The Truly Bizarre career of the Truly Bizarre Vincent Gallo
Recently, I fell victim to a phenomenon I have decided to call “the Vincent Gallo jumpscare”, which is essentially what it sounds like - when suddenly, and without warning - boom- the actor Vincent Gallo appears in the film you are watching, much to your shock and alarm. The first time that this occurred, I was dipping my toes into U.S. Go Home, a French coming-of-age film set in the 60s, against a backdrop of US military occupation. The second time this happened to me was during the absolute and complete fever dream (or nightmare) masterpiece Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby. In both of these films, Gallo appears in the last 20 or so minutes. The jumpscare element comes from the fact that it is just so surprising when he appears, and because he has such an impact on the tone of the films.
So who is this enigmatic figure? Well, Gallo’s best known feature is probably a small role in the film Goodfellas, as well as his self-directed and starring features in Buffalo 66 and the Brown Bunny, the latter film being particularly infamous for Gallo’s unsimulated sex scene with Chloë Sevigny.
Gallo’s appearance in Freeway II signifies the film’s shift from a crazy, high-octane road trip to one of the darkest horror films I have ever seen. Gallo plays the film’s main antagonist, Sister Gomez, a satanic nun, in a performance that would likely be highly controversial for a whole host of reasons if released in 2024. As his character torments Natasha Lyonne and María Celedonio, Gallo goes full-frontal nude and sports a falsetto voice with a put-on Mexican accent, lending a further outlandish feel to the already insane feature.
By contrast, in U.S. Go Home, it feels like Gallo is playing himself, or at least the same character he would go on to play four years later in Buffalo 66. Brusque and particular in his manner in both of these features, Gallo snaps at his younger female co stars in a way that feels quasi-worrying, given Christina Ricci (90s icon and his Buffalo 66 costar)’s description of Gallo as “a crazy lunatic man”.
Despite these problematic performances and alleged mistreatments, Gallo is unquestionably a talented director and musician. He also hasa deeply fascinating life story which includes a stint in the mob at age 12 and living with William S Burroughs as a child. Like auteurs such as Kubrick, Tarantino, and Fincher, Gallo has become a divisive cult figure, being praised for his admittedly gorgeous directorial style by big names such as Jean-Luc Godard, John Waters, Werner Herzog, and Josh Safdie, with his performance in Arizona Dream being a large influence on Robert Pattinson’s career.
However, this multi-hyphenate seems not to have stayed modest, made most evident by a trip to his personal website. The page boasts a “classifieds” section, which reads “here is a list of items I, Vincent Gallo, am looking for”. In this section he also threatens the viewer with the statement,, “Let’s not turn this page into a waste of my time, or I will never direct another film”. The merchandise section of Gallo’s website offers the usual products one might expect (signed DVDs and posters, the CD soundtracks of his films, t-shirts, etc), as well as, for the low price of one million USD, the opportunity to purchase Gallo’s sperm. The 519-word description of the product (only a hair shorter than this article) fluctuates between first and third-person references to himself, and includes some intensely off-putting preferences Gallo has for the ethnicity and appearance of the potential mother of his child.
I do encourage you to read the Personal Services section of his merchandise website branch, as it is so intensely fascinating and - well - bizarre. Now, it is most likely that the website’s offerings are purely in jest (at least this “personals” section), being labeled as satirical by the Daily Wire, and with Gallo himself stating, in response to a question about the website in an interview for Independent Film Quarterly, “I think the liberal mainstreamers in the press may be trying hard to eliminate antagonism and they may not have a sense of humor”.
This wording, particularly his use of the term “liberal mainstreamers”, reflects Gallo’s broader political and world opinions. Adding to the unique tableau that is this man, Gallo is a staunch conservative, and most recently endorsed Donald Trump for president, describing him as “the greatest president the USA has ever produced”. This leads me to the conclusion that Gallo is indeed a man of stark, bizarre inconsistencies. A lifelong conservative who continues to push the letter in his direction and performances, a man who promotes racist and anti-semititc speech on his website, yet cries discrimination over his political views in Hollywood. A man who is both a reasonably niche cult figure, yet also seemingly at the heart of the entertainment industry. And he’s scary.