Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
We ran another Vincent Gallo interview last week, but the great thing about Gallo is that he never gives the same interview twice. Love him or hate him, he’s entertaining. Beaks got into a very different conversation than Capone did, so check this out and enjoy!
One doesn’t really interview Vincent Gallo. Mostly, it’s just a question of getting him wound up, waiting for a break in the action, and trying to guide him into areas of particular interest. Still, it’s undeniable that the confident, articulate, massively talented filmmaker is in complete control of the… well, it’s not a conversation at all, but more like a series of arias on subjects as diverse as aesthetics, connoisseurship, ego, love, detachment, Cannes and, inevitably, Roger Ebert. Through it all, Gallo was provocative, inscrutable and, occasionally, exhausting.
He was very curious about the website and advertising and the possible corrupting influence of the site’s advertising before we began. After discussing that for a bit, we got into the interview.
I really admire what you’ve done with this film. There’s just no rationalizing grief. This film attacks grief head-on, and a cross-country drive by yourself seems to be the perfect metaphor for that. First off, is this film coming from a specific incident? Is there a certain source of pain that you’re riffing on?
No. Not in a personal way or a catharsis in any sense; however, it is a personal insight. And an insight works in the same way as a mechanism that an experience does. If you see something that you understand in a strong way, or you relate to conceptually, it can have the same impact. Or more. Because you’re even more objective about an insight. You can be more irrational with a personal experience.
You’re saying that, emotionally, there is a detachment here. Because (the film) does feel very deeply felt.
Well, all the things I make feel deeply felt. Most of my work is about very subtle, sensitive issues relating to composition, intimacy, love, romance, tragedy, but in an aesthetic sensibility. The only things I really relate to in my films are the execution of broad, clear aesthetics and the aesthetics that fill those broad concepts. I guess it would be silly for me to deny that I don’t relate to all the work that I do, but my work has quite a range, so I guess I can relate to many things. But it’s not a personal thing in the sense… if Kubrick reads a book, and he likes a book, and he makes a film; he didn’t write the book, but on some level he had to relate to it or find it engaging in some way, and then he converts that into his cinema. Just because I wrote the script… I wrote the script because the script doesn’t exist. I didn’t write the script because it’s a reflection of me. Once the script is written, *then* I relate to it. I relate to it in another way; the way you relate to material that you’ve read. In the act of writing it, though, I’m highly focused on concepts, mechanisms and metaphors and things, and they’re very impersonal. Because the film, and I just realized this now talking to you, the film becomes more personal after the script is written. I make it personal. I make this script which is not personal at all *become* personal.
So it’s the embellishments.
Mm-hm! And they have a lot to do with just simply aesthetics because aesthetics reflect your emotional sensibility, too. They reflect your past, and your present, and your perceptions of things, and what you find beautiful.
I’ve got to say I really respond to how preoccupied you are with aesthetics, because there’s almost something, and I don’t even know you can put a finger on where you think you’re headed (when writing the script), but there seems to be something ineffable – a search for something ineffable. Are you looking for some kind of transcendence when you set off on these journeys?
I’m acting, in part, as a connoisseur and a custodian. My ego tells me that I can make good judgments about what’s beautiful and that I have insight into what’s meaningful, or what’s correct, or what’s metaphorical. It’s not that I create them; I realize them, or I choose them. It’s not in relationship to other movies or other works, not like Quentin (Tarantino) or those people, in terms of these universal things. So, partly I’m acting as this connoisseur; I’m staying so focused on a thought, a philosophy, by talking it through, talking it through, talking it through like a collector who eventually knows what the best piece is. When you first start collecting guitars you don’t know anything, so your taste is obvious. Your taste reflects commonplace; it reflects mainstream perceptions. As you evolve and become your own person, you start to make your own choices about what are the best pieces. And you make those judgments based on your experience – listening, seeing, touching; your knowledge of history and technical things; your understanding of augmentations and things when they become unoriginal or how they should’ve been, or how they were presented; your historical sense of what they meant at the time, and what was involved in their creation. All these things, if you stay highly sensitized to them, you develop your own point of view. What’s happened with me is years after I’ve developed my own point of view because, initially, my own point of view was avant-garde to the rest of the community. I was buying things that no one else was buying, thinking they were the most valuable pieces and, then, twenty years later my collection is worth a trillion. But that was done inconsequentially because I was following my instincts.
I do the same thing with philosophical metaphors, or with aesthetics, or with techniques, or with compositions. You stay focused on them over and over; you’re looking, looking, looking, and you’re finding what no one ever showed you before. You’re finding this thing that seems so obvious. You’re looking through the lens and you’re like, (mimicking an epiphany) “Oh!” And it’s just because you’re so sensitized to it; you’re a connoisseur in a sense.
Right—
And by creating that, then, by making that important for everyone else, you’re just a custodian; you’re the guy who’s polishing the statue or waxing the floor. You’re just a sort of bystander fighting to preserve something that should be public in a sense. It has nothing to do with self-indulgence; it has nothing to do with narcissism. In fact, both of those descriptions, or characterizations, don’t apply to me in any way. I am a connoisseur. I am an egotist, meaning I do feel like I know what’s best. I feel absolute confidence when I make my decisions about what I think is the most important guitar ever made. No one can change my mind, and I can give you ten years of speeches why. I’ve done the work. I’ve *done* the work. I’ve stumbled upon things on my own in that way, but I’ve made absolute personal sacrifice to… obtain those things. I’ve ignored my body, my health, my peace of mind, my leisure time because I’m so fascinated by those things. There’s nothing self-indulgent about purchasing or owning those things because they all come from gigantic sacrifice. “Gigantic” meaning I don’t eat for a month to own that piece. I don’t take any good jobs in films that would pay me and make me popular and get me laid. Instead, I do these things where I lose money, and I work way too hard, and people ridicule me. So, “self-indulgence”? No. “Narcissism?” Narcissists identify with winners. None of the characters that I’ve played and none of the things that I’ve set myself up for were to be an obvious winner. Just in THE BROWN BUNNY, for example, there’s no physical way that it could’ve done as well as BUFFALO ’66, because it can’t sell or show in as many outlets. And no matter what the film was, no matter how popular it could’ve been, there was a limitation.
And you knew that starting out?
I knew that starting out! I knew that I would be perceived as a loser, because why would this guy make BUFFALO ’66 and have all this lucky success? Because it *was* unintentional. I was really lucky that the film reached a broader audience than it could’ve reached. Not that I’m marginal. I set out thinking big. I mean, I’m making big movies in my mind, because I think they’re so beautiful. But, technically, it could’ve very easily never been released because it was heavily ridiculed just like BROWN BUNNY at the festivals, and didn’t win any prizes, and went unsold for a long time. That said, I was so focused on painting this beautiful thing, I was so sensitized to it as a connoisseur that I overlooked what that meant to myself, like I do all the time.
I have a bed. It’s completely uncomfortable, but it looks perfect and its aesthetic… it’s perfect in my New York apartment. It’s beautiful. It’s not warm, it’s not comfortable, it’s not big enough, but perfect in some other way. If I’ve sat in that bed for twenty-five years, and laid in that bed, and woke up in discomfort… why don’t I just get a puffy-buffy-comfity-cum-fluffy-comforter and a nice, springy, fat-ass, giant bed like everyone else? Well because it would destroy the balance of the apartment. How could you call that self-indulgent? How could you call that narcissistic?
But there is a gratification that—
Yes! I don’t deny the gratification! I’m very gratified. I’m so gratified by the beauty of the bed that it overwhelms my sore back. But my back is my body, and the bed is an idea! And the gratification comes from things outside of myself. That’s the only point that I’m making. Am I gratified? Heavily gratified. But I’m not heavily gratified in a self-indulgent way. I’m not lying on a puffy comforter eating chips and dips, jerking off to soap operas, which would be fun. You know, I would love to sit and eat ice cream like a barbarian, and just never work, and have hookers come over and do all kinds of things. But I’m so unwilling to let myself *enjoy* myself in that way, or let loose in that way, because I’m too preoccupied with polishing the railing.
Well, *that’s* just instant gratification. Anyone can achieve that.
That’s how I feel.
So—
I’m very happy with my life. I’m very happy with all the things that I’ve been able to do, and I’ve had a very full life. But it is a brutal, rigorous, sacrificial life that I’ve chosen for myself. It’s just one that I’ve chosen, and I accept and I enjoy it. But I don’t know too many people who work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Every day, every year of their whole lives whether they’re sick, injured, broken, sad, lost. I don’t know too many people who eat dinner alone as often as I do. I’ve never spent a holiday with anyone. I live without any understanding, compassion, or unconditional love from anyone, because to get those things I have to sacrifice some of my time and some of my energy towards other things. I’ve lived without them.
You’ve lived without love?
I’ve lived without love for most of my life. I’ve only had two girlfriends for very short periods of time, both of whom I loved *terribly* when I broke up with them. Especially my last girlfriend, Bethany.
How long ago was that?
That was four years ago. I loved her more than I could imagine anyone loving anyone. I really *liked* her, too. She was great. You know, she was just… great! I loved everything about her, every inch of her and every way about her. And I broke up with her because I’m compulsive, I’m irritable, I need to be alone. And the technique I used to break up with her was to diminish her in my life so that I could justify moving away from her.
Removing her bit by bit, or--?
Define something wrong, define something that she did to make excuses and make myself unlovable to her. Whatever. Because I knew I was going to make THE BROWN BUNNY. I knew I was going to go into this very compulsive, sick period of my life. I didn’t even know at the time; I didn’t know exactly why. But I was preparing myself to make this film for reasons I don’t even know why – because I was really comfortable at that time not making movies anymore. It was great. That was the happiest time of my life – spending time with her and not feeling like I had to do something remarkable.
Most artists work for acceptance. They put their work out there for people to appreciate it. There’s that kind of gratification; that’s a *delayed* gratification. And it comes after a great, intense period of toil, which I think THE BROWN BUNNY was after all this time. You then put that together – and I’m going to talk about Cannes now – you have this film that you’re working so hard on and somebody tells you, “We can get this into Cannes.” We’re going to show it there. And you’re forced to show a version of the film—
I say “no” initially because in my contract… I have so much creative control that in a trillion years from now when planet Dorko starts releasing microdust chips of films, my children’s children’s children control the transfer from rock-chips to dust-chips, or whatever they do then. So, I said simply “no” to Cannes. Whatever. I had to do one thing: I had to deliver the film by June 30th, 2003. That’s all I had to do. And at a certain point, I couldn’t do it. I could *technically* do it, but I couldn’t do it the way that I wanted because I wanted to wait for this machine to be ready that would make the 16mm blow up to 35mm much, much better. The idea that my film would exist in eternity not as good as it could be was too much to bear, so I negotiated a deal with the financiers that we show this rough draft of the film at Cannes, and they would use the festival to promote the film’s ultimate release in Japan and the rest of the world. Because they financed the film, but they were going to keep the Japanese rights where the film could play well. It was their dream to have a film in Cannes. It was the first film they ever financed, and the first film they ever financed was being offered to go in the main competition at Cannes. It’s a miracle, right? So, they couldn’t bear my better judgment, which was, “You don’t use Cannes for a test screening, you don’t use Cannes to show an incomplete film, and you don’t use Cannes to show a film like THE BROWN BUNNY.” Even if the film was finished, it would’ve had the same effect at Cannes. Let’s not fool ourselves and think that the excuse for Cannes was because my film wasn’t finished.
Do you think at ninety minutes it would’ve been rejected as harshly as it was at two hours?
You answer this question: if they boo the opening credits and they heckled from frame one of the film to the end, how could it have been any different?
Well, then it’s obviously not going to have a chance. If the audience isn’t going to give it a chance—
It never had a chance. And you know why it didn’t have a chance? Because people had suspicions about why I made the film. People don’t like me. They don’t like my politics, they don’t like my independence, they don’t like my cockiness or my arrogance. They don’t like my unwillingness to reach out to them. And they don’t like the idea of a filmmaker multitasking a film that he appears in where he gets blown. They just don’t like that conceptually. And on that description I agree with them, but that’s not what the film is, and that’s not what I did.
Critics have tolerated cockiness and arrogance from filmmakers before, but it’s after time. You have to earn it. Do you think they were just like, “You haven’t earned this yet, so we’re not going to let you get away with it?”
Yeah, probably. And partly it’s because they didn’t understand my history. When Thelma Adams writes in THE NEW YORK POST, “Calvin Kline underwear model’s directorial debut…,” she forgets that I had twenty-nine one-man shows of my paintings, that I was in four or five radical, important bands… and by the time I directed BUFFALO ’66 my history was clearly leading up from twenty-five years to that point. So, because she saw me in a Calvin Kline perfume ad, she decided to say, “Underwear model’s directorial debut.” Yeah, so on that note, if one is showing confidence and stubbornness in their point of view, yes, they’re an open target. I’ve always had that thing about me. I don’t know what it is, but I antagonize people. And people react in odd ways when they’re antagonized.
But Thelma Adams hardly qualifies as a film critic anymore, or, frankly, as a journalist. But Roger Ebert, who is discriminative—
Roger just had a weird pathos with that film. I wasn’t sure at the time if he was trying to get ratings for himself, because on his show he was saying, “The worst Cannes in history!” while giving thumbs up to every film that he reviewed on the Cannes issue at the time. I think his show was in flux at the time. My characteristics and my film’s characteristics were perfect for him to make himself the center figure of the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. We didn’t hear anything about Roger Ebert this year because there was no way for him to position himself, lever himself in the controversy. So, I think he took a broad shot at my film that way, and I think he enjoyed my response to him and our banter together. In the end, he’s a great person. He’s a very bright person, I have a lot of respect for him, I really enjoyed meeting him, and I promise you he won’t… ultimately, he’ll use the fact that the film is different than Cannes to cover his ass. He will not live with the review that it’s the worst (film in Cannes history). He does not want to have the tail pinned on the donkey.
It could be an honest thing, though, too. Olivier Assayas radically recut demonlover after Cannes 2002, where it was received very poorly, and emerged with a much better film.
I didn’t say that BUFFALO ’66 didn’t get better from the two hour and forty minute version to the 110 minute version. I didn’t say, “I don’t like THE BROWN BUNNY better than when it was unfinished, unmixed, didn’t have a beautiful mix and the color was perfect.” But if 3,500 people boo at the opening credits, and they start heckling one minute into the film, and I get a fourteen minute standing ovation at the end; somehow, the split audience is reacting to something else. They’re reacting to things not related to the film. I didn’t say that I don’t like the film better. I wouldn’t have continued to work on the film unless I thought it was better. My work on the film was not in reaction to Cannes because I had locked the film in March, and continued working on it. By the time I got to Cannes, the film was different than what showed in Cannes by a lot. But if you saw the film at Cannes and you called it “The Worst Movie Ever Made” without saying why, then you didn’t say I tried to do something and failed; you just said I made “The Worst Movie Ever Made.” That smells of me having had bad intentions, which relates more to what I’m telling you; that the film had prejudice, and it had suspicion. Because if he felt I failed, if he felt that he believed I had good intentions but that I failed, he would’ve mentioned that. If he just plain out said it was the worst movie in Cannes history, that means that the film had bad intentions; it had little integrity from its inception; it was unambitious. If he felt the film was gratuitous or self-indulgent, that would’ve led to a description like that, as well as the other people heckling or booing at the same time. What I’m saying is: if he said the film had problems then, and then saw it again and said, “I thought he fixed the problems”. But he didn’t say the film had problems. He said the film was the worst movie ever to show at Cannes, which translated to people: “The Worst Movie Ever Made”. But the film was in competition for a Palm d’Or. How many films get in competition for a Palm d’Or in history? A few hundred.
There have been some stinkers, but I know what you’re saying. But do you think the experience of all that… having had this film at two hours, and now it’s down to ninety minutes. You’ve had all this time to reconfigure the film. Did any of this influence how you reedited the film?
The film *wasn’t* reedited. You’re missing the point. No film in history has ever gone from a production of photography to a final cut. No film in history. I go from a rough cut to a final cut faster than any fucking filmmaker in the world! In BUFFALO ’66, I did a rough cut in three-and-a-half weeks and we worked three more days and got to a final cut. Period. Wes Anderson calls sixty of his friends every night for six months test screening his stupid fucking movie, and everything that they say affects what he does the next day. And they screen it, and they take surveys. I’m in my own world. BUFFALO ’66 was not recut from the rough cut to the final cut; it went from a rough cut to a final cut. BROWN BUNNY went from a rough cut, which happened to be seen in public, to the final cut in the same way any movie would. And it happened before it was seen. Mostly. The only thing that I changed after Cannes… first of all, it was never supposed to have that ending. The ending hadn’t been shot yet, so the ending was just a sort of fake ending to present it at the festival. The only thing that I changed after Cannes was the sequence in Utah to Colorado, which played a little long. And that’s because when you’re editing a movie you look at it reel by reel. There’s no way you’re going to watch reel one to reel six without picking up the phone, answering the door, eating something, making notes, stopping, fixing something, noticing something wrong, stopping there and changing it. There’s no way. So, you never watch your film from beginning to end. *I* don’t, because I don’t have that kind of discipline or focus. The hardest part about the WHEN record, was having to listen to the ten tracks together to see that I thought they played in the right order. The way that I did it was just to think it through, give it to them, and go and mix it. I never sat at home and listened from beginning to end. When I actually watched the film from beginning to end, I was in France, and I was able to see it projected. I was able to watch it with the mix – with a temporary mix, but a mix. I was able to watch it with music. I was able to watch it with some effects. I was able to see how the film would affect *me* from beginning to end. And at Cannes I made one decision, one thing I didn’t like, and that was it. And then when I got back to the United States, I shot the ending that was in the script, and wound up not using the ending that was in the script, or the ending that was in Cannes. Instead I used the ending that you saw, and that cut out seven minutes of the film. But I didn’t use that ending to make it shorter, I just thought the message of that ending was stronger. The other things that were shorter was the credits were, like, six minutes longer at the end and three minutes longer in the beginning.
Not much of the film changed in its essence. I promise you: you hated the film at Cannes, you’d hate it now. You like the film at Cannes, you’d like the film now. You might like the film a little more now, but a lot of people liked it better then. A lot of people. Because, for them, there were things in the film that were more extreme, and had an appeal for people who were more interested in extreme cinema. You’d be surprised at how many people were disappointed (that it’s now shorter), which is bizarre, too. A lot of people were disappointed in BUFFALO ’66 when they saw my first rough cut because I cut out this six minute sequence of me and Jan Michael Vincent, and everybody loved that scene the most. But I just felt that in history, in eternity, that scene interfered with what I was trying to do, and that’s what I felt about the Utah sequence.
(I’ve wildly exceeded my time with Vincent by this point, but the generous Karen Oberman of MRC offers me one more question.)
You’re interested in getting your film to a place where it satisfies you, and not considering the audience—
You consider the audience like this: you go into a forest and you find a tree; a beautiful fucking tree that has the most beautiful piece of fruit that you’ve ever seen in your life. And the first thought in your mind is, “Oh, my god! When I show this to my friends, or when I bring this to people, they’re going to go nuts. Nobody knows this tree, and it’s the most beautiful tree!” You have two choices: to never tell anybody and to make it your private tree, and to go there like a creep every day, getting the fruit and eating it, and never tell anyone about it. My personality is to want to share it with everybody. I don’t find the tree beautiful because of everybody; I didn’t go looking for the tree because of everybody; but I want to share it with everybody when I find it. What happens with me is when I come out of the forest with this piece of fruit, ironically, some people don’t like it. They think the fruit is weird. It tastes weird. “I like apples and oranges. I don’t like this weird fruit.” And I’m disappointed. But it doesn’t make the fruit less attractive to me. It doesn’t make me love the tree less, and it doesn’t make me start eating apples and oranges. And that’s it. I mean, if that makes sense to you, that’s the best way I could describe it to you.
Aesthetics are subjective.
They’re very subjective. I can’t say that every filmmaker is thinking on their own like that, but I would rather fail on my own. At least that. I would rather feel that I was attracted to what I was doing in spite of other people not feeling the same way. And that’s it.
Suddenly, almost imperceptibly, Gallo brightens. A slight smile dashes the moue that had darkened his demeanor the moment Cannes was broached. He’s clearly happy with this explanation about his art, and his relation to the audience. Of course, it’s not a self-indulgent or narcissistic flourish. No, not that. Actually, it looks an awful lot like contentment. If that is indeed the case, then, after the year he’s endured, he’s at least earned that.
THE BROWN BUNNY opened on Friday, August 27th in New York and Los Angeles. See it.
Faithfully submitted,
Mr. Beaks
As expected, a great read. Thanks, man.
"Moriarty" out.
