Vincent Gallo
Vincent Gallo is an American actor, filmmaker, and musician. He has won several accolades, including a Volpi Cup for Best Actor, and has been nominated for the Palme d'Or, the Golden Lion, and the Bronze Horse.
Gallo was a successful painter and musician, working with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Lukas Haas. Gallo later became an actor and starred in films including Arizona Dream, The House of the Spirits, Palookaville, The Funeral, Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby, Trouble Every Day, Stranded, Tetro, Metropia, Essential Killing, The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, and Shut In.
As a filmmaker, Gallo directed, wrote, and starred in Buffalo '66, The Brown Bunny, and Promises Written in Water. He has also directed and starred in numerous short films, including The Agent, and several music videos, such as "Going Inside", "Cosmopolitan Bloodloss", and "99 Problems". Gallo has released several albums, including When, and worked as a model, having been photographed by Calvin Klein, H&M, Supreme, Persol, and Yves Saint Laurent.
Gallo's work has gained a cult following.
Early life
Vincent Gallo was born on April 11, 1961, in Buffalo, New York to Vincent Gallo Sr. and Janet Gallo. He has an older brother named Charles and a younger sister named Janine. Gallo was raised Catholic, and made his First Communion in 1969.Gallo's parents are Sicilian and worked as hairdressers, with his father having retired to be "a gambler."
Gallo has described his parents as dishonest people, saying "If it was my birthday, I knew my mother took me to the K-Mart and she stole my toy. She'd put it in the shopping cart and we'd walk out. I was raised with that." Growing up, Gallo says that his father was abusive and beat him on several occasions, including one instance where Gallo's father broke his nose. He has said that while growing up, his father was "this kind of dark, raging figurehead...That's not who he is today, but when I was a child there wasn't a day...when he didn't hit me, punish me, yell at me or tell me something I did wrong." Gallo's mother also forbade him from decorating his own room, which he shared with his siblings and grandfather, and from owning a guitar, leading Gallo to secretly hide the latter underneath his bed. Gallo has attributed his self-described controlling and perfectionist nature as a filmmaker to his childhood experiences.
Gallo claims that at the age of 12 he worked for the local mafia in Buffalo, helping them to perform small crimes, such as carjacking and shoplifting. Supposedly, Gallo worked for the mafia for approximately one year, and desired to continue down a life of crime and become a powerful gangster. However, he was eventually convinced by a mafia member, who felt that Gallo was wasting his potential, to abandon it in favor of a legitimate career.
After graduating from Sweet Home High School in 1978, Gallo left his home in Buffalo and ran away to New York City at the age of 16. He took up various jobs, including ones working in a hi-fi guitar shop and as a restaurant dishwasher.
Gallo claims he went on to race motorbikes professionally, supposedly without training, in Formula II. Gallo says he raced for Yamaha, but never won a national championship. He claims to have raced 125cc and 250cc WERA bikes in the 1980s; and later performed his own racing scenes in his 2004 film The Brown Bunny. In the film, Gallo rides a gold Honda NSR250, which he personally designed. He also went on to become a successful painter.
Film career
20th century
During Gallo's artistic period in the 1980s, when he worked as a musician and painter in New York City, he also began experimenting with film. Gallo created the short film "If You Feel Froggy, Jump" and appeared in the 1981 film Downtown 81 with painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 1984, Gallo acted in the No Wave film The Way It Is or Eurydice in the Avenues by Eric Mitchell, along with actors Steve Buscemi, Edwige Belmore, Mark Boone Junior and Rockets Redglare. After starring in the obscure 1989 film Doc's Kingdom, he began acting in small parts in more well-known films such as Goodfellas, The House of the Spirits, and The Perez Family. French director Claire Denis hired Gallo to act in several films such as the short film Keep It for Yourself, the made-for-TV U.S. Go Home, and its follow-up feature Nénette et Boni."In 1998, Gallo released his directorial debut film, Buffalo '66. The film received positive critical reception and was nominated for an award for "Best First Feature" at the Independent Spirit Awards. Gallo made this drama for $1.5 million, serving as writer, director, lead actor, and composer/performer of the soundtrack. The release of Buffalo '66 "gained him a solid fan base."
During filming, Gallo had difficulties working with actress Christina Ricci, who starred in the film alongside him. According to Ricci, Gallo was a "crazy lunatic man" and did not get along with her on the set. Ricci also said that Gallo mocked her weight several years after the film released, and that she has no interest in ever seeing his other films. Gallo disputes Ricci's account, and in 2018, wrote "I still smile when I see a picture of her and when she insults me in the press it reminds me that we are connected in some way, and for that I am grateful. Christina Ricci was my friend during the filming of Buffalo 66 and working with her made sense and felt natural....I insulted her jokingly one day to a friend and a sneaky gossip writer overheard me. Christina and I have not spoken since."
2000s
In 2001, Gallo again collaborated with Denis, and appeared in her horror film Trouble Every Day.In 2003, Gallo starred in and directed the film The Brown Bunny, which chronicles a motorcycle racer's cross-country road trip and co-starred Chloë Sevigny. The film, which contained a scene of Sevigny performing unsimulated oral sex upon Gallo, received an overwhelmingly negative critical response to its Cannes premiere and became a media scandal, in part due to Gallo's use of a still image from a sex scene on a promotional billboard. Andrea LeVasseur of Allmovie said that The Brown Bunny "premiered to much derision at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival." Film critic Roger Ebert stated that The Brown Bunny was the worst film in the history of Cannes. Gallo retorted by calling Ebert a "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader" and put a hex on Ebert, wishing him colon cancer. Ebert then responded – adapting a statement made by Winston Churchill – that, "although I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of The Brown Bunny." In 2003, several media sources later reported that Gallo apologized to Ebert, but Gallo disputed this, saying "I never apologized for anything in my life...The only thing I am sorry about is putting a curse on Roger Ebert's colon. If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn't like my movie then I'm sorry for him."
In 2004, Gallo and Ebert appeared to have reconciled, and Ebert ended up giving a thumbs up to a re-edited version of The Brown Bunny. However, in a 2018 article, written after Ebert's death, Gallo accused Ebert's review of the re-edited version as being "far fetched and an outright lie."
Gallo was strongly considered for and almost cast as Uncle Rico in the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite, though the role ultimately went to Jon Gries.
In 2008, Gallo was cast as the titular character in Francis Ford Coppola's drama film Tetro.
2010s
In 2010, Gallo won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 67th Venice International Film Festival for his non-speaking role in Essential Killing. Gallo did not attend the ceremony to accept his award in person, leaving the duty to the film's director Jerzy Skolimowski, who tried to get the actor to reveal himself, leading the audience in a chant of his name. Gallo was not in attendance.At the festival, Gallo's third feature film, Promises Written in Water, debuted. It was also screened once at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. The film received polarized and mostly negative reviews from critics, though several positive reviews cited it as one of the year's greatest films. The film was nominated for the Golden Lion.
Gallo has stated that he has no plans to ever distribute the film and allow it to be seen again, as "I do not want my new works to be generated in a market or audience of any kind." He also added that allowing the film only ever being shown at two screenings was part of a deal he made with Delfine Bafort, who starred in the film. Gallo explained in a 2011 interview that the film would be "allowed to rest in peace, and stored without being exposed to the dark energies from the public." As of 2024, Promises Written in Water is not available to watch, and has not been screened since 2010.
During the Venice festival, Gallo also released a short film, titled The Agent, which was nominated for Best Short Film. The Agent starred Sage Stallone, and has also only ever been screened twice, with Gallo having no plans to re-release it to the public.
In 2012, Gallo starred in Davide Manuli's The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, a modern-western interpretation of the German legend of Kaspar Hauser which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Gallo plays the two largest roles in the film, the English-speaking Sheriff and the Italian-speaking assassin. Later that year, he appeared in Julie Delpy's 2 Days in New York, in a cameo role as himself. In the film, Gallo appears as a Mephistopheles-like version of himself, who purchases the protagonist's soul, after she puts it up for auction. Delpy wrote the role with Gallo specifically in mind, who agreed to the part after reading the screenplay.
In 2013, Gallo's website listed that he had directed, written, produced, and acted in his fourth feature film, April. It states that the film is 88 minutes long, stars Gallo as the lead character Seth Goldstone, and co-stars pornographic actor Jamie Gillis. The film has never been released, leading to speculation about the nature of the project. That year, Gallo also co-starred with Kōichi Satō and Yoo Ji-tae in Junji Sakamoto's film, Human Trust.