Mini Biography
Vincent Gallo. American-born, Buffalo, New York, 1961. Left home, moved to New York City in 1978, and began playing in the experimental musical group, Gray, with artist Jean Michel Basquiat. After leaving Gray, he formed the band, Bohack, and recorded the highly regarded avant-garde industrial noise album, "It Took Several Wives".During the same period, Gallo also became known in New York City for his very unusual street performances, which were spontaneously executed in public and also witnessed by invited guests in the know. The One-Armed Man, The Man with No Face, Sandman, Boy Hit by a Car, and Boy Cries in Restaurant Window, to name a few. These radical public performances were upsetting and disturbing and were meant to provoke thought, self-reflection and consciousness. Gallo's invited guests could witness his performance's impact in this larger public context.
One invited guest, New York Underground filmmaker, Eric Mitchell, cast Gallo as the lead in his film, The Way It Is (1985), alongside newcomer Steve Buscemi. The Way It Is (1985) was Gallo's first appearance in a feature-length film, though previously he had directed himself in several short films, including If You Feel Froggy, Jump (1986), The Gunlover (1986) and Rocky 10, as well as the collaborations with filmmaker Michael Holman, Vincent Gallo as "Jesus Christ" (used in Julian Schnabel's Basquiat (1996)) and Vampire LeStat.
Since his early performance art days, Gallo has continued to create very conceptual performance pieces. Examples are a series of protesting of protests. Gallo has also created his own website, which upon closer examination, is actually a highly conceptual artwork resonating with his early performance work.
On his website www.vincentgallo.com in the merchandise section, Gallo is selling his sperm and sexual fantasies as conceptual works. Gallo's Internet art questions celebrity, procreation, ego, social agenda, and views of religion, race and sexuality. These public offerings are motivated by extreme sensitivity, concept and thoughtfulness, however their presentation appears crude and offensive. Misinterpretation of this work is common and Gallo is often incorrectly categorized as a racist, sexist, homophobe. Gallo has had over 25 one-man shows of his paintings, including several with famed New York art dealer, Annina Nosei, and 4 museum shows including one at the Hara Museum in Tokyo, Japan.
Gallo has also released several musical albums including 2 on the prestigious Warp Records label-When and Recordings of Music for Film. Gallo wrote, composed and performed the original music for the films Buffalo '66 (1998), The Agent (1990) and Promises Written in Water (2010).
In the 1980s, Gallo reached the professional level of Grand Prix motorcycle racing, though he did not win a national championship. Gallo is one of the actual motorcycle riders in his feature film, The Brown Bunny (2003).
For many years, Gallo has been known and highly respected in hi-fi and music recording circles and is considered by many professionals in the field as having world-class knowledge and experience. He has been published many times by specialty magazines focused on high fidelity designs and equipment as well as music recording techniques and equipment. His collection of vintage hi-fi and recording gear, as well as musical instruments, is amongst the largest and most refined in the world. Gallo is also a fanatic record collector, owning over 35,000 vinyl LP's.
Gallo has no agent, manager, assistant or intern and he makes his films without producers, and with extremely scaled down crews. He has self-distributed his movies and is directly involved in his films' sales for distribution. Gallo has also created all of his films' trailers and posters.
Gallo is one of the most misunderstood, misquoted, misrepresented talents in the past 25 years and a brief review of his IMDb page suggests he has also been incredibly prolific. In the summer of 2011, under much secrecy, Gallo began co-directing the independent fantasy, Ape (2012), alongside long-time collaborator, Joel Potrykus.
IMDb Mini Biography By: Catherine Doran
Personal Quotes
I stopped painting in 1990 at the peak of my success just to deny people my beautiful paintings. And I did it out of spite.I don't trust or love anyone. Because people are so creepy. Creepy creepy creeps. Creeping around. Creeping here and creeping there. Creeping everywhere. Crippity crappity creepies.
I'm the happiest the saddest guy in the world can be.
There's nothing self-gratifying about knowing you've played a performance where people may easily dislike the character and associate it with you. There's nothing fun about having people suspicious about why you're making work. I'm clearly not networking or making a bid for popularity. I'm following another motivation, and it's not as a provocateur. It's because I'm blinded, like an idiot, by wanting to preserve and express an insight that I have, or an aesthetic that I believe in. I forget that people react to me personally as the representative of that. Did you see a credit for hair and makeup? How can I be a narcissist? I've never even had hair and makeup done for me on a film. I don't even know what I look like as I'm filming. - on being called a narcissist.
Early in elementary school I had a very small moment where I had a different face - a little nose, straight, blond hair. I had a lot of response, from older women and little girls. But at some point when I transformed into a less [attractive] person, I decided to push away my feelings, to protect myself in order to avoid rejection.
I don't drink any coffee or take any drugs and I don't smoke cigarettes and I don't eat sugar and I don't take any medicine at all. I eat a lot of fish, vegetables, and I stay away from starches. I'm not so sure my eating behavior is responsible. I look like someone who takes drugs, so I refuse to take even aspirin in order to contradict my appearance. But I like the color brown. Oh, and I don't eat dairy. And I sure do like the color brown. And pink. Pink and brown. If I had to choose, pink would lose.
I never wanted to be an actor. I never want to be an actor. I want to be a movie star. The whole idea of having to act is too gruesome. It's too ambitious for me.
I told you, I'm an extremist. Even in art, if my work wasn't 50 times more interesting than me and my petty life, it would be useless.
I'm not an artist, I'm a hustler. As a hustler I've done many things. You should really believe it when I tell you that, 'cause I'm not being sarcastic. I'm a total hustler. What that means is I've hustled to make a buck and I've hustled to change the world and I've hustled to take revenge - but it's always hustling. I've never had a career or a single goal. I've never been formally educated. To get things together, to make a living, I constantly have to hustle.
I'm so in love with the United States. Not as a patriot. I'm in love with America like it's my first girlfriend. The geography, the people, the smell, the touch, the taste, the gas stations. I'm madly in love with America. Madly in love. And I was the guy that people used to say, "He's so European." I mean, I never felt like that. I don't relate to those monkeys. I just can't relate to them. I'm a super American--Captain America.
"Well, if you want to be an actor, move to a major city, either in L.A. or N.Y. and every day do as many things as you possibly can to reach that goal. But make sure that goal is set so high, that if you reach one-tenth of the goal, you've gone a long ways. Fantasize and believe that you could star in a 100 Oscar-winning movies, and just work for that every day. Let's face it, most people want to be actors because they want unconditional love and power and money and to be able to act out a character fantasy that involves themselves. So if one is truly honest about themselves in that way, then you're on the right path. If not, the process becomes convoluted. You have to go out grab it, and demand it. That's my advice. " - His advice to struggling actors.
I did my first job as an actor and my first role was in 1978 in Rome. I did a play with an Italian actor named Victor Cavallo who worked with Bernardo Bertolucci. After that I was very much a part of the New York performance art and underground theater and movie scene, so it's been quite awhile. But always very peripheral.
The good thing about bicycling is that, since I'm a public figure, I don't have to interact with people. If I walk from here to West Broadway, 50 people will stop me. On my bike, I can just wave. More public figures should ride bikes. It's a good way to deal with people.
My parents took an interest in nothing, at home no books, no records. My mother and my father are the emblem of indifference, dryness and bad taste. My father is also terribly stingy, in life as well as in feelings: I have never seen him filling up the bathtub. To save, he used to put the water 4 inches from the bottom. At home everything was ugly, casual, lacking in love, from furniture to clothes, to behaviors...
I became an actor, because of Danny Bonaduce on the "Partridge Family". He's tremendous, so funny and brilliant, and we seemed around the same age, I felt I should be on a show with him. We could have done a good spin-off, "the Danny Bonaduce, Vinnie Gallo show", da-da-da-da- da di da da.
I feel very happy that Bush is our president. One way that you can tell we have a good president, is by how much the French dislike him. The more the French hate him, the better he must be. And they hate this one.
I sold The Brown Bunny camera package because I had organized it so methodically, so precisely, that I couldn't let anyone touch it, scratch it, or break it up. I just had to get it out of my life. The package was sold to Sage Stallone who's one of my favorite people in this whole world, one of the smartest, young, goofy kids I've ever known in my whole life. So it went to the right person
I've never been a popular person, but it doesn't matter. I have everything in my life that I want. I'm not a walking publicity stunt. I'm not an anarchist, or bitter. I'm not trying to be subversive. I just try to remain unguarded, unprotected by fear, and agents and publicists, and I feel comfortable that way.
[on Argentina]: This country sucks. If I drop a banana here, everyone kills for it.
Sofia Coppola likes any guy who has what she wants. If she wants to be a photographer she'll fuck a photographer. If she wants to be a filmmaker, she'll fuck a filmmaker. She's a parasite just like her fat, pig father was.
I wouldn't work for Martin Scorsese for $10 million. He hasn't made a good film in 25 years. I would never work with an egomaniac has-been.
[on Spike Jonze] He's the biggest fraud out there. If you bring him to a party he's the least interesting person at the party, he's the person who doesn't know anything. He's the person who doesn't say anything funny, interesting, intelligent. He's a pig piece of shit.
Drugs and alcohol cloud your mind. When you drink, you do things you wouldn't do as sober. And that's why most people drink... O.K., but it doesn't interest me.
Salary
| El sueño de Arizona (1992) | $175,000 |
| Palookaville (1995) | $10,000 |
| El funeral (1996) | $20,000 |
| Últimas consecuencias (1997) | $100,000 |
| Buffalo '66 (1998) | $200,000 |
| Trickbaby (Freeway II) (1999) | $150,000 |
| Trouble Every Day (2001) | $350,000 |
| Stranded (2001) | $400,000 |
| Loca seducción (2001) | $400,000 |
| The Brown Bunny (2003) | $500,000 |
| Tetro (2009) | $300,000 |
| Essential Killing (2010) | $300,000 |
| Loosies (2011) | $175,000 |
Where Are They Now
(March 2002) Working on second directorial movie, The Brown Bunny (2003). Lives in NYC and L.A.(April 2011) Living in downtown Los Angeles. Within the past 24 months, he has written, directed and produced three films, two of which were in the 67th Venice film festival and both were in competition. At that festival, Gallo won the best actor prize. Mr. Gallo is currently set to star in an Italian film titled La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser (2012).
source: imdb.com
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