As someone who is currently working on their first film, I understand the pitfalls Vincent Gallo fell into in the making of Buffalo '66. In the course of making such a personal project, it is easy to slip into an egotistical protectiveness and self-indulgence - forcing the script to go in a certain direction so as to include a particular shot or line. You know, that idea which kept you up until 3am in the morning and that you just have to put in because its one of those private jokes that makes such an unexpectedly torturous thing as writing/directing so gratifying in the first place.
By Gallo's admission, the film was originally conceived as a grouping of unrelated elements - he wanted to use the house he grew up in and a recording of his father singing, he wanted the opening 15 minutes to depict the desperate need to urinate of a dislikable jailbird who beats up gays and hates women, but who (supposedly) gains our empathy by the end of the film. The result is a film that is at times choppy, at others a little forced - Mrs. Brown's fascination with the Buffalo Bills for example, the corny inserts of his puppy dog being murdered by his father, Wendy Balsam, the girl he had a crush on in the third grade. On the other hand, his father's outburst about the knife being pointed at him was a flash of genius, as was the surreal tap-dancing routine by Christina Ricci in the bowling alley, and Ben Gazzara miming to Gallo Snr's voice.
Buffalo '66 sits on the fence between black comedy and Cassavetes style character-study. It suffers from high-auteurism, and let's face it, Gallo's rampant arrogance. In interviews he has claimed he re-invented Ricci, taking personal credit for improving her dress sense and telling her how to act. Anyone who saw Ang Lee's masterpiece The Ice Storm will clamourously denounce Gallo's flamboyance as inferiority complex, or madness. Buffalo suffers from Gallo having his fingers in a few too many pies (remember how no-one liked that kid who was good at everything?) but it is also driven by that emotional investment and attention to detail. It is the little things that make Gallo's film work, despite the cliched dross and bad dialogue. The yellow stuffed-toy bunny rabbit and the guinea-pig in Goon's room, the tiny silver heart that dangles from Billy's necklace as he threatens to beat Layla's face in - these details are endearing. As for Layla's last line in the movie: "I think you're the sweetest, most handsomest guy in the whole world... and I love you." That is simply atrocious scripting; sudden character development that doesn't sit well with Billy's unlikable personality, and the lack of context given to Layla. It exists simply to setup the the clever camerawork in the stripjoint, and the terribly contrived happy ending.
In making a film, you have to let go of some of your ideas, simply because they won't work with all the others. Gallo falls into the trap of wanting to have his cake and eat it too. The result of Gallo's uneven intensity and extravagance is a patchwork of self-gratifying stylistics - the camera movement in the stripjoint: panning through space but not time, is a nice visual effect, but it lacks context and justification. This gratuitous shot is pure form - painfully self-conscious artistry in a film which lacks the subject to do it justice. The thirty second shot of Kevin Corrigan's paunchy belly on the other hand, was beautifully summatic, a casual counterpoint to the excessive cameos by Gallo's more well-heeled acting friends. (Kevin Corrigan... is there a single New York independent film that he isn't in?) There haven't been many intimate shots like that in American cinema since Cassavetes passed away. And we miss that little pinch of humanity.
eugene chew
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