it will have the same impact for someone else who doesn't know all the things I know."

As long as Gallo is satisfied with the film himself, he says that will be enough. "Don't take this the wrong way if you're going to write about it. I am giving zero attention to what the audience thinks. It's not that I resent them or don't care about them. I feel that if I am going to make my best work, I have to take that attitude ... I don't care if it ever gets released, I don't care if anyone ever likes it."

Two small tidbits

2009-10-07T04:49:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Anonymous poster, a lovely interview clip about Fashion Shows :-)

And, the "Phone-Number-Scandal" of 2009 ;o)

Can be found here: http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/vincent_gallo_phone_faker_vexes_Ux76b4eJPULILK7Z3HkdlK and in various other sources all over the net.

Downtown filmmaker Vincent Gallo would like the man who has his old phone number to stop impersonating him.

"I had a New York number for years, before 'Buffalo 66' even came out," the often colorful actor/director tells Page Six. "I eventually transferred to a California area code, and the phone company gave someone my old number. When the guy would get calls that were for me, instead of telling them they had the wrong number, he'd play along and pretend to be me."

Gallo says the impostor even set up a Gmail account with his name to further confuse people. "He screwed up a number of business deals for me and also misled girls in certain ways," he says. "He was trying to create intimacy and would say strange things. I figured it would eventually stop, but it hasn't."

Vincent GalloThe last straw came, he says, when a female editor at Vice magazine called his old number to invite Gallo to a screening of "Where the Wild Things Are" at the Tribeca Grand on Thursday night, and the impostor creepily requested her photo.

"She e-mailed me very confused," Gallo relates. "I just want him to stop." E-mails and calls we made to the impostor were, predictably, not returned.

Gallo, who famously had a graphic sex scene with Chloe Sevigny in "The Brown Bunny," is no stranger to controversy. After critic Roger Ebert panned the 2003 film, Gallo called him a "fat pig" and put a hex on Ebert, wishing him colon cancer.

Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, Ebert replied, "Although I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of 'The Brown Bunny' . . . The video of my colonoscopy is more entertaining than your movie." The two eventually reconciled.

F***ing Long Interview from Galore

2009-10-06T12:07:00.001-07:00

...which is a German online magazine to be found at www.galore.de.

And because I am nice and with LOADS of help, this has been translated to English :) Please don't make a big deal if there are any little spelling mistakes in there or something - I think it works quite well and I also know we might have overlooked something, but you surely get a good idea of what he said in Venice.

09/04/2009, Venice, Villa Foscari. „ Be carful. Vincent Gallo will ask what you want to know from him,“ warns the PR- Lady prior to the Interview. But this is dispensable - the 48- year-old actor, musician, director, photographer and painter with the liabiltiy to the extremes doesnt show any defense, but open minded friendliness. His appearence- deep in the holes set eyes ,mazy hair, airtight beard- reminds of an Old Testament Preacher, and indeed Gallo spins wildly enlaced thought-threads; admittedly without orthodox furor but healthy distance. In between he builds an abstract sculpture out of a napkin. In the heat of the converstation he bursts trough any timelimit. Even as the implied PR-Lady enters the room to pick him up for lunch, he cotinues to sprinkle briskly. Even the topic „food“ encourages surprising considerations, that becomes clear right at the begining of the meeting on account of a plate full of berries on the table.

Mr. Gallo, You look at the berries so scepticly. Don´t you want any?

Vincent Gallo: No, better Not. Since i know what real berries taste like.
I conicidentally know the head of the Dole Food Company. He has the biggest private greenhouse on earth, where the earliest genetic variants of all fruits are cultivated- from seeds that are 10.000 – 100.000 years old. When you eat a berry there- it is truly unbelievable, not to compare to anything else. Even at an organic farmer´s market you can get only modified versions, nothing pristine. But there it is proverbial like in the Garden of Eden- i never had such an intense experience before.

How much time to you spend in this Garden of Eden?

Unfortunatly not as much as i would like. The problem is, that i can only hardly bear the owner.
He is not a bad person, but an extremly agressive businessman like this: „I! I created this!“
When i want to visit him, i have to build a protective barrier around my heart.
Usually i can accomplish that once a year.

What’s it like when it comes to movies? Do you only work with directors you can bear or do you also accept difficult candidates? What was it like when you were shooting “Tetro” with Francis Ford Coppola?

I’ll go the long way round to answer that question. I grew up in a family with a very low income in Buffalo, New York. A very unharmonious home. I went to New York City, out of reasons that i still dont understand, and there i started doing peculiar performance-shows: i pretended crying jags in front of restaurants, i let myself colide with cars, i ran trough the streets screaming.

Why did you do that?

I had told friends to be there at a certain point of time to watch me. I did that for quite a while and one day, a film student asked me to act in his debut as a director. And I said: “How much do you pay?” And he started to explain that the whole things was a very personal art project and that he couldn´t pay anything and i said: „Man, i´ve got my own problems. I’m in it for money though.“
He said: „Fuck you. you´re no artist.“ and off he went. A few months later he came back and paid me $ 500. And since then the first thing I ask when I decide whether to make a movie or not is:
“How much do you pay?” And that also counts for a Francis Ford Coppola.

But there are no typical commercially succesful projects in your filmography. That seems a bit contradictory.

Maybe that’s because, in Hollywood, you’re not alloed to ask for money that open. But I can’t change it. I don’t insist that this is a good attribute of me. I’m not a hero.
This behaviour, this fixation on money, only reflects the narrow minded way of thinking I grew up with. And it's not that I would get a lot of offers. That's why I can't afford to ponder whether I like a certain director or not. I have to take what I get as long as they pay me for it. When I did the synchronization of the Swedish film "Metropia", it was just the same. But as soon as I had accepted the job, I tried hard to deliver the best work possible. I put myself under so much pressure that I'm difficult to work with for my colleagues. And that leads to conflicts.

But your are looking for conflicts with the audience. Your second work as a director, „The Brown Bunny“ got booed by the full audience in cannes.

But it was also funny somehow. Who can make 3.500 people boo? I never had so much attention before. And people didn't do it at the end, they started right away with the opening credits. They hated the film right from the start. As soon as they read "Directed, Written and Produced by Vincent Gallo" they started booing. Because everyone knew: this is the movie, where i get blown.

But you had to know that the explicit blow job would lead to extreme reactions:

I don't like explicit sexuality. In my newest film, there is nothing of that - not even a kissing scene. In "Metroia" I felt slightly uneasy because my character was naked. And when you look at "Buffalo 66" and my photography, everything is really discreet. When it comes to "Brown Bunny", I was confronted with a certain dilemma. I wanted to present a situation I knew way too well from my experience: the breakdown of an intimate relationship and the intense mix of sadness, anger, regret and resentment that you feel when it happens. In this context, the physical contact with your partner becomes really uncomfortable. And that's why I thought: Usually, we do see explicit images in the context of sexual fantasies. But what if I took an icon of erotic and show it in connection with anger and sadness?

But that doesn't mean you are forced to take such extreme measures.

Trust me - it wasn't fun for me. I am very concerned with my private life. I don't even show myself at the pool in bathing clothes, I never even owned any. There are no pictures of me topless. When I had to lie next to my colleague Maribel Verdu in a love scene in "Tetro" I was so tense that Francis Ford Coppola said: "You did 'Brown Bunny' so just kiss her!". But in "Brown Bunny" it was important that I put my dick in Chloé Sevigny's mouth. I didn't even think about what that would look like, I only thought about the bigger context of it all. Only when I started cutting the movie, when I saw the images out of context, I thought "Oh God!". But on the other hand it's not erotic at all. The whole thing was no performance stunt, no gag, no act of narcism. I put three years of my life in this movie to achieve the greatest aesthetical perfection possible.

How did you deal with the negativity that hit you afterwards.

I found a simple solution for things like that: Ieliminated my desire for love and accpetance. I don´t need any of that- that way i can deal with rejection and misjudgement towards myself. I am not particularly proud of that, but that is how i am. Probably because of my childhood.

Tell me about it...

Once, my mother did something really evil: I had let my hair grown in a certain way and I was the coolest boy at school. But my mother was a hairdresser and she cut my hair. I told her: "If you destroy this hairstyle, I'll never ever talk to you again." But she didn't listen and cut my hair short. As a consequence I didn't talk to her for three and a half years. Whenever I am confronted with something negative, I stop caring. I don't need anyone.

What is your emotional situation now? Are you still rejecting love and friendship?

I don't find love, but I am happy as ever in my life. Even though I have always been happy - even when I have been fighting with other people on the street. But I am never depressive, I don't ponder negative things. I wake up in the morning, I see something and I think: "What a color! Isn't that great?" I always think in a constructive way. What can I build, organize, create? I love my life, I never want to die. The only thing that irritates me is when things don't work the way I want them to work.

Don't you have any fears?

I used to...no more though. When I was younger, a lot of my actions were driven by fear. Because I was scared to be poor I worked harder. Because I thought women could reject me, I looked for partner I had complete control over. But now I don't think about my fears anymore, I grew as a person.

You want to be immortal - don't you fear death?

The one thing has nothing to do with the other. I said I want to live forever because I reject all kind of prefabricated opinions. When I grew up, people said: "Oh, your uncle, he's 50, he's old now." They believed everything was written down statistically. "This is the average age. When a man is older than 40, he has to have his prostate checked." But nothing is written down! We can choose a totally different point of view. If I die, it doesn't matter. Only the fact that I wanted to live forever is wonderful. I feel free and I am not limited by any kind of prejudices.

Are you religious?

I had an interest in Buddhism, I have been to temples, where 5000 monks were singing - that's an overwhelming experience. But I don't believe in religious enlightenment. The way is a process that never ends. That's why I am not religious. I am rather fascinated by the cosmos.

What exactly?

Once you realize how far away the closest star is, you lose your ego. Alone the fact that we use the word "world" for our earth, which is a tiny planet, seems naiv to me. We have to see our life in a different relation. The death of Julius Ceasar happened 2.000 years ago but what does that mean in relation to the age of humanity? Our history started six million years ago and we have millions ahead of us, hopefully. Everything we consider to be absolute size seems relative.
We'd like to have that a bit more detailed.
For example, was does "poor" mean? Years ago it meant something different than it does now and a hundred years from now it will mean something totally different again. In the early 20th century people worked under conditions we would call slavery now. That was accepted back then. We always see things in the wrong context. But only when you put things in the right relation, you stop taking your position and point of view seriously. And that way you lose your ego.

Vincent Gallo and Buffalo 66 - by Jerry Tallmer

2009-09-22T07:55:00.000-07:00

An old but to me new interview I just found (here: http://www.siegelproductions.ca/filmfanatics/gallo.htm)that I really like - it's sort of different...

Vincent Gallo and Buffalo 66
By Jerry Tallmer

Jerry Tallmer
New York City journalist and critic
One of founders of “ The Village Voice”
Created the Obie Awards (Off-Broadway Theatre) in 1956

It was 12 noon, the appointed hour, on a recent sunny Sunday, but the buzzer didn't answer and didn't answer and didn't answer, so the next most logical thing was to look around for a street phone, and spot one on the next corner, the intersection of Elizabeth and Spring, and go to it and put a quarter in and dial the guy's number -- or just be in the middle of dialing when there he was, Vincent Gallo, in his undershirt, crossing from the other side of the street toward his own doorway, his hand raised in a hi-ya salute.

"I was up there, working on some tape," Gallo said, indicating an upper floor of the building across the way. "I was looking out the window and saw you, so I came running down."

He points to the top of his own building, the Little Italy tenement, in which he's had a tiny pad subsequently expanded into a tiny duplex, since he was 17, a runaway kid from Buffalo, N.Y.

"Scorsese's parents were married on that roof," he says. "Joe DiMaggio's father or uncle or something owned the building next door. Eric Bogosian's place is somewhere around here too."

Etched here and there at our feet into what was once the wet cement is the name GALLO in big block capitals. A few feet away: VINCENT GALLO.

"There are around a hundred of those scattered all around town," the actor murmurs. Then,
straight-faced: "Seventy percent of them I did myself. Then girls started doing them too, adding their names and telephone numbers."

Yes? Well?

"Well, I'm listed in the phone book. I'm very open to girls calling."

That's in that breath. In another he talks of his lone-wolf loneliness -- his near-celibacy -- for along time now.

And so, in its own sweet sharp full-of-contradictions way, does the kookie, original, quite lovely movie he's turned out, "Buffalo '66," written by Vincent Gallo, directed by Vincent Gallo, starring Vincent Gallo.

One of the hits of the Museum of Modern Art/Lincoln Center's 1998 New Directors/New Films series,"Buffalo '66" brings a difficult guy named Billy Brown out of prison and back to the scene of hisscrewed-up boyhood under ludicrously self-involved, dysfunctional parents (Ben Gazzara, Anjelica Huston), who couldn't care less whether Billy lives or breathes.

Accompanying him willy-nilly in this visit is the gorgeous teenage dance student (Christina Ricci) whom Billy has kidnapped and is dragging home to prove to those same wacko folks that, yes, he has a wife.

To this totally unfrightened girl (whose gearshift car he can't drive, so she does) he blusters, like a 10-year-old: "If you make me look bad, I'll kill you right in front of my mom and dad - and I won't ever talk to you again in my whole life." Beautiful.

Perhaps the knife-edge face of Vincent Gallo, blue eyes blazing with sensitivity, is already familiar to you from Abel Ferrara's "The Funeral" (in which Gallo plays a slain 1930s working-class radical), Alan Taylor's "Palookaville" (about a gang that couldn't rob straight), or Emil Kusturica's "Arizona Dream" (wherein Gallo did a knockout parody of Cary Grant versus the crop-duster in Hitchcock's "North by Northwest").

Perhaps you've seen him in any of a half-dozen pictures he's made abroad, three of them directed by´Claire Denis in France.

Most probably you've seen him, even if you didn't know it, as that lean and hungry hunk in the Calvin Klein CK cologne ads shot by Richard Avedon. You'll soon also have the chance to see him in Roland Joffe's "Goodbye, Lover" (as, says Gallo, "a very methodical assassin"); as "a very sweet pothead" in Aki Kaurismaki's "Los Angeles Without a Map"; and as "a man on the run from the law and the mob" in Kiefer Sutherland's "Truth or Consequences, N.M."

Busy fellow, Vincent Gallo. But never so busy as in these past weeks, getting "Buffalo '66" ready for release.

"Come upstairs," he said on that recent sunny Sunday. "I worked all night, to 8 a.m., on the
poster and the soundtrack cover and the sequence mix of the music for the film. Like I did the trailer too -- one of the best things I did.

"I tell you something," Gallo said, plucking at his miniature Mephistopheles beard. "If you're a perfectionist, it can be overwhelming. When I made the movie, in my mind I was making a classic musical.

"So when Ben Gazzara sings (or, to be exact, lip-synchs to a scratchy 24-year-old recording of "Fools Rush In" by Gallo's own father), or when Christina Ricci does her tap dance, or in the bedroom scene where we kiss (she leading the way for a frozen, terrified Billy), it's choreography. Those are musical numbers like in those old Hollywood musicals.

"To make a movie with '50s realism, that's what John Cassavetes does. People should understand I'm not interested in that."

What Vincent Gallo the actor, the director, the musician, the composer, the artist, the model, the free-thinker, the free-speaker is in fact interested in is . . . everything; not least each and every one of the 5,500 movies in his video collection.

The Billy of "Buffalo '66" was born in that city in that year, on a day on which the Buffalo Bills ignominiously blew a championship football game. Billy's mother had to miss the game on TV because she was giving birth to Billy. She wishes she'd skipped the childbirth instead.

Vincent Gallo was born in Buffalo on April 11, 1962, four years before his fictional alter ego, and if the bit about his mother is only, shall we say, poetic license, any of the extreme behavior in "Buffalo '66" ascribed to his father (terrific performance by Ben Gazzara) is, that father's son will tell you, understated.

"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. My mother is Jacamina Fantuzzo Gallo, called Jan, or Janet (as in the film). They like to say they're Sicilian."

It was to avoid a beating from his father that 13-year-old Vincent, an electronics whiz-kid and budding thief, had, back there in Buffalo, taped his old man singing "Fools Rush In" to an old Nelson Riddle background arrangement.

"So 10 years ago," says 36-year-old Vincent, "I'm driving across the country in a car with one hundred 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 'Fools Rush In' and I'm stunned at my father's 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' (when she was 9 years old).

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."

This being the same father who - you've said - yanked you out of the back seat and smashed your face into the rearview mirror when, on a Christmas trip home to Buffalo, you told him that Stella Adler ("and she taught Marlon Brando") had accepted you into her acting class?

"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. 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.

"Incidentally, I never did raise the tuition for the Stella Adler classes, which was all for the best."

And in the movie, when the girl asks if she can see photos of you as a kid, and the mother bellows: "Honey, where's the Billy picture?" - i.e., the one and only Billy picture.

"Very true to my childhood." (Pause.) "Whereas they have a shrine to my brother. I was
the best athlete, the best student in the family, and had the best girlfriends, but he dated one pretty cheerleader or something." (Pause.) "If I had three kids (Vincent also has a sister]) and I was one of them, I'd be my favorite by a lot."

Billy Brown couldn't have put it better.

"So at 16," says the real Billy Brown, "I quit Sweethome Senior High School 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, lugging this huge suitcase I'd brought with me, 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 and hung out there. I wasn't a vagabond either; I was a smart kid. It was lonely, isolating, and overwhelming.

"Then I met a young guy, a hustler, a hip kid, and he let me crash at his place in that great big building at 200 Central Park West. He lived with some life-insurance guy. Ever seen the movie 'The Servant'? It was a relationship like that.

"Went back to Buffalo for three months to get my high-school degree, sold all my possessions, came back to New York with a few hundred dollars, and checked into the Bond Hotel, on Chambers Street, $22 week. Finally I found this apartment, and that hustler kid introduced me to (artist and musician) Jean-Michael 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 wonderful, intense, really intense. It was just that nobody had any money. Nobody got big. Except maybe Madonna.

"Being big," said Vincent Gallo, sitting there in his Stanley Kowalski undershirt in the
six-foot-square kitchen of his little white-on-white, Quaker-style apartment, "just means
you have impact. And if you can do something with it, it's exciting.

"I'd always thought money was the big thing in my life, and then I suddenly realized that I might be dying any day and that you can win the money thing and lose the impact.

"Marcel Duchamp had impact, very sophisticated impact, the best kind. He's my favorite artist."

Yes, Vincent, and he quit as an artist at the height of it all.

"Yeah. I think if Rauschenberg and Jasper John had quit like that, it would have been better for both of them."

Gallo isn't quitting, not yet. He's trying to raise the money for a movie to be called "The Brown Bunny" - if he can have the ironclad guarantee of "one-million percent" creative control.

"I still want money, but not at the risk of losing impact. That's why I can't make a bad second film," he says, fist hitting kitchen table. "Because then 'Buffalo '66' is wiped out."

All he'll say about "The Brown Bunny" is that it's about two brothers who drive across the country to see a girl. "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."

An Interview with Vincent :-)

2009-09-15T04:31:00.001-07:00

Someone apparently managed to fullfil all his criteria ;)

Metropia and interview with Vincent Gallo

We saw today here at the Biennale the wonderful swedish animation movie Metropia: in 2024 the whole Europe will be connected with a high-speed metro system, an enormous subway between cities. The scenery is just great (lovely Berlin's Hauptbahnhof in decay!). Here a video.

Vincent Gallo give his voice to the main character, and today I interviewed him:

Vincent Vito Gallo (Buffalo 11.4.1961) is an American actor, director, painter, musician and model of Sicilian origin. Here at the 66th Biennale in Venice he dubs the protagonist of Metropia, animation movie by Tarik Saleh: come half an hour late, Gallo, T-schirt, tight black trousers and leather boots, was very friendly in answering our questions.

In Metropia we face themes like environment's destruction, no hope for the future and apocalyptic human relationships: what is your own opinion about?

I would say that the film has its own view, which does not correspond to mine: if you just think that the sun is 8 and a half minutes away at the speed of light, you realize that all this things are just minor concerns, details. In the world there are lots of things that we do not even are able to imagine, so I direct my energies to a bigger goal.

How does this point of view influence your cinema?

Ma story is very simple: I come from a poor family, a tough experience for me; I started very pragmatically, elementary, without any artistic pretension or philosophy. My work was a way to earn some money, like when I used to wash dishes in restaurants, I was the best of New-York! Gradually I started to do a kind of performances, staring at the people eating in the restaurant, crying, and make them feel bad. To me it was an idea of “survival”: I started working in the cinema only when I was sure that I was going to be paid. Also in Buffalo 66 I was supposed to be only an actor, but when the producer offered me a better payment if I was also the director, I accepted. So I became director! That movie helped me to have a better relationship with girls too...

Do you like Italian cinema?

Years ago I used to watch many Italian, mainly in TV: after I became interested in B-movies, I like the camera movements, the photography. The problem with Italian cinema were financial aids: these work against the idea of “survival” as I said before; you have to really get involved in your movie. I took part in some Italian productions, but they lacked the genius...

Do you make music in the same way in which you make movies?

No: in the cinema everything is stressful, you have to work with a lot of professionals, lots of people; in music you can be relaxed: for instance I paint while I listen to music (Gallo was a friend of J.-M. Basquiat).

In Metropia love is a revolutionary power...

Actually I loved more things than people: for 10 years I didn't have a girlfriend, I always felt embarrassed: even now when I sleep with a girl I have the feeling that the bed does not belong entirely to me anymore, as if I couldn't reach every corner of the bed. Maybe because I had to sleep till 11 with my grandpa, who had eventually a wooden leg! So uncomfortable...

Differences in dubbing and acting?

It was easy to just give my voice to the movie: today one gives too much importance to the image, to the personal appearance; if I don't see me I cannot think “How ugly I am!”. For instance now I don't want you to take pictures because I don't like my hairstyle. (He is preparing for his next film). Anyhow I accepted Metropia because of the money they offered: even tough I never did a blockbuster, it's just because nobody offered it to me seriously.

Do you consider yourself an outsider?

We are all insiders: I would be so happy if everybody loved me: I don't know ho said that I am a difficult and hard guy...

http://babylonreloaded.blogspot.com/2009/09/metropia-and-interview-with-vincent.html

I love nasty men...

2009-09-14T02:03:00.000-07:00

According to Times Online, Vincent has showen the "worst behaviour by an actor" at the Venice Film Festival.

Why, you all might ask?

Worst behaviour by an actor Vincent Gallo, promoting the Swedish animation Metropia, apparently gave a warning that he would terminate interviews in which the words “but”, “however” or “only” were used. He also requested prior approval of journalists so that he could veto those he didn’t like the look of.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6829464.ece

You have to love him - and I don't even mean that in an ironic sort of way. I actually expected that he had done way worse than this when I read that his behaviour had been bad.

And did he show himself there yet? Well kinda sorta...

METROPIA - Longer Clip

2009-09-08T10:48:00.001-07:00

Remember Metropia? The animated film Vincent did together with Juliette Lewis? Dark, gloomy? There was a teaser trailer a while ago and as it will be shown at the Venice Film Festival, a longer Clip has surfaced.

Me Likes. But then again, I am into these dark animated films - I also fell for Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride and so on (even though I know these are nothing like Metropia).

And the last one (at the moment)

2009-08-17T01:57:00.001-07:00

http://www.bluecomet.tv/?p=846

Vincent Gallo: The King of Conceptual Confidence*
posted by philip sumner on August 17th, 2009
*another perspective on two shows with Vincent Gallo and Sean Lennon

I’ve been a fan of Vincent Gallo’s since a screening of The Brown Bunny at the Nuart Theatre. This was soon after the Cannes debacle and the curse, the notorious billboard, etc.

At the Nuart I found his film to be a carefully crafted, beautiful piece of work. The elements; the van, the motorcycle, the wardrobe; seemed thoughtfully and lovingly considered, and the care put into these things glowed from the screen. To those within the audience who were receptive, it was an aesthetic philosophy. I certainly will never think of Gordon Lightfoot the same way… or Jackson C. Frank. Come on. I was floored by this film.

What is seldom, if ever, mentioned when The Brown Bunny is discussed is the tension that spreads through the audience as the climactic scene nears. I had never felt anything like it in a movie-going experience. The air seemed thick. And this, the finale to something that moments ago felt on its own so entirely different and new.

After the film, the Q&A began. Gallo’s answers were thoughtful and delivered in a fierce, intelligent manner. I witnessed something very special. Something modern, well planned and real. Something that pushed the language of film and aesthetics into the future– and right here in my lifetime. I didn’t have to look back for Godard or Dylan. (I’d term Gallo the “anti-Dylan,” as Dylan relies on mystery and avoidance in interviews.) I didn’t have to wonder what any of those revolutionary times were like– those moments you read about. This was mine, it was right here and, thankfully, far more subtle.

Vincent Gallo and Sean Lennon at the Red Devil Lounge, San Francisco
So here now, five years later I find myself catching a flight up to San Francisco– literally hours before the show– to see Gallo perform at the Red Devil Lounge with Sean Lennon. I had read about RRIICCEE and felt I had a good idea of what I was in for: it was to be an example of spontaneous composition. This concept though turned out to be much more complex and its reception certainly differed from my expectations.

Sean Lennon played first with his band, or rather, with his girlfriend, Charlotte. Together, they compose The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger (The GOASTT). Their set was fairly traditional. I found Lennon’s voice and presence soothing and was impressed by his kindness, self deprecating humor and skilled guitar work. Charlotte’s vocals were wonderful as well. It seemed clear her personality was well balanced by Lennon’s, and they were very pretty together. They finished their set, Lennon’s guitar blaring and cutting through the room louder than all the other sounds of the night.

Then came Gallo, and here is what literally happened: He, Lennon and Rudy (whose name was mentioned once by Lennon) walked on. Gallo sat in the corner, his back to the audience, and played alternately guitar, bass and a melodica. Rudy played a synth and sometimes guitar, Lennon played drums and guitar.

They played melody lines and simple progressions that melded into each others’. At times Gallo created different levels and tones of feedback. There seemed to be a moment fairly early on in which the three came together and the very unstructured sound, sonically nearly crescendoed. It did not. At another point Gallo played a touching line on the melodica. Again, as the trio moved toward unison, the momentum dissipated and the moment ended. Gallo sang a short, delicate, improvised song, and they walked off stage. Throughout the show, the din of the crowd had grown, and with their departure, the crowd’s confusion continued.

Later, Lennon played a set with Bob Weir, and the crowd hooted and hollered to traditional tunes like “Oh, Boy!” and “Pretty Peggy-O.” Gallo stood off to the side as a line of girls 15-to-20 deep waited to meet him.

Vincent Gallo and Sean Lennon at Anthology, San Diego
Anthology was quite a different venue, an upscale dinner and Jazz club. This time Gallo took the stage first. He was joined by Rudy and two other performers. His only comment to the audience was to the effect of “We’ll play first, The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger will play next.” They started with two players on drum sets at opposing ends of the stage, Gallo on guitar, and the other performer (a young girl in a red dress with a flower in her hair) sat on the floor with a keyboard. Gallo played facing away from the crowd on the far corner of the stage.

The band was projected onto a large screen above; the image looked as though there was no band playing. At times Gallo glanced upward at the image and seemed to remove himself farther toward the outskirts of the frame. Again, there was a buildup somewhat reminiscent of the pre-show tuning of an orchestra, and the group played into what nearly became a song. This time, due to the superior sound of the club and the extra players, the sound was large, and full and spread out– built of the intertwining melodies, loops and beats. In all, this, the first movement of the night was subjectively the most impressive, although it seemed the audience had not yet realized the show had begun. As soon as it seemed the song was found, one that could satisfactorily be improvised and embellished upon, it dissipated.

The show went on similarly. Gallo played melodica and bass. He sang more than at the Red Devil, and the quality of his voice was apparent here on the better system, his notes floating among the other instruments. One vocalization was similar lyrically, though not structurally, to another he sang at Red Devil. The final vocal was lyrically compelling, though I won’t document the lyrics here. They left the stage with a quiet “thank you” to the audience, who had chattered throughout the performance.

Lennon and Charlotte played their set next, and again it was traditional singer-songwriter, and very well done. Again Lennon’s guitar work and, more notably, his progressions were very interesting. I look forward to reading through The GOASTT’s lyrics, as they were hard to catch at times.

Much conjecture ensued through the nights following each show, in the cold parking lot of the Travelodge in San Francisco, and, ironically, over a cup of Ghirardelli’s chocolate in San Diego. Why was there so little contact with the audience? Why was his back turned? Why was the audience allowed to disengage itself? My friend Leona thought perhaps we were over-thinking things. I did not.

Gallo is, after all, the man responsible for arguably the most controversial and best film of the 90’s, and easily the most controversial and most progressive of the new century. This is the man who just finished working with Coppola, who lived briefly with Burroughs, played with Basquiat and who collects hi-fi gear 99.99 percent of the population can not even dream exists. EMT turntables?? The man whose 300-square-foot apartment was worthy of a magazine spread. Yes, the same man who gained the friendship and respect of Mr. Discipline, Johnny Ramone. Whether or not Gallo had the charisma to charm a crowd was not in question. In fact, a few words of explanation would have done the trick. Whether or not his actions were calculated was not in question.

After the first show, late into the night, I declared Gallo’s performance “perfect” to Leona. I did not fully understand why yet, but I knew that in its own way, it was. We had both yearned for the audience to be controlled and impressed– or at least for them to have been more receptive. That had not happened. I was beginning to understand that that was not an objective, though. And I was beginning to understand the magnitude of Gallo’s conceptual confidence, his willingness to commit to his conceptual vision.

Gallo has said: “I’ve been booed before, my parents booed me. No booing is going to hurt me.” And over the years he has made it known that he is not afraid to attack public figures with whom he disagrees or who have meant to harm him in any way– Kusturica, Harmony Korine, Tarantino, Christina Ricci, Roger Ebert and Steve Albini, to name a few.

This drums up publicity, but as well, lends an element of protection and personal preservation. You would be hard-pressed to find more vicious public attacks than those expressed by Gallo. In turn, you would be hard-pressed to find someone else who so determinedly injects their own personal, singular vision into the public spectrum. Vincent Gallo, the man with “the vengeance of a thousand men,” whose explanation of the public’s expressed opinion toward himself is most closely mirrored by that of Charles Manson.

I thought about my last moments in the Red Devil Lounge. Leaving, I’d passed Gallo and the line-up of girls and glimpsed his interactions. In them there was a sense of delicate joy and love. But it was more than that. It was as if a girded wall had been built and above it flew something gentle and light, understanding itself to be free in its recognition of its own safety. (Even that is not quite right, and I’ve been trying to express this feeling for four days.)

After the second show, falling asleep in my bed after a long drive home, I tried to figure out the riddle of these performances. I envisioned myself walking onto the stage, not knowing what I’d play or sing. I realized that the thought of addressing the audience did not sit well in this imagining. What would I say? Would I explain my intentions? Would I say: “We are going to approach these instruments innocently and play them as if none of us has any experience? We are going to try and find new voicings and if it seems like we slip into something redundant we’ll stop and laugh with you? We’ll chat about it?”

I envisioned facing the audience, but it didn’t make any sense. How would I make the presentation when it does not yet exist? I imagined quieting or controlling the audience, and it seemed wildly narcissistic. I thought of how our waitress had all but apologized for his act and how the bathroom attendant had put him down. I thought of the drunk lady outside the club shouting, “The one night I come out and this is what I get?” And then I fell asleep soundly, but before I did, I remembered Gallo saying to Howard Stern (of all people), “One would have to be slightly unpopular to have a profound vision”

And one more...

2009-08-17T01:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.bluecomet.tv/?p=837

Vincent Gallo and Sean Lennon: Two Shows*
posted by Leona Laurie on August 15th, 2009

*note: this one is all text, baby. gallo & lennon say “no” to video/audio.

vincent gallo & sean lennon. photo by last.fm user marquis_de_sad

This week I went to two shows by Vincent Gallo and Sean Lennon, each of which also featured Lennon’s band with Charlotte Kemp Muhl, The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger (The GOASTT). The first involved a whirlwind trip to San Francisco to catch the acts at the Red Devil Lounge. The second was a 180-mile round-trip drive to San Diego to see them at Anthology. Both shows were sold out.

I didn’t know what to expect at all from the first show. My companions for the evening were Phil, an ardent admirer of Gallo’s, and Marcia, always game for an adventure. We stood in line outside the venue, wondering what the common denominator(s) in the accumulating crowd were and whom they’d come to see. Was it Sean Lennon’s crowd? Was it Vincent Gallo’s? We couldn’t tell. They skewed a great deal older than we’d expected, although there were enough youthful people in vintage clothing to convince us we were in the right place.

It had been years since I’d been to the Red Devil, and I’d forgotten how bad the sight lines are. I’ve enjoyed every show I’ve seen there so much that my lingering impression is positive, but we settled on the balcony for what turned out to be an evening of straining to see the musicians through chandeliers. Phil went down on the floor at one point to see if it was better, but it was so crowded and hot down there that he returned to the relative comfort of leaning against a cast-iron balustrade and craning to see past lighting fixtures.

The GOASTT went on first, and I never caught a clear look at Charlotte’s face through their entire set. Sean Lennon apologized for their unprofessionalism and explained that this was only their third show together. They implied that they were a couple (Wikipedia says boyfriend/girlfriend, although it looked like Charlotte’s ring finger was sparkling last night), and since I couldn’t see Charlotte, I watched Lennon for visual cues.

Perhaps it’s gauche of me to say, but we were all struck by how much Lennon looks and sounds like his father. I guess it makes sense, and that it’s something we could have expected, but it was still remarkable. Charlotte’s voice sounded a little limited in range, but well-suited to the kind of music they were playing, and she seemed solid on both piano and electric bass. Their music didn’t break any new ground in the world of mellow boy/girl duets, but Lennon is a talented guitar player, and their song India really gave him a place to show off.

They finished their set, and after a short break, Vincent Gallo took the stage with Lennon and someone named Rudy. I learned Rudy’s name from Lennon, who said a few things to the audience during the set. If he hadn’t, no-one would have. They did not introduce themselves. They did not banter with the audience. Gallo spent most of the set sitting in a corner of the stage with his back to the audience, hiding in his hair and focusing on what he was doing. The music was experimental/noise. They only played for between 20-30 minutes, and when they left the stage without comment or explanation, the audience murmured in confusion and discontent. They didn’t sound polished. I got the distinct feeling that they weren’t playing for us– we were just there.

I watched the sound tech in his crow’s nest across the way, and he made no move to bring up the lights or dismiss the audience. He was exchanging hand signals and messages with someone backstage, and eventually he picked up a mic and asked us all to hang in for a special treat. During the lull, though, about 1/3-1/2 of the crowd filtered out of the club.

After a long pause, Sean Lennon returned to the stage with Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead and RatDog. They played a long jam session, throughout which Weir was made suggestions to Lennon– and the fact of their friendship and appearance of a mentor/student relationship was fascinating. The crowd responded so well to Weir’s appearance that I suspected they’d known either that he was in the building or that he might be joining. Aside from a long piece that sounded eerily like the Cialis commercials, the set was fun to watch. Gallo emerged from backstage to stand in a corner and watch, and I watched him intermittently, wondering about the structure of the show and the thought behind it– because there did seem to be thought behind it.

Both venues had been instructed by the artists to forbid cell phones, cameras, and audio or video recordings. The audiences in both venues were cautioned several times that using a forbidden device would result in ejection from the show. There was an opportunity to demand silence from the crowds, but neither crowd was quiet. In fact, the seemingly deliberate disengagement of the band from the audience during the experimental set seemed to encourage the crowd to get gradually noisier and less respectful. I kept waiting for the reprimand or at least a request from the stage for silence, but nothing came. It must have been on purpose.

After the San Francisco show, Phil and I talked about what we’d seen for a couple of hours. I felt like my pleasure in the evening was based on having entered the venue without expectations, and he eventually declared the show “perfect.”

The next day, my plans for Friday night fell through, so I grabbed tickets to the San Diego show at Anthology. We hit the road at 3pm, arrived in San Diego at about 6:30, and settled into counter seats in the raised bar-area above the main dining floor.

The menu was so tempting that we went a little crazy, ordering four appetizers to share and then an entree and a fifth appetizer. Anthology feels like an upscale jazz supper club. There’s a loosely enforced dress code, mood lighting, cloth napkins… and to our surprise, a second show that means the audience is asked to leave at the end of the first show. We were out the door at about 9pm. In any case, the venue seemed like a mis-match for what we expected the show to be, and the crowd was as varied and curious as the San Francisco crowd.

When the announcer took the stage to introduce The GOASTT, Vincent Gallo emerged and explained into the mic that The GOASTT would actually be going on second, and they’d be going on now. With him was Rudy and a woman and a man he didn’t introduce. (Lennon later identified the man, who played the drums through Gallo’s set, as “Stephen.”) A man in the seats below us responded to Gallo’s announcement with, “Who are you?”

This set sounded richer and tighter than Wednesday night’s. It also lasted quite a bit longer, and included three pieces during which Gallo sang. He’d sung once in San Francisco, but I wasn’t really able to hear the quality of his performance over the din of the instruments and the crowd. In San Diego, though, I discovered that he has a beautiful voice. When they left the stage this time, he said a brief “thank you” to the audience (excluding the group below us who had walked out 1/2 way through), and Lennon and Charlotte emerged to help switch the equipment for their set.

The GOASTT’s set was tighter than Wednedsday’s, too, and this time I had both a clear view of the stage and the assistance of a large screen behind the artists that enlarged their images, so I was able to get a clear look at Charlotte. I guessed that she must have been a model, and the Internet has confirmed that. She had a self-conscious and “on” energy about her that I hadn’t picked up in San Francisco. I wasn’t sure what I thought of her overall until she picked up her bass. When she was playing that, her energy mellowed, and her focus seemed complete and joyful. She won me over. Lennon’s guitar playing on India was again the highlight of their set for me, and we were hoping for a little post-lineup treat again, but were disappointed when the venue politely asked all of us to leave.

During Gallo’s set, our waitress approached us at one point to ask if we needed anything else. Phil was so focused on the stage that he didn’t acknowledge her, and she responded to that by assuring us that if we ordered food right then, we wouldn’t miss anything, because this was not the main event. I corrected her, but she pushed a button for me with her assumption that we were not enjoying the show. An assumption I guessed was based on the conversations I’d witnessed her having with other patrons on her way to us.

After the show, Phil and I adjourned to the restrooms, where we had almost identical experiences of hearing other people’s negative reviews of the show we’d both been happily and sincerely engaged in. The washroom attendant in the ladies’ room couldn’t stress strongly enough how terrible it had been– the worst thing she’d ever seen there. Her comments, combined with our waitress’ comments and the general grumbling of both crowds left me wondering: What were you expecting, people?

When I go to a show by a mega-band on a major label during an arena tour to promote a new album, I have a reasonable expectation of what the show’s going to be, and if it seriously diverges from what I thought I was in for, I’m disappointed. When I attend something like this, though, a barely-announced show by two personalities with no promises of what it will be and no agenda in terms of promotion or merch sales, I feel like I’m walking into the unknown, and it’s my responsibility to show up ready for anything. Since that’s how I approached these shows, I thoroughly enjoyed them. They were an experience. They were interesting. There was something special about them. I felt buoyed by being there. I don’t know what the grumblers were expecting, but I wanted to shake them for interfering with my experience and making their discontent audible enough that the artists must be able to hear it.

In closing, I think I’d recommend that you check this dog-and-pony show out if it comes to your town– but only if you’re in the mood for surrender. Oh– and in answer to the question I posed the other day, I do think Vincent Gallo is kind of sexy.

THE END

More Reviews of the Show

2009-08-17T01:48:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Leona Laurie and an Anonymoous poster more reviews of the show :-) First one here, second one in the next post:

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2009/08/last_night_vincent_gallo_sean.php

Last Night: Vincent Gallo, Sean Lennon, Bob Weir at Red Devil Lounge
By Jennifer Maerz in Last NightThursday, Aug. 13 2009 @ 12:06PM
Vincent Gallo, Sean Lennon, Bob Weir, & The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger
Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009
Red Devil Lounge

Better than: Getting what you expected, every time.

Going to a Vincent Gallo show is a bit like dropping money into one of those claw arcade games. You pay the fee and hope to grab a valuable jackpot, something worth the price of putting your trust into such a fickle, teasing instrument. You do this in part because when the claw grabs a tangible prize (a giant teddy bear! a performance where Gallo engages his fans and plays fleshed out songs!) it makes all the touch and go worth it. But the odds are too often on the hollow--or nonexistent--spoils.

Last night the actor/cultural provocateur/musician/sperm salesman sold out the Red Devil Lounge, bringing together a room full of people hoping to grab the Gallo prize. And what'd we get for paying into his prima donna playbook? A night of truly bizarre, unscripted, and yeah, frustrating entertainment. It was either a total bust or exactly the theater of the absurd fans appreciate from this slippery musician who, at the very least, keeps them in pursuit.

For my part, I enjoyed the show, in part because the whole event was so offbeat. But the tease wasn't for everyone-- one woman gave the entire bathroom line an earful about how she didn't pay $16 to "hear Vincent Gallo play one long song and leave." She obviously saw the claw as half empty.

The night opened on a normal enough note. Sean Lennon and his (latest beautiful waif-model-girlfriend) musical partner Charlotte Kemp performed together as The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger. They were the warmest and most enthusiastic act on stage, Lennon playing guitar as Kemp played piano from somewhere behind a curtain. From there Kemp joined Lennon on stage and in harmony, their voices spinning tender ballads like cotton candy, all light and pink and sweet and melting away in the heat of the room. The pair don't have the dynamic punch of a She & Him, in part because The Ghost's music is so AM radio soft and the couple's falsettos blend into one another so completely (even their whistles became one). But under the red lighting of the lounge, there was something intimate and inviting about their set, even if it was more memorable as a whole then from any of its individual song parts. And Lennon's constant self-effacing banter broke down any diva impressions you could've had about John Lennon's kid.

That diva wall was erected for the second act, which comprised Gallo, Lennon, and a third musician trading off of drums, guitars, and synths for a half hour of half-baked, improvisational jams. Gallo sat on the floor for the most part, his back to the audience--or he'd hit the synths to rev up the prog vibe. He skipped his gorgeous, ghostly folk repertoire to instead expose us to an art-damaged band practice, the fragmented melodies like fever-dreams that only snapped awake with a final bout of feedback at the very end. I liked it in theory, although the concept was better executed when Gallo did his post-rock instrumentals with greater focus and different musicians at the Swedish American Hall a couple years back.

Whether you dug it or hated it, the Gallo portion of the evening was shorter than the line for the bathroom, and with a quick wave the headliner was off the stage after like a half hour. The crowd looked confused as to whether this was the end of the show, but an announcer told folks to stick around, as there was a "very special surprise" on next. This was the same announcer who'd also warned us, multiple times, that there was absolutely no cell phone use during the show, per Gallo's request: no texting, no chatting, and no taking photos.

So what was the grand finale? No Gallo.

Instead the show took another 180 and Lennon introduced a "local we wanted to bring on stage tonight," at which time Bob Weir appeared out of nowhere. From there, it became the Grateful Dead hour. The two men enthusiastically strummed their way through "Peggy-O" and "Big Boss Man," which both cleared out the room and made those remaining pack tight against the stage. It also made a couple Grateful Dead fans in the balcony hug each other and gush, "This is so fucking awesome! I'm so glad we came!" Lennon and Weir played well together, their presence and pairing working in part because it was so out of left field.

Whether the guest appearance was as improvised as Gallo's set, or as caculated as the actor's briefest of stints on stage, only the headliner knows for sure. In the end, I feel like I came away with the prize--playing an amusing game that's more of a challenge than your standard show, with a few real grabs at strange and haunting music along the way.

Critic's Notebook

Critical Bias: I wish Gallo and Lennon would've played last night like they did at Bimbo's a couple years back. At that show the two paired up on acoustic guitar for some quirky anti-folk ballads. Gallo seemed more at ease that night than at any gig I've seen him play since. (Perhaps it was all the ladies in the front taking photos.)

And Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola's movie starring Gallo, is one of my favorite films of '09.

Article on the Show

2009-08-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

Keli - who I think is also the writer of the article - posted this link in reply to the announcement of the show. As I like it pretty much and don't want it to get lost somewhere in the replies, here it is again:

http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/events/vincent-gallo-and-sean-lennon/

Vincent Gallo and Sean Lennon with The Ghost Of A Saber Toothed Tiger

Ambient art pop from John and Yoko's son and the notorious actor.

By KELI DAILEY
SIGNONSANDIEGO STAFF WRITER

No pictures. No promotion. Make sure to put Vincent Gallo's name before Sean Lennon's.

That was the official word from the PR guy at Anthology, where the eccentric pair are playing at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 14.

And just what are the indie Republican (seriously Wikipedia?) and the son of a Beatle playing? A despairing kind of ambient art pop. It sits on a soft, dark cloud next to the late Elliott Smith, poring over photos of ex-girlfriends.

On Vincent Gallo, solipsism and hookup tunes

I bought Gallo's sedated lounge album "When" (Warp Records) back in 2001. I'd say listening to it alone in my studio was better than playing it during makeout sessions. But just barely.

Anyway, I emailed Gallo, asking for a photo. I added something about when I liked to play "When," and he asked for a picture of ME instead.

Gallo's an eccentric nearing 50, and all that living means his path's crossed with many New York nuts and luminaries. He once played in a band with Brooklyn artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Yet his music is not stuffed and overripe with experience (or something offensive, Gallo is L'enfant terrible in interviews, and upset the world over his oral sex scene with ex-girlfriend Chloe Sevigny in "The Brown Bunny").

Instead Gallo goes for musical minimalism ... a vintage keyboard, his voice just above a lover's whisper ... like Joao Gilberto, whose delicate "Besame Mucho" cover is also a good hookup backdrop.

On Sean Lennon, Xanax and celebrity hounds

Sean Lennon's melodies are well-suited to those quirky, sometimes intense intellectuals who dress in ironic kitten T-shirts, who are looking for an escape hatch back into their adolescence, who pass out Xanax pills at their house parties.

I actually like Lennon's piano progressions: They walk sleepily over slowed down rhythms. But his vocals are delivered a little timidly for my tastes. He tries to be heard, but comes off like a sensitive kid at an all boys' school being bullied into selling chocolate.

I wonder how many anti-anxiety drug users will be at this show? How many who just want a sneaky-poo because of Lennon's parentage (and Gallo's movies)? And can people with panic disorders be celebrity hounds, too?

Sean Lennon's last album "Friendly Fire" came out in 2006. "Into the Sun" got a better reception back in 1998.

On The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger

The opening act, The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger, stars Sean Lennon and a hottie he's kissing in the band's MySpace pics, Charlotte Kemp Muhl. Her voice is wistful, sparkling, something I could hear over a Paul Williams score, singing a duet with Kermit the Frog.

She adds something to the Lennon melodies. That something would be stronger vocals.

Vincent on Howard Stern (old)

2009-08-11T11:27:00.001-07:00

As you all might or might not know, Vincent was on Howard Stern quite a while ago. Someone uploaded the audio version on youtube, so for those who haven't heard it, listen to it as long as it's there :-)

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flUP7C4n8RI

And how much did I miss Gawker?

2009-08-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

As usual, they hate Vincent once again. Actually, to be honest, I am always looking forward to the shit they come up about him again.

http://gawker.com/5334164/vincent-gallo-high-on-life

Vincent Gallo, High on Life
By Hamilton Nolan, 3:09 PM on Mon Aug 10 2009, 139 views
Hot-tempered, wild-eyed, self-pimp Vincent Gallo will have you know that he does not do cocaine.

In a Decider.com column, Gawker friend Max Silvestri relays a bit of a story involving Gallo:

My drinking partner knew an employee [at a bar called The Rabbithole], whom we'll call Diego, and after serving us some french fries (which are great, owing in large part to the fact that they were french fries), Diego somehow quickly segued into a story about how one time he was allegedly hanging out with a coked-up Johnny Knoxville and a coked-up Vincent Gallo (this story was clearly already taking the bullet train straight to Integritytown). Gallo tried to hit on Diego's girlfriend (model, obviously), so Diego shoved him.

Silvestri, you see, was using a sophisticated "sarcasm" technique to deride this "Diego's" story as untrustworthy, as is abundantly clear if you read the column. Now, the column has this note appended:

(Editor's note: After this column first ran, Vincent Gallo called The A.V. Club to make it known that he does not do cocaine and thus would not, in fact, have been "coked up.")

Fine, fine. Just stop acting so cokey.

Concert in San Diego with Sean Lennon

2009-08-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

Anyone else thinking that he won't be coming to Europe for the RRIICCEE gigs he didn't do in May and said would happen in September?

SNEAK PEEK: Vincent Gallo and Sean Lennon
Anya Moberly, Tempo Editor

Published: Monday, August 10, 2009

Is it true? Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon, and respected independent filmmaker and artist Vincent Gallo making a stop to perform in San Diego?
True, indeed. Friday at Anthology will be an epic night of Gallo and Lennon with special opening act The Ghost Of A Saber Toothed Tiger. This intimate venue is usually host to revered jazz musicians and blues acts, but this night will have all those who clapped when they saw Gallo’s “Buffalo ‘66” and scratched their head when they saw the “Brown Bunny” in awe of Gallo and Lennon’s musical chemistry.
Tickets are a mere $16 so be sure to get them quick and mark this down as the night you see Lennon the artistic intellect and Gallo the filmmaker make their musical mark in San Diego.

Visit www.anthologysd.com for more event details.

Taken from http://www.thedailyaztec.com/tempo/sneak-peek-vincent-gallo-and-sean-lennon-1.1815037

This seems wrong

2009-07-25T03:27:00.001-07:00

Don't know why...

Mr Mickey's One Minute Movies Presents Vincent Gallo from Mickey Boardman on Vimeo.

San Francisco Show with Sean Lennon

2009-07-18T03:19:00.000-07:00

And, to anyone in the San Francisco area:

http://reddevillounge.com/mainpage.htm

I'd go if I could...

Interview-Clip

2009-07-18T03:17:00.000-07:00

As also posted in reply to the Q&A, I thought to make sure you all find it I'll give it an extra post :-) Wish it was longer though!

EDIT: Youtube won't work anymore? Check the comments ;-)

How Vincent Gallo taught me to love Yes

2009-07-16T03:44:00.000-07:00

from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jul/14/vincent-gallo-yes

The pop-culture polymath has used his spectacular tastes to introduce people to much-maligned musical genres. But if only he could get around to releasing his own recordings.

Vincent Gallo is one of the few modern renaissance men. He boasts a long list of achievements and I can add another: Gallo is the only person who could persuade me to get into the prog-rock band Yes.

Every time I play Tales from Topographic Oceans, I have to laugh at myself and ask: "Am I really listening to Yes?" The band were a joke back in 1977, associated with creepy basement dwellers who read fantasy novels while watching VHS tapes of Rick Emerson stabbing his keyboard with Nazi daggers. I'd always sided with punk rock's reaction against 17-minute songs, so it took the musical wisdom of Gallo to show me the error of my ways. He's proved you can be both a Yes fan and a Ramones fan (kudos to Gallo for getting Johnny Ramone a film role in Stranded and for being godfather to Chris Squire's child).

Gallo's musical opinions are always spot on. For a start, he's gone on record to say he prefers Journey's Don't Stop Believing to Radiohead's OK Computer. Need more evidence? Just look at the tracklisting for the Brown Bunny soundtrack ... it's genius! The critically misunderstood film shows Gallo as a man of spectacular musical tastes. Brown Bunny is the answer film to Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop and stars Gallo as anti-hero Bud Clay as he goes on an existential search through America to the sounds of Gordon Lightfoot, Jackson C Frank and John Frusciante. Amazing. On the soundtrack to his masterpiece Buffalo 66, Gallo repays his debt of influence to prog rock and includes great and original covers of King Crimson and Yes. I still remember being shocked at how much I enjoyed the soundtrack. Gallo vanquished my own musical prejudices towards the era of musical excess. I was curious enough to get Tales from Topographic Oceans, and had to admit he was right - it's a classic album.

The facts show that if something was happening in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, Gallo was at the epicentre of it. At 16 he moved there and started a no wave band with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Gallo was heavily into the downtown art scene, playing with the Bush Tetras and Lydia Lunch, and was a regular at Manhattan's Mudd Club. Hip-hop? Gallo was there, starting his own rap act Trouble Deuce, and as Prince Vince he appeared on the shortlived, iconic and utterly street Graffiti Rock. Twenty years later and he's making appearances with Rick Rubin in Jay-Z's 99 Problems and rapping with RZA. The man is a pop-culture zeitgeist.

Despite all this, Gallo's own recorded musical output has been curiously limited. Sure, there are treats out there for people willing to spend outrageous amounts of money, but he has only had two wide releases on Warp: When, a cool number inflected with the spirit of Moondog, and Music for Films and Recordings, a compilation of Gallo's previous scores and cinematic offerings, twisted and bent into shape for general release. This is somewhat frustrating. Gallo is sitting on a mountain of unrecorded material; even in the mid 90s, when I heard talk of him signing to Sony and recording with Bunny member Lucas Haas, prog-rock producer Eddie Offord (producer of Tales from Topographic Oceans), Beastie Boy Adam Horowitz and DNA member Tim Wright, I was excited - but nothing happened. And again he recorded in 2005 with Sean Lennon and Jim O'Rourke, but has this project been released? No.
Gallo sparked my musical curiosity when he announced his new improvisational project RRIICCEE, featuring a rotating lineup (Eric Erlandsen of Hole was a founder member). The band's musical manifesto is to create tours only featuring improvisation, to dispense with the recording-industry model and be true to the music. Yet again, no records appear to be forthcoming. Is he refusing to release his recordings out of spite (as he did with his artwork)? Or is he too preoccupied with other projects? I don't know. But I'd like to hear more from the man who helped me understand the complicated and majestic beauty of Yes.

Gallo totally dressed up for the Q&A for Tetro in LA....

2009-06-21T08:22:00.001-07:00

Source: Klaxon's Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ori/3642395219/in/photostream/)

Yay.

Actually, as an Anonymous poster it's not from the premiere and there was an explanation:

This was from the question and answer session last week at the Landmark theater on Pico in Los Angeles. He was there along with Francis Ford Coppola for about 30 minute talking to the audience.

When asked about his disheveled appearance he said he came direct from a shoot.

Johnny 316

2009-06-20T11:11:00.001-07:00

Probably everyone has already seen the trailer of this movie (of which I think it probably is pretty interesting but couldn't get my hands on so far). Anyway, a teaser (9 minutes) has appeared on youtube so, for your viewing pleasure, teaser and trailer.

Tetro Reviews

2009-06-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

I was actually asking myself several times if I wanted to go into posting reviews of the movie. After all, they can easily be found everywhere and the more than vast press tour that Mr Coppola has been doing can hardly be avoided.

But then again, the one in the Washington Post needs attention in my opinion.

'Tetro': Angst and the Artiste

By John Anderson

Special to The Washington Post
Friday, June 19, 2009

Based on the first original screenplay he's written since "The Conversation" (1974), Francis Ford Coppola has created a movie that aspires to the grand opera -- and probably should be considered successful, given how often grand opera is confusing, hysterical and/or illogical, and with enough plotlines to hang itself. No one cares that "Tosca" is a bloody mess, of course, because it has a score by Puccini. "Tetro" doesn't.

What does it have? An overheated emotional engine. A story about patriarchy, frustrated artistic ambition and, ultimately, self-absorption. All of which are aided and abetted by the presence of Vincent Gallo, an actor with the ability to render drama into farce -- and comedy into God knows what. In a bit of stunt casting on Coppola's part, the resolutely eccentric Gallo plays the title character, a tortured writer who's given up on himself and is living in the Italianate section of Buenos Aires. "He's like a genius, without a lot of accomplishments," says his long-suffering yet chronically upbeat girlfriend, Miranda (Maribel Verdú, of "Pan's Labyrinth"), a dancer and doctor who met Tetro in the asylum where she worked. Tetro is never going to be what one would describe as happy, but he seems content enough when we meet him, stewing in his own frustrated juices among the Argentine demimonde. Predictably enough, he reacts harshly to the unexpected arrival of his young brother, Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich), who wants to know why Tetro abandoned him, and why he hasn't realized his potential.

Every indication is that Bennie is on a fool's errand. Neither Tetro nor his brother, whose editing will lift Tetro's work to public acclaim, is plausible as a great writer -- there's nothing introspective or even intelligent about them. But Coppola's efforts here are all about elaborate gestures, exalted feeling and high-decibel angst. Tetro and Bennie have different mothers but are both sons of the world-renowned conductor and world-class egomaniac Carlo Tetrocini (Klaus Maria Brandauer), who delivers to his elder son the movie's most memorable line: "There's room for only one genius in this family." Tetro has fled his father, his country and his art. His brother is a reminder of all he left behind. Their remembered relationship with their father is Gothic. Unlike certain Coppola clans of the past, this one isn't killing each other. But it's a thought.

The film looks fantastic, the HD black-and-white that connotes the present (color identifies the past) being a glory of moody contrasts and haunted high-resolution. Now that Coppola has transitioned from onetime studio lion to scrappy indie filmmaker, it also should be noted that "Tetro" is a vast improvement over his last opus, "Youth Without Youth," although the 70-year-old director commits the same mortal sin as any 22-year-old would-be auteur: He doesn't have enough story to support his characters' anxieties. Gallo recites lines, lines that really should be played for laughs, as if he were a doctor delivering a cancer diagnosis. There's a disconnect between the feverish emotion and its cause: Carlo's legacy, other than his music, is one profoundly dysfunctional family, but it hardly justifies all the interpretive dancing being performed by our trusty cast. The great Spanish actress Carmen Maura is the one performer with a clue, playing the mysterious Argentine critic Alone (as in "I vant to be . . . ') for maximum campiness. But it's too little -- as is the incidental music scored by the great Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, or the splendid cinematography of Mihai Malaimare Jr. "Tetro" has no internal tension -- you can't bring yourself to care about the characters because there's no justification for their suffering. In other words, it should have been a comedy.

Tetro (127 minutes at Landmark E Street Theatre) is not rated.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/18/AR2009061803846.html

Rumors or true? New project might be ahead

2009-06-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

So, this comes from a Blog-Entry based on information from the bio page on www.tetro.com. To me, the idea that just the name of the project with nothing else about it being known is enough to conclude he'll write direct and act in it is a bit hasty, but who knows? It would be great if it's true.

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2009/06/vincent-gallo-directing-new-film.html

Vincent Gallo Directing New Film, 'Promises Written In The Water' For 2010?

Just earlier today we lamented the paucity of Vincent Gallo films, discussed his potential "retirement," wanted more original works from him and were emboldened by the recent discovery of four copyrighted projects of his, at least three of them appearing to be screenplays.

We asked/pleaded/speculated: could more films written and directed by the filmmaker be on the horizon possibly one day?

Well, something one of our astute readers just hipped us to that we totally missed.

On his bio page for Francis Ford Coppola's "Tetro," which Gallo stars in, there's mention of a new project scheduled for 2010 titled, "Promises Written In The Water," which distinctly sounds like he'll be writing and directing.

What's it about? No one seems to know anything about it other than the title, but we assume it wouldn't be on the his "Tetro" bio page if it wasn't something he was working on currently seeking finance for. In some shape or form, even if 2010 is wishful thinking (which it sometimes is these days when it comes to self-financing indie projects), the fact that's it on the map is a good sign to us. Hopefully that officially puts the "retirement," behind him (though as we noted, that sounded just like a good excuse to get out of a film).

Tetro Clip

2009-06-01T06:31:00.001-07:00

In case you didn't notice it in the reply:

RRIICCEE Tour postponed until September

2009-06-01T06:29:00.001-07:00

Yep. According to various sources and the site of the venue in Bern:

"Due to RRIICCEE losing a KEY musician we have to postpone the current dates until September."

This concerns the whole European tour. The new dates will be announced ASAP.

http://www.dampfzentrale.ch/de/index.html?show=0&id=512

Tetro Clip

2009-05-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

First three minutes:

Tetro Articles

2009-05-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

Okay, so there has been a lot lot lot about Tetro - good and bad and I am more eager than ever to see the film as soon as it comes out.

As it would be just too much to post all the articles here, I decided to only give you some links to some interesting ones.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/interviews_profiles/e3i641dc7e691e8df84fbb3b0f20de242af

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iUKbv3368cEbih5RiPnYqy-nmRdA

http://www.totalfilm.com/news/cannes-2009-tetro-takes-flight

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/talking_pictures/2009/05/cannes-may-14-coppolas-return.html

And this one in the whole from http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/05/cannes_visiting_with_vincent_g.html:

Cannes: Visiting With Vincent Gallo and Francis Ford Coppola

CANNES, FRANCE — One of Cannes’s most enduring scandals remains the maelstrom of laughter, boos, attacks, and counter-attacks destined to live on as L’affaire lapin brun. Sensing a ready punching bag in 2003’s The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo’s road movie with a literal climax, the critics pounced; notably Roger Ebert, who called it the worst film in the history of the festival. Gallo retaliated by putting a curse on Ebert’s colon. Ebert, upon seeing a recut version, revised his opinion, and the movie has gone on to some degree of cult respectability. But Gallo has more or less stayed away from the film world since.

He’s back as an actor this year, with the lead role in one of the most talked-about films so far — Francis Ford Coppola’s operatic, Buenos Aires-set family drama, Tetro, which opened the Directors’ Fortnight section last night. Gallo is mesmerizing in the film, in a part he was born to play: a tortured artist, thin-skinned and self-obsessed, charismatic in spite of himself. But he has kept a low profile at Cannes: We were told he wasn’t doing interviews and he skipped yesterday’s press conference (“Where’s Vincent Gallo?,” Coppola asked the moderator). To our surprise, he opted to sit in when we were talking to Coppola this morning.

Gallo, who seemed to be in good spirits, said he had every intention of walking out of last night’s screening. “I asked to sit on the aisle,” he said. “I’ve never sat through a film I’ve been in. When you see yourself on film, there’s mostly pain and regret, there’s never emotion.” But he said he found Tetro gripping: “I was very moved even by scenes that I was in, and I’ve never felt that way.” And what’s more, “There were a couple moments when I looked good.”

Coppola pointed out that Gallo was watching through his hands most of the time. He added: “Do you know how long it took me to cut his hair? Five visits. We had to do it a quarter inch at a time.” Gallo: “I had a photo of Clint Eastwood from Dirty Harry, and I was trying to keep it like that. We had Artaud and Clint Eastwood.” Coppola: “It’s fun to go to the barber with Vincent.”

Gallo is working on his next film as director, which he’s shot (on 16-millimeter black-and-white) and is about to edit. But he was content for now to keep the spotlight on Coppola’s movie. Not one for understatement, he went so far as to declare it the fulfillment of an eternal ambition: “The dream of my life was to be in one movie that I like.”

Tetro Premiere Pics? Sure!

2009-05-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

So he has been there, for the premiere and there are pics popping up everywhere. Here some without watermarks from zimbio.

Tetro at Director's Fortnight in Cannes

2009-05-14T01:56:00.001-07:00

Yes, that's true. But, apparently, Vincent Gallo is missing out on the Cannes-fun ;-)- no surprise to me.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/47587,news,coppola-returns-to-cannes-but-where-is-vincent-gallo

Gallo, the star of Coppola’s ‘Tetro’, was booed out of Cannes the last time he attended the festival in 2003 with his film ‘The Brown Bunny’

By Jack Bremer

The great Francis Ford Coppola, one of the few directors to have won the Palme d'Or twice (for The Conversation in 1974 and Apocalypse Now in 1979), has arrived in Cannes to open the 'director's fortnight' sidebar to the main festival with his new Argentinian-set film, Tetro.

He has in tow his Spanish leading lady, the lovely Maribel Verdu, best known for her starring roles in Y Tu mama Tambien and Pan's Labyrinth. In Tetro, Verdu takes the role of the wife of a washed up writer played by the New York actor Vincent Gallo.

However, there is no sign of Gallo in the Coppola party - for which there is a very good reason.

Gallo famously left Cannes with his tail between his legs in 2003 when a notorious road movie he directed and starred in was greeted with boos and catcalls by the festival audience. The Brown Bunny was famed for two reasons: (a) it was incredibly boring, due to interminable scenes of Gallo riding his motorbike across America, and (b) it climaxed with one of cinema's rare un-simulated sex scenes, in which Chloe Sevigny performed fellatio on Gallo.

A giant billboard for the film, showing Sevigny on her knees before the gaunt figure of Gallo, had to be taken down after it shocked Los Angeles. But not half as much as the film itself bored Cannes. Hundreds of members of the audience walked out while the remainder simply booed. Sevigny was reportedly reduced to tears and a humiliated Gallo went back to the cutting room.

There is a happy ending: after being cut by almost a quarter, The Brown Bunny was released and even found favour with the American critic Roger Ebert who had earlier called it the worst film in the history of Cannes.

How will Coppola's Tetro fare tonight? The omens are good, with some who have seen it saying Coppola is on magnificent form. We know what Coppola himself thinks: when someone stole a computer from his Buenos Aires studio containing the script for Tetro, he told Time magazine with a straight face: "The script was finished. It made Hamlet look like garbage."

RRIICCEE Tour

2009-05-08T13:02:00.001-07:00

Even though nobody can be sure WHO will be playing apart from Vincent (there is no information on their myspace at the moment apart from the fact that Vincent is in the band), RRIICCEE is on tour in June.

Here are the collected tour-dates. These come from various places all over the internet because I have not found a list yet. If you can, go and attend one of the shows. If you plan to go to Bern, let me know because I'll probably be there :-)

June 12th "ICA" London, England (sold out!) http://www.ica.org.uk/
June 14th "Paradiso" Amsterdam, Netherland http://www.paradiso.nl/index2.php
June 15th "Ancienne Belgique" Brussels, Belgium http://www.abconcerts.be/nl/
June 16th "La Boule Noir" Paris , France http://www.laboule-noire.fr/en/
June 18th "Sonar Festival" Barcelona, Spain http://2009.sonar.es/en/
June 19th "Galileo Galilei" Madrid, Spain http://www.salagalileogalilei.com/ (?)
June 24th "Villa Arconati " Milan, Italy http://www.insiemegroane.it/festivalarconati/
June 25th "Spazio 211" Turin, Italy http://www.spazio211.com/
June 26th "Circolo degli Artisti" Rome, Italy http://www.circoloartisti.it/
June 29th "Dampfzentrale" Bern, Switzerland http://www.dampfzentrale.ch/de/index.html
June 30th "Volksbühne/Prater" Berlin, Germany http://www.volksbuehne-berlin.de/

And to get in the mood for the tour...

2009-05-03T12:40:00.000-07:00

...some OLD live pics from 2006 or so. I found them while googling around and there was no real information as far as who took them so if they are yours, let me know and I'll of course give you credit :-)

Seattle International Film Festival

2009-05-03T12:28:00.001-07:00

There are some unconfirmed rumours that Coppola and Vincent will both attend the Seattle International Film Festival which runs May 21 - June 14.

Tetro Trailer

2009-05-03T09:44:00.001-07:00

...and sorry for being two days late on this one :-(

And there will be RRIICCEE...

2009-04-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

As you probably all know, European Dates for the Tour are slowly coming and even though the official MySpace Page only lists Vincent as a bandmember at the moment, there will be concerts under the name of RRIICCEE.

According to http://www.net-lab.co.uk/2009/04/27/vincent-gallo-to-play-ica-london-june-2009/(and various other sources), one will be held in London:

The ICA (London) have announced a show with Vincent Gallo & guests on 12th June 2009. Tickets are £22 + BF but strictly limited.

“Eat Your Own Ears presents RRIICCEE, featuring Vincent Gallo + guests. With RRIICCEE, Vincent Gallo continues the musical career which has included beautifully-crafted Warp album When and Gray, his band with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Formed with Eric Erlandson (ex- Hole), Nicolas Haas and Rebecca Casabian, the improvisational project promises to metamorphose into something unique for the ICA and its audience on the night.”

And Tetro will be shown...!

2009-04-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

After turning down Cannes, there are new news (yep, I know that's doubled up) as far as where and when Tetro will be shown.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118002806.html?categoryId=11&cs=1

Francis Ford Coppola is to open the 41st edition of Directors' Fortnight (May 14-24) with his Argentina-set family drama "Tetro." The self-financed production stars Vincent Gallo as an exiled writer who's visited in Buenos Aires by his estranged younger brother. Helmer will self-distribute the movie in the U.S. through his own American Zoetrope Releasing.
Pic was originally offered a non-competing slot by Thierry Fremaux in this year's Official Selection, which Coppola declined. Fortnight topper Olivier Pere then stepped in with his own offer -- arguably snagging one of the biggest names for the Cannes sidebar in recent memory.

"After Coppola announced that he wouldn't show 'Tetro' out of competition, we asked to screen it for the Quinzaine," Pere told Daily Variety. "We loved it! And our enthusiasm convinced Coppola that an opening Fortnight slot would be the ideal place to debut his film."

With five features, including "Tetro," U.S. directors have a stronger presence in the Fortnight than in Cannes' Competition.

No Cannes for Tetro

2009-04-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I feel a bit relieved at these news because I was wondering how and if Vincent Gallo would be able to overcome his traumatic Cannes experiences from the past ;-)

Apparently, Kathleen Talbert, a publicist for Francis Ford Coppola, has denied any rumours that "Tetro" will be shown in Cannes.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/mikejones/archives/2009/04/17/no_cannes_for_coppola

In a statement, Coppola says:

“While I very much appreciate the invitation, this is an independent film, self-financed and self released, and I felt that being invited for a non-competition gala screening wasn’t true to the personal and independent nature of this film. More important than Cannes, our team can focus all our time, energy and resources into the U.S. release this June 11th.”

Talbert told The Circuit that Coppola will release the film through a distribution arm of American Zoetrope, the studio the helmer founded in 1969 with George Lucas.

Following its world premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 10, “Tetro” will open in New York and LA before expanding to Seattle, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco , and Washington, D.C.

Patrick Hoelck talks about Vincent

2009-04-17T12:07:00.001-07:00

A small mention of Mr Gallo in an interview by Patrick Hoelck, photographer/director:

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO BECOME AN ARTIST?
I moved to NYC when I was young and started running with the downtown art scene. They would talk shit about entertainers and how unimaginative they were, coming from LA this was news to me. My friend, Vincent Gallo, would invite me to these dinners and gatherings to and sit listen in awe. I was a young fly on the wall collecting mental notes. I used to get laid a lot by borrowing their stories and metaphors and points of view.
WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS?

The ones from those days Jean Michel Basquiat, Vincent Gallo, Francesco Clemente, Richard Serra. Of those I didn’t meet Jackson Pollock, Diego Velasquez, Ed Ruscha, the list could go for miles. I don’t know all of the names of artists nowadays, I just like movement. Damien Loeb is amazing, David Shadi Perez, Jose Parla and Richard Prince all have really interesting work I have seen recently.

If you want to read the whole interview, you can find it here: http://features.guerillaone.com/?p=163

Tetro Interview with Vincent

2009-04-16T10:58:00.001-07:00

There he is - straight from the official site, enjoy if you haven't seen it already.

Tetro - Black & White

2009-04-16T06:15:00.000-07:00

Tetro is not only probably maybe going to be shown in Cannes (rumors about that are everywhere and I think it is likely), it also will be in black and white.

http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/04/16/francis-ford-coppolas-tetro-will-be-in-black-and-white/

While perusing the news on Variety, I came across an article looking at the prospective line-up at the Cannes Film Festival this year, which I will be attending. In the article, author Todd McCarthy lists all of the big American and foreign directors that will most likely be showing up at the festival in France with their films. One of them is Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, who is back again this year with a new film called Tetro. The last time we heard anything about this project was way back in 2007, when it was first announced. The most interesting update is that Tetro is actually going to be in black and white.

You see, I have a wonderful love for gorgeous modern day black and white films - like Medicine for Melancholy, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Soderbergh's The Good German, Besson's Angel-A, Jarmusch's Dead Man, Burton's Ed Wood, Smith's Clerks, Aronofsky's Pi, just to name a few. And knowing that Tetro is actually in black and white is fairly exciting news for me. The quote comes from the later half of the article and is mentioned in relation to another film at the fest. "Haneke's German entry, The White Ribbon, examines incipient fascism at a rural school in 1913; like Coppola's film, it was shot in black-and-white."

The White Ribbon is the latest from German director Michael Haneke, of the original Funny Games as well as Hidden and The Piano Player. As far as I know, this is the first time we've heard that Tetro will be in black and white. Described by Coppola as "small, indie and personal," Tetro stars Vincent Gallo and is about the rivalries of an artistic Italian immigrant family. Coppola has said that the story is reminiscent of his own life and roots in New York City. Unfortunately his return to directing in 2007, Youth Without Youth, was panned by critics and performed poorly at the box office. Let's hope it's not the same fate for Tetro.

OLD Grand Royal Interview

2009-04-15T05:42:00.000-07:00

A masterpiece worthy of being posted here - Vincent Gallo interviewing Vincent Gallo. If you don't know it already, read it - if you DO know it, read it again because it's awesome.

Updated Grand Royal Interview

Grand Royal magazine had asked me to interview Vincent Gallo ten months ago. Of course I said yes. As a matter of fact, I think I shit my pants, I was so excited. Imagine, little old me, the great Vincent Gallo, getting to interview him, oh my God, the great Vincent Gallo. However, tracking down the elusive, mysterious, handsome, workaholic superstar was not that easy. Neither one of us would make time for the other. We're both so damn busy. Chicks and stuff, you know. And revenge.

For the lost and out of touch who don't know Vincent Gallo: Abel Ferrara, his director on the movie, The Funeral, describes Vincent Gallo as, "the best actor I've ever worked with. He makes amateur directors like me look good. I wish I wasn't smoking so much crack during the filming of The Funeral, that way I could have come out of my filthy trailer now and then to watch some scenes being filmed. But I heard Vincent was great in my movie. After rehab I hope to be able to see all my films."

Annina Nosei, his art dealer during the '80s (she also represented Jean-Michel Basquiat, the over-rated Barbara Kruger and David "The Tribeca Gimp" Salle), when asked about Vincent had this to say: "He was my favorite artist I've ever shown. All his work sold instantly. I'm sorry I'm such a penny-pinching wacko because I couldn't help myself from cheating him out of penny after penny, tons of pennies I cheated him out of. Plus, I prevented him from showing in other good galleries so I wouldn't lose a penny. And all the years I represented him, I behaved like a bitter, resentful, love-scorned, sexually depraved ex-girlfriend, all because he made tremendous love to me. Once. I never really understood why he left the gallery and stopped painting."

Vincent Gallo was quoted as saying, "I stopped painting in 1990 at the peak of my success just to deny people my beautiful paintings. And I did it out of spite."

I spoke to Michael Holman, one of the creators of the TV show Graffiti Rock and co-manager of the New York City Breakers, about Vincent. He had this to say: "I'm just an upper middle class mulatto military brat. Vincent is the real thing. Vincent was always way way hipper than me. I relied on him for any of my cool. He was way down with the hip-hop scene. He was the first white boy homeboy in the world. He was a very creative force behind most of early hip-hop. He danced fresh. He dressed fresh. And he made it with the homegirls funky fresh. He was the Almighty Prince Vince. I was merely a beige-colored figurehead."

Kenny Roberts, Formula 1 motorcycle racing champion of the '70s and '80s watched Vincent a lot at the race tracks during the '80s when Vincent raced Formula 2 for Yamaha. Roberts was once quoted as saying, "That Italian kid races fast and smooth. He could be a champ if he wanted to."

DJ Spooky, New York DJ extraordinaire, never DJs without a copy of the Bohack LP (Bohack was one of Gallo's legendary bands during the '80s). Spooky has said that Gallo's music says it all. Spooky went on to say, "Vincent was actually a friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Jean would have hated me. Good thing he's dead so I can pretend to be him. And nobody knows the difference."

Richard Avedon, who photographed Vincent for the prestigious Calvin Klein CK be ads and revolutionary commercials, has said, "My life was no fun. I was photographing loser wannabes like that creep Kenny Jossic, you know, the poseur with the K tattooed on his chest, the guy who sharpens ginsu knives for a living. Then I got to work with Vincent Gallo and I remembered my glory days. I'm back. Eat your heart out, David Sims."

Guy Oseary, Madonna's houseboy and part time A&R man, had this to say about Vincent's music in a heavy Sephardic accent: "I don't know anything about music, I know most about being a jew. Somehow that's worked for me in the music business. People have told me for many years that I should hear Vincent's beautiful music. The truth is, many years ago, Madonna was screaming at me real loud one day I think it was because I spoke during one of her long stories and she screamed so loud that I've been deaf for eleven years. But in the crowds I hang out in, no one really notices. I wonder what Alanis Morissette sounds like."

Vincent Gallo wanted to meet at his favorite lunch spot, Petrossian, to do the interview. Funny, it's my favorite lunch spot, too. We got there at exactly the same time. I watched him walking in and it was like they say, you know, he kind of glowed. Like a ray of light was around him. A kind of Jesus. He was wearing a light pink leather suit that had airbrushed flames all over, and engraved into the leather were flowers, hearts and bunnies. He made it himself. God, he does it all. He also made his patent leather hat which was frayed into the shape of Warren Beatty's hair in the movie Shampoo. And a pair of transparent Adidas that Mr. Adidas made for him in 1981. He was wearing solid gold socks underneath.

As he waked through the restaurant every chick and queer's head turned (seems like every man becomes queer around Vincent). Our waitress, sweating, gave Vincent a piece of paper with her number on it before she gave us our menus. He just blushed (he's so sweet!). We both ordered the beluga and blinis. Neither one of us drinks alcohol, so we shared a bottle of water. I later discovered neither one of us has ever taken any drugs. He's a natural.

HIM: Thank you. That's really nice of you to say. I never really know what to say when people tell me that. And by the way, I'm not gay either. Never have been. Never will be. But I was just going to say the same thing to you.

ME: Alright, so, you've had success acting in 17 movies, including the European blockbuster Arizona Dream; the painfully sweet and charming Palookaville, which you stole; The Funeral, which we all would have liked to see more of you in; House of the Spirits in which you rose above an all-star cast; and the upcoming films Truth or Consequences, N.M., which was hardly directed by Kiefer Sutherland; and Roland Joffe's new film Goodbye Lover, with the beautiful and kinky Patricia Arquette. Now, you are about to direct your own film, Buffalo '66 which you wrote and will star in. You headed the legendary band Gray with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and have done two solo albums since then. You are now recording an LP for Warp Records which is going to be called When, which won't be finished and released until September of 2001. You've had 15 one-man shows of your paintings. You had your own clothing line, which was very conceptual, you sort of transformed found clothing into new clothing. Although I have a hunch, years from now, there will be a failed movie actress named Tara Subkoff, and a friend, boy, I can never remember his name, who will rip off all your clothing ideas and start their own company and call it Imitation of Christ. I guess maybe because you look so much like Jesus Christ. I guess maybe they should be more clear and just call it Imitation of Vincent Gallo. You won 88 trophies racing motorcycles. You have the most important collection of vintage HiFi gear in the US, and you write stunning articles for many HiFi-related magazines. You collect guitars and recording equipment. You do plumbing, electric and plaster work. You cook and clean like a Sicilian immigrant. You co-managed the New York City Breakers and helped create and produce the famed Graffiti Rock TV show. You are a supermodel. And you've supermodeled for Calvin Klein, Yoji Yamamoto and Anna Sui all over the world. You satisfied 36 girls at a Motel 6 in Texas in four hours. Legend has it that the maid keeps three dozen rubbers in a shrine in Mexico. You can fix or repair TVs and VCRs. You still maintain a 90 mph fastballl even though you must be well into your twenties. Hey Vincent, what the hell don't you do?

HIM: I don't trust or love anyone.

ME: Why?

HIM: Because people are all creepy. Creepy creepy creeps. Creeping around. Creeping here and creeping there. Creeping everywhere. Crippity crappity creepies.

ME: Who do you think are the creepiest?

HIM: I'm glad you asked. Well, there's that rat bastard, Tracy Falco, the backstabber from Ted Demme's company; that twisted phony Rene Ricard; Kate Miller that lesbo monster; Kelly Lynch that bullshit bad actress, she's the queen member of the lucky club; Tim Roth, that filthy no-talent mini dwarf Brit; Bill and Hillary Clinton and their ugly orphan-like daughter Chelsea; Greta Seacat and her poisoned mind "acting coach," my ass; Susan Bertram, that Judas piece of crap, listen everybody, she's the worst wardrobe person in the world, don't hire her for your film; Mark Romanek, that dark, anal photo plagiarist and his useless penis, he's a great example of a world gone wrong; Cheryl "Dumpy" Dunn and her pigeon dung photographs, wow is she creepy; Phil Goldfarb that AlAnon basketcase, worst producer who ever lived; Jennifer "Leave me alone" Levy; Dewey's friend, Analisa "The character assassin" Tessin; Vicky Icky she was so sticky Galvez Bici; that lumpy-assed Alba Clemente; Paul "I can't direct but boy, can I brown nose my way to the top" Anderson and his fermented, mulatto cannabis-soaked girlfriend Fiona Apple who coulda been shoulda been; Kelly Lynch's bitch-whipped husband Mitch; Nam-Anh Duong; John Kennedy Jr. that philandering cadaver; my Ex-Mother-in-law; Tammy "Sick Sick Sick and Ugly Ugly Ugly" Rosen, that jerk; Todd "you wish you had my rod" Feldman, that short Jew bastard and his polluted and dishonest cousin Eileen Feldman, it's a miracle anyone can even make a movie with assholes like this in Hollywood; Davis "Boy Does a Herpes Sore Smell" LaChapellle; everyone at Lions Gate films, is that the best Canada has to offer, a bunch of lowlifes like that?; Jefferson "What a" Hack from Dazed and Confused magazine are they still in business? Cause I heard all he does now is fetch cocaine for Kate Moss; Dale "H like in Homo, I like in In-his-ass, and V like in Virus" Peck I dare anyone to stay awake through one of his novels. That's some creepy losers right there, huh? Huh? And what about the actress Zoey "Go Ahead and Blow Me" Deschanel, you fuckin' lying whore, I'll get you; from Universal Home DVD Releases, Colleen Benn(d her over and fuck her fat asshole); Suzanne "Pockface" Nichols and her pockmarked nipples; Michael "Musty" Musto (faggot); Andrew "Drew a picture of his penis on a matchbook actual size" Richardson and his syphillytic boyfriend Bob Racine [hairstylist, look it up]; And from Connecticut without Etiquette, Chloe Sevigny, who when she's not drunk and posing in movies is busy out spreading Harmony Korine's herpes. Oh yeah, and my mother. Mamma Creepy Corleone. And my father, the Godfather of Creepy.

ME: Wow. That's amazing. I agree with you about all of them. Especially your mother. Boy, people are creepy, huh? Though, chicks after you date them are the creepiest. Anyway, are there any dead or alive folks that you like at all?

HIM: I'm glad you asked. Well, my beautiful white dog is number one. And I've always loved Richard Nixon. And the wonderful and classy hero Ronald Reagan and his beautiful wife Nancy. The underrated genius Governor from New York State George Pataki, Rush "Howard Stern could only dream of being as good as you" Limbaugh, Robert Ryman, Cy Twombly, Pier Paolo Passolini, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulce, Robert Bresson, and Ozu. I will always love Chris Squire, the bass player from Yes, and John Wayne, Charlton Heston, and Charles Bronson. He's good Charles Bronson, real good. My beautiful white dog, my former friend Johnny Ramone and his gold-digging wife Linda, you gotta lover her though. She can't help it. My ex-girlfriend Vicki Clay has had moments of kindness too, but those moments come and go. The sex bunny PJ Harvey. My friends Cat Doran, Anna Sui, Mark Lyons, Layla Nabulsi, my beautiful white dog, I like the filmmaker Gaspar Noe, and the photographer Corin Day, and the always pretty Rosemary Ferguson. I think Jaquetta Wheeler is very pretty… My grandma was nice to me once. And the only girl I ever loved, who I haven't seen since I was eleven years old, Angela Mirasci from Pittston, PA. If anybody knows her, tell her I still love her. Though, when I was twelve, I met a girl named Otta Marie Monaco at a resort called Villa Roma, I would like to see her again, too. Since then though, it's been only regrets. Especially the last one, Bethany. Boy I wish I never met her. I like Truman Capote. The waiters at the Chinese restaurant in New York, Sun Lok Kee, have always been nice to me. Joanne Cologna tries her best to be a friend. Seth Goldfarb has never let me down.

ME: I heard your father beat the shit out of you every day of your childhood. That he said you were nothing but a bum. And that you would always be a bum. That you were grounded once for a year when he found out you raised the heater thermostat from 38° to 41° one cold winter day during your worst flu and bout of strep throat. That your father broke your nose once because you broke your ankle playing football and the doctor bill was $55. That your mother was dishonest, cold-hearted and a thief. That she idolized your brother and hated you. That she shaved your head of its beautiful long hair the night before your first day of high school and ruined your life.

HIM: I've totally forgiven my parents for all of that. I have no more resentments or angers. I understand now that they did the best they could. That they're God's children.

ME: Did you see any good movies this year?

HIM: The just-released Rolling Stones film, Rock-n-roll Circus, Paradise Lost and especially the PBS documentaryTriumph of the Nerds. Those were all brilliant.

ME: What were the worst ones you remember?

HIM: Swingers, the L.A. Jewish Mean Streets. Paul Thomas Anderson's Sydney, starring Harvey Weinstein's fellater Gwyneth Paltrow. I know she's gonna blow her way to an Oscar one day. Any French film. Gummo -- when I think of all the great films that barely get released, to think of this midget, rich Jew from Nashville coming to New York City pretending he's Jean-Luc Goddard, and getting to make that piece of crap -- wow. You young kids are lost. You don't have anything better to do with your time? Why don't you clean your apartments, or at least your bongs. Bastard Out of Carolina -- Angelica Huston directing, need I say more. And the dreadful thriftshop ad I Shot Andy Warhol, why would anybody put Lili Taylor in a movie? She is so ugly. Ugly is ugly ok, it's not interesting. It's ugly, OK? She ugly. Ugly ugly ugly. I don't like her. Plus she's an asshole. Nothing worse than an ugly asshole, shouldn't ugly people at least be nice? It's bad enough most good looking people are assholes. Anyway, just seeing a movie poster with Skeet Ulrich on it is more than enough to make me pass gas. In a perfect world, Skeet Ulrich would be stopped by the doorman.

ME: Wow, you know your films. Are there any actors you'd like to work with?

HIM: No.

ME: Any actresses?

HIM: Well, I do like girls, so let me think. I just saw some scenes from the unfinished Lolita, and the girl in it, Dominique Swain, is brilliant. She blows that asshole Jeremy Irons off the screen. And I think the little girl Kirsten Dunst will be really good. She's already good now. If they were still young, I'd like to do kissing scenes with Tuesday Weld, Sandy Denis, Kitty Lynn, Deborah Winters, Glynnis O'Connor, Nicoletta Machiavelli, and Elizabeth Montgomery. Lee Remick, she was cute. I guess I only like whiteys. Yeah, whiteys. Although, remember that TV Show "Julia" with the black lady in it? She was cute. Nah, forget it. I couldn't do it.

ME: I know you have 10,000 albums, but are there any new bands you like?

HIM: I like Cat Power, especially the song Mr. Gallo. I would like any band that did a song about me. Even though that good looking Cat Power chick, Chan Marshall, wrote some nasty words. What could she do? She loved me. I would've done the same thing if I loved me. Anyway, that chick's a superstar. I should've stayed with her. PJ Harvey. The new Aphex Twin record is good. I still sort of like listening to the same 20 records that I've been listening to for years.

ME: Like which ones?

HIM: Charles Mingus Plays Piano, This is Tal Farlow on Verve, the Yes album, Tales from Topographic Oceans, all the Stooges albums, stuff like that.

ME: You have good taste.

HIM: Thanks, handsome.

ME: Anything in life you're looking forward to?

HIM: I just placed an order for a miniature donkey. I should be getting her in about two months.

ME: A miniature donkey? What's that?

HIM: A very, very small donkey, dummy.

HIM: What do they eat?

HIM: The same things big donkeys eat, only a lot less.

ME: What are you going to call her?

HIM: Daisy. I'm going to build myself a sombrero and walk her around the city. [Our waitress comes over and brings the check. Vincent swipes it out of my hand and lays down some cash. He's such a guy that way. We're talking a hell of a tip, too. As we were getting up to leave I asked him one more question.]

ME: Hey Vincent, are you happy or sad?

HIM: I'm the happiest the saddest guy in the world can be.

ME: Strange. I feel exactly the same way.

[We shake hands and say goodbye, knowing we'll see each other again and again and again. Me and him. Him and me.] You can email Vincent Gallo or Vincent Gallo at hero@vincentgallo.com

RRIICCEE at the Sónar 2009

2009-04-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks to an anonymous poster for the link :-)

RRIICCEE feat. Vincent Gallo
Sónar 2009 | 31.03.2009
Fetish actor from independent cinema and ocassional model, Vincent Gallo stands out from associates of his generation. His carisma and restlessness have lead him to go against the tide, writing and directing films (‘Buffalo 66’ and ‘The Brown Bunny’) forming part of a rap duo, developing a career as a fine artist and of course, recording an album, ‘When’, a whispering and mysterious electronic offering for the acclaimed English label Warp.

RRIICCEE is the latest musical movement from Vincent Gallo. Conceived in 2007 with the creator of Hole, Eric Erlanson, it is formed by an unusual band whose musical offering proposes improvisation from a new angle composing songs live and intending to avoid the tradicional concept and cliches of the jam session. At Sonar we will see how RRIICCEE, a trio formed by Gallo and the Haas twins Nikolas and Simon (brothers of the actor Lukas Haas) strictly compose their songs live and on the go, a work in process on stage of an uncertain end.

http://2009.sonar.es/en/noticies.php?id=28&page=1&year=2009

Tetro Poster

2009-03-24T13:35:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Bud, an on-location clip (see comments): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpxsVvoJmNY

Enjoy :-)

Watch them while they're there

2009-03-24T11:38:00.001-07:00

H&M Clips finally surfaced on youtube - thanks a lot to whoever posted them !!!

Because it's being slow when it comes to news...

2009-03-23T12:46:00.001-07:00

...I went do dig around on www.tetro.com and found some new pics of Vincent :-) So, if you haven't seen them on the official site already anyway, here they are:

Anyone else holding their breaths until June 11th?

One more again...

2009-03-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

Slowly, but they are coming coming coming :-)

I have to say: I love these pics so far.