Vincent Gallo.... C/D?

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Fuckin' Buffalo 66 is me all over, I haven't seen any of my family in 10 years and they're starting to get curious in a hassling-type manner and I'm on the verge of kidnapping somebody to bolster some bullshit story about having had a respectable normal life instead of spending the last decade in prison, I mean England

― dave q, Saturday, 24 May 2003 16:17 (9 years ago) Permalink

roger ebert is probably the best english language film critic currently publishing. vincent gallo is a tool.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 May 2003 16:26 (9 years ago) Permalink

He didn't like 'Night of the Living Dead'!

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Saturday, 24 May 2003 16:53 (9 years ago) Permalink

or 'I Spit on Your Grave'!

― dave q, Saturday, 24 May 2003 17:08 (9 years ago) Permalink

or 'Dunston Checks In'!

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 24 May 2003 19:08 (9 years ago) Permalink

Yancey, the LES comment upthread made me fall on the floor laughing.

My feelings on Gallo can be summed up by taking every mean thing written here so far, blending them together, and redoubling them.

― M Matos (M Matos), Saturday, 24 May 2003 19:14 (9 years ago) Permalink

also, his music is even worse than his movies are

― M Matos (M Matos), Saturday, 24 May 2003 19:22 (9 years ago) Permalink

too true

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 24 May 2003 19:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

Ebert's very good usually, but it looks like the "worst movie in the history of the festival" has inspired him to write possibly one of the worst paragraphs in the history of film criticism. I'm referring to his whole spiel about "Imagine 90 tedious minutes of a man driving across America in a van. Imagine long shots through a windshield as it collects bug splats, etc....".

I really don't find any of these supposed travesties of ennui and pretention damning at all, and you could make similar types of statements about isolated aspects of any number of the movies Ebert considers great, like "Last Year of Marienbad", "Picnic at Hanging Rock", "Blow Up" or "Dinner with Andre". "The Brown Bunny" might well suck big-time, but Ebert's particular illustration of its suckiness is not convincing at all.

― Wired Flounder (Wired Flounder), Saturday, 24 May 2003 19:34 (9 years ago) Permalink

...or "Last Year *at* Marienbad", for that matter.

― Wired Flounder (Wired Flounder), Saturday, 24 May 2003 19:37 (9 years ago) Permalink

Imagine long shots through a windshield as it collects bug splats

The impression I get is that this is literally all that happens in the movie. Which is pretty goddamn pretentious, you have to admit, even if you're a Jim Jarmusch fan.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Saturday, 24 May 2003 19:44 (9 years ago) Permalink

I agree, but Ebert's gotta give me more than that. I mean: "Imagine a movie that's about two guys talking in a restaurant, and nothing else happens" (Dinner With Andre); "Imagine endless shots of people in formal wear standing around inside a palace" ("Last Year at Marienbad"); etcetera. That's no less pretentious or potentially sleep-inducing than what Ebert describes. Ebert isn't telling why those movies "get away" with such things, and are worthy of his esteem, and "Brown Bunny" (then again, the title alone sinks this movie, doesn't it?) isn't.

― Wired Flounder (Wired Flounder), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:06 (9 years ago) Permalink

the title, and the person who made it

― M Matos (M Matos), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:08 (9 years ago) Permalink

presumably he'll do that when he actually, you know, reviews the movie. the comment you refer to comes in a johnny on the spot writeup of the festival so far.

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:09 (9 years ago) Permalink

wouldn't Andre be more intrinsically interesting just because there's dialogue?

― M Matos (M Matos), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:11 (9 years ago) Permalink

haha - "If Gallo had thrown away all of the rest of the movie and made the Sevigny scene into a short film, he would have had something. That this film was admitted into Cannes as an Official Selection is inexplicable. By no standard, through no lens, in any interpretation, does it qualify for Cannes. The quip is: This is the most anti-American film at Cannes, because it is so anti-American to show it as an example of American filmmaking."

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:12 (9 years ago) Permalink

You both make good points. I guess I just don't find Ebert's litany of "Imagine(s)..." all that outrageous. Great films have often pushed the boundaries of what audiences are supposed to tolerate, and I see no reason why a great film could be made that *was* just about a guy driving across a continent in a van with lots of shots of bug splattering on the windshield. It's a stretch, obv., but it's not inconceivable. Evidently Gallo didn't pull it off.

― Wired Flounder (Wired Flounder), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:18 (9 years ago) Permalink

I have it from the man himself that the Chloe-shag was all about messing with Harmony (someone was using my old flat as a location for his photo shoot and we hung out for a few hours and mostly talked about Jenny Holzer v. Barbara Kruger). Yanc3y is korrekt in that CS is pretty easy to hook up with. Apparently one of VG's female friends was assaulted by HK, using rohypnol, which caused the woman to have some kind of breakdown. He took revenge in a way he found personally satisfying. He didn't say or do anything to suggest to me that he was racist, but he definitely does like to wind people up.

If this film is as big of a bomb as people say, there are going to be red faces at work - not mine - is all I'm saying. And in an even odder set of six degrees, my step-aunt used to date Ebert. Go figure.

― suzy (suzy), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:31 (9 years ago) Permalink

I'm so not reading this. Ebert is "the best english-language film critic" today? Then who, I ask, who are Jonathan Rosenbaum, Kent Jones, Amy Taubin, Armond White, Adrien Martin, J. Hoberman, Steve Erickson, Fred Camper,

I've got nothing against the guy's love and knowledge of movies, which are real, but he rarely offers insight that one couldn't find from the gallery of movie stars recruited to comment on every annual AFI list of "100 Years... 100 of the Same Movies Rearranged." If he's the best we've got, then maybe the rancid Stephen Hunter deserved his ludicrous Pulitzer.

Ebert also hates Kiarostami but loves Majidi, which is like hating Godard but loving Molinaro. As boutique as shit.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:43 (9 years ago) Permalink

Did Warp finance this film? Because I seem to remember that Warp was going in to the film business and of course they love Gallo.

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:44 (9 years ago) Permalink

I didn't finish the first list, but I think the eight I mention are a good start. Saying Ebert's the best working film critic is like saying Rob Sheffield is the best working music critic. They're both good and stuff, but puh-leez.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:45 (9 years ago) Permalink

I don't think they have that kind of money, and they aren't the company to keep it quiet.

― Ed (dali), Saturday, 24 May 2003 20:45 (9 years ago) Permalink

Yahoo's blurb on the flick says the budget was $10 million.

― David Beckhouse (David Beckhouse), Saturday, 24 May 2003 22:51 (9 years ago) Permalink

That can buy a lot of mouthwash.

(Sorry!!)

― Ernest P. (ernestp), Saturday, 24 May 2003 23:00 (9 years ago) Permalink

I really have to believe it was more like $1 million.

― David Beckhouse (David Beckhouse), Saturday, 24 May 2003 23:28 (9 years ago) Permalink

Ebert's "review" was unconvincing. Todd McCarthy's review in Variety was a bit more convincing, and no less disapproving. I like Ebert as I have stated on other threads. Mainly it's because he is almost alone among critics for major American dailies in actually writing intelligently and sympathetically about a fairly wide range of cinema. His weird blind spots--his digs at Kiarostami and Angelopoulos in this week's column for example--confuse me, because if he thinks so little of these filmmakers, does he think all of his colleagues are simply shamming? And how can he approve of the relatively empty exercise that was Gerry and reserve such skepticism for Landscape in the Mist, etc. It's confounding, but it doesn't exactly take away from my respect for Ebert.

I don't have strong feelings about Gallo one way or the other. I thought I should point out, though, that a number of films that had disastrous receptions at Cannes have gone on to become, if not unassailable classics, then important touchstones. Like Dreyer's Gertrud ("100 minutes of static shots of furniture," said one French critic at the time--sounds a bit like Ebert's synposis of The Brown Bunny).

Buffalo 66 seemed like an effective mood piece to me, not much more. The fairytale-esque conceits in the midst of the limpid upstate NY realism were actually a bit ahead of their time--they're all over indie films now. That doesn't mean I liked them. The film looked gorgeous though, I forget the particular method Gallo used to process his film stock but the results were distinctive.

As for "film critics in the English language," I can't pretend to know half of them. Ebert is a very good prose stylist, much more pleasant to read than Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum begins practically every long review with a screed about the Cultural Guardians not letting us see (x) film and force-feeding us Titanic or what have you. It's not that his complaints don't have a basis in fact, it's just that his need to see every foreign/art movie through this particular lens is limiting, tiresome, and v. possibly condescending. In interviews Kiarostami has lauded The Godfather and in Positif not long ago Chris Marker said anyone who condemned Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (which borrows its plot from Marker's The Pier) and thought they were doing him any favors were foolish. I wonder what Rosenbaum--whose outlook on Film culture is increasingly Manichean--thinks of that.

― amateurist (amateurist), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:18 (9 years ago) Permalink

What I like about Ebert is his ability to be serious and fairly intellectual about artsy films but still appreciate complete trash.

Ebert doesn't hate fun.

― David Beckhouse (David Beckhouse), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:25 (9 years ago) Permalink

Ebert is the best populist movie critic working today. I would argue that he does a more important job than those who spend their careers pointing out the glorious stuff we're missing. Praising the good and dismissing the bad are only part of criticism -- Ebert takes it on himself to wade through the mediocre. Noble, I say.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

... point taken, except that Rosenbaum actually liked Titanic. (I don't think he's above fun, either, as he had a rollicking good time at Small Soldiers, for example.)

I think the distinction I make that puts critics like Rosenbaum and White (I mention these two particularly because of their tone, which many people insist is condescending and vengeful) above Ebert is that film criticism... or, at least, film criticism that aims to mean something other than to tell you whether or not you should see a movie (as a film prof once said to me: "every film is worth watching at least once") is usually more about the person reflecting and writing about the film in question as it is about that film. Purely objective "checklist criticism" (good cinematography, a stunning performance, clever jokes) means nothing to me. I'm not saying Ebert is a checklist critic, but he does more often than not seem to be striving for a very objective tone.

Different strokes, obviously, but I prefer reading a very personal opinion that I happen to disagree strongly with (most of A. White) than merely nodding along at a basic description of a given film's socio-cultural-zeitgeist position at the moment it opens (which is what I think Ebert excels at).

At least we both love Gertrud... am I right?

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:29 (9 years ago) Permalink

Far above the socio-cultural-zeitgeist, are we, Eric?

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:31 (9 years ago) Permalink

Whatever could you mean, Kenan?

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:32 (9 years ago) Permalink

I'm the opposite. I hate reading blog entries about movies, no matter how accomplished the writing. I want to know -- is it any good? Is it important (not is it important to you)? These are basic questions, and usually do not require fancy answers, only a solid working knowledge and a sense of the history of film. Ebert has this.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:36 (9 years ago) Permalink

(Methinks maybe this conversation should be detoured back over to that film criticism vs. music criticism thread, but I'm too hopelessly lost in that thread to start anything up there...)

It's pretty difficult for me to trust anyone who decides that a film is or is not important -- and not even important for me, for the writer, but just for everyone. First and foremost, any standards of what is considered "good" in film need to be held in suspect if not outright contempt. Take the films of Brian De Palma, for example. Nothing he does could be considered in "good taste," as far as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' definition of "good" has developed. Is he important to me? Hell yes. Is he important to others? Not for me to say. The best I can do is suggest how perhaps the cultural barriers between good and bad films might be interfering with one's reading of his films....

But I suppose I could just as easily stop now, since you hate reading blog entries on movies. ;)

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:44 (9 years ago) Permalink

I'm bored now. Off to the movies!

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:50 (9 years ago) Permalink

I'm with you on that one, chum!

By the by, I can't help but feel it's a bit ironic having this discussion in the first place, as I'm much more into movies than music in general, and have been posting at cinephile's message boards a lot longer before I stumbled onto this neat place. Like with you (only opposite), I sort of operated under the assumption that music was very much a totally subjective thing and the best any blog writer could do was to merely suggest the music was worth my time. I've certainly been disabused of that notion since reading some of the insights here.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 25 May 2003 00:57 (9 years ago) Permalink

Eric - could you name a daily newspaper film critic who write in the tone you prefer? this is basically a question of venue isn't it?

― James Blount (James Blount), Sunday, 25 May 2003 01:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

Probably, but that's not what the original assertation of Jess stated. There's no question that I prefer the writings of the free alt weeklies to the morning papers (though, to be fair, most film reviewers at daily papers really only write one day a week as well: every Friday).

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 25 May 2003 01:33 (9 years ago) Permalink

Sorry, that wasn't clear. I meant to say that I probably could find a daily writer whose work I like alot, but in general I find a lot more to like in the Village Voices and the City Pageses. (Though I do understand how that style can be seen by some as self-indulgent.)

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 25 May 2003 01:38 (9 years ago) Permalink

yeah, I don't really think Ebert's the 'best working english language film critic' by any means, though film critics aren't something I tend to rank beyond 'ones I read' and 'ones I don't', and even this has as much to do with where they work than anything else - I tend to read the Times and the Voice anyway, hence I read Elvis Mitchell, Tony Scott, James Hoberman, Amy Taubin, etc. - Hoberman's the only one I'd bother to seek out the way I have to remind myself to seek out Rosenbaum or Chris Fujiwara (the only other working english language film critic with a net presence I think to seek out). Ebert links thru Drudge, is a good read, I read him.

― James Blount (James Blount), Sunday, 25 May 2003 01:47 (9 years ago) Permalink

Fujiwara is great, right up there with Steve Erickson as far as net critics go.

(Also, though I'm biased because I've engaged in conversations with them, I have to say that Zach Campbell, Ed Gonzales, Damien Bona, Jaime Christley, and a great number more have done as much as anyone to shape my understanding and appreciation of film at the moment.)

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 25 May 2003 01:52 (9 years ago) Permalink

Whoops. Should be Gonzalez.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 25 May 2003 01:53 (9 years ago) Permalink

I'll also say (tying this back into 'I love music') I can't think of (m)any working english language film critics (I can think of maybe five working tagalog film critics) who excite/interest/surprise me as much as Frank Kogan or Chuck Eddy or a half dozen other music critics I could name (a good 80% of which post here sadly enough). I can't think of any who I read just for their sentences (unless we count the occasional Anthony Lane, and he's really a book critic in sheep's clothing).

― James Blount (James Blount), Sunday, 25 May 2003 01:58 (9 years ago) Permalink

where can you read Erickson online?

― James Blount (James Blount), Sunday, 25 May 2003 01:59 (9 years ago) Permalink

Chronicle of a Passion.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 25 May 2003 02:42 (9 years ago) Permalink

thanx!

― James Blount (James Blount), Sunday, 25 May 2003 04:59 (9 years ago) Permalink

fuck yes! thanks for the link!

― M Matos (M Matos), Sunday, 25 May 2003 08:58 (9 years ago) Permalink

uh...that's not the Steve Erickson I thought it was--sez about 2/3 down "I am not the novelist Steve Erickson, nor do I know how to get in touch with him." I'm sure this guy is cool--I'll read him--but just in case anyone else is expecting the novel-writing/Los Angeles magazine guy....

― M Matos (M Matos), Sunday, 25 May 2003 09:01 (9 years ago) Permalink

he wrote about movies for spin veeerry briefly mid-nineties or so

― James Blount (James Blount), Sunday, 25 May 2003 09:19 (9 years ago) Permalink

he's a dumbass. but his use of 'heart of the sunrise' in b66 was cool.

― chaki (chaki), Sunday, 25 May 2003 09:20 (9 years ago) Permalink

Gallo has always given me the feeling of somebody who woke up and said, "I'd like to be depraved and edgy, but I'm too sallow today."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 25 May 2003 16:28 (9 years ago) Permalink

Skipping 147 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

the man who helped me understand the complicated and majestic beauty of Yes.
hee hee, ugh is right. though i will admit that Buffalo 66 made me revisit Yes. Though I already owned Tales from Topographic Oceans ...

― tylerw, Tuesday, 4 August 2009 19:49 (3 years ago) Permalink

lol @ "Rick Emerson"

― velko, Tuesday, 4 August 2009 19:54 (3 years ago) Permalink

dude's touring on the west coast now

― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, 4 August 2009 20:06 (3 years ago) Permalink

this is a very good album

I saw him on that RRIICCEE tour--I was probably one of a handful of folks there for the music, as the first 3 rows were packed with girls trying to catch his eye. He wore a long blonde wig and didn't say a word the entire show; at the end the girls gathered around the stage hoping he'd come back but he didn't, which made me chuckle. Now the music was tedious "improvisation" with his nasal-ly croon atop it periodically, which was a letdown for me given how much I like the album mentioned above...

― Malcolm Money, Tuesday, 4 August 2009 22:25 (3 years ago) Permalink

The sheer amount of time and effort this man spends wheeling and dealing vintage bass guitar knobs on eBay (not to mention snatching up his own memorabilia whenever he can) almost undermines his place as one of popular culture's greatest self-mythologizers since Orson Welles. Almost.

― Goethe*s Elective Affinities, Wednesday, 5 August 2009 04:04 (3 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

Vincent Gallo is so great

― puff pastry hangman (admrl), Friday, 14 January 2011 21:35 (2 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

no he isn't

― am0n, Friday, 11 May 2012 04:15 (1 year ago) Permalink

newish

― LaMonte, Friday, 11 May 2012 04:21 (1 year ago) Permalink

Would laugh when the AV Club would do it's yearly christmas catalog of unlikely and ludicrous items available over the internet and end with the same punchline: a vial of Vincent Gallo's seed he was selling on his website for $10,000 dollars, maybe more, for prospective mothers. Also, Gallo's refusal to sell to any females who weren't caucasian.

― I serve at the pleasure of Dr. Dre and a team of Sorbonne scientists. (R Baez), Friday, 11 May 2012 04:21 (1 year ago) Permalink

Vincent Gallo is so great
― puff pastry hangman (admrl), 14. Jaanuar 2011 16:35

[1 year passes...]

no he isn't
― am0n, neljapäev, 10. Mai 2012 23:15 (6 hours ago)

did enjoy reading this part of the discourse. really.

― t**t, Friday, 11 May 2012 11:08 (1 year ago) Permalink

neljapäev, 10. Mai

― am0n, Friday, 11 May 2012 14:38 (1 year ago) Permalink

everybody I know who's worked with this guy has nothing but awful things to say about him

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 11 May 2012 15:27 (1 year ago) Permalink

5 months pass...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_leggenda_di_Kaspar_Hauser

― am0n, Sunday, 4 November 2012 21:11 (6 months ago) Permalink

― buzza, Sunday, 4 November 2012 21:18 (6 months ago) Permalink

― am0n, Monday, 5 November 2012 01:36 (6 months ago) Permalink

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