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Anyway, just got in from looking at Vincent Gallo's "Buffalo
66", which was surprisingly competent and effective for a
debut feature, and a pure vanity project at that (starring and
written, directed, produced and scored by Gallo). Gallo's
probably best known as the epitome of Calvin Klein
"junkie-chic" supermodel exposure, though his small
appearances in the occasional film by Aki Kurasmani or Abel
Ferarra may resonate with certain viewers, as well. For
"66", he's assembled an impressive cast and
iconoclastic style to tell the story of a misanthropic, isolated,
passive-aggressive loser just out of five years in prison, intent
on murdering the Buffalo Bills kicker whom he believes to have
landed him there, and his kidnapping of a tap-dancing ingenue who
he manipulates into posing as his wife along the way as a method
for convincing his dysfunctional parents he's turned out okay
after all. One intruiging thing about this film is that Gallo
effectively blurs the distinction between his role inside the
film and his role as megolomaniac project coordinator. His
fictional character browbeats those around him, while Gallo
simultaneously browbeats his audience and his actors into
providing the necessary attention and gradual respect required to
make a vehicle like this function. His scenes, for example, with
this year's Parker Posey (read: current "it girl")
Christina Ricci (who delivers an achingly vulnerable performance)
are a bizarre improvisational combination of narrative thrust and
on-screen real-time directoral manipulation ("Just look like
you like me, godammit, don't do your fuckin' best, just do it
right"), and many long sequences are improvised and carried
successfully by the rest of the cast (including some amazing
turns by Anjelica Huston and Rosanna Arquette, and while Ben
Gazzarra is game and capable he's wasted in one of Gallo's
missteps in the old "creepy/funny" lip-synch routine already done to poor
effect by David Lynch and Gus Van Sant...and Mickey Rourke just
looks like a honey-baked ham), while Gallo merely omnisciently
observes on-screen. Another intruiging thing here is Gallo's
surprising ability and commitment. While there are a few
overwrought scenes and deliberately flashy moments (like
Gazzarra's previously mentioned lip-synch) typical of a debut
feature, the restraint and appropriate judiciousness with which
Gallo applies these elements is refreshing and admirable (and
besides, when you're Jean Luc Goddard's godson, as Gallo is, the
occasional freeze-frame or jumpcut is not only acceptable, it's
damn near mandatory). There's a nice, consistent, loping rhtythm,
and even Gallo's more embarrasing decisions never come off as
arbitrary. Perhaps the most intruiging thing about the film,
though, is its look. After the firing of the original
cinematogrpaher due to objections to Gallo's desire to shoot the
entire film on reversal stock, Gallo got Kodak to invent a
completely new film stock and corresponding developing process
which replicates the reversal saturation at a higher speed
(thereby using less film). The results are absolutely gorgeous,
and in conjunction with the high-end computer editing technology
utilized, are almost as instantly alien and welcome as Derek
Jarman's first forays into multiple stock transfers. In sum,
while Gallo comes off as essentially more of a spoiled crybaby
than the legitimate 'enfant terrible' he may eventually become,
and his first venture is hardly perfect, nor even wholly
successful, it's a tangible dose of winning ego and refreshing
potential. Plus, it's got the only tap-dance routine set to a
terrible King Crimson number I've ever seen. Worth seeing, either
way.
Vincent Gallo did not receive production credit for "Buffalo
66". But he may as well have.
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