Mann and Supermann (10/7/98)
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Buffalo ’66. [Vincent Gallo, 1998.]
Vincent Gallo gets out of prison in the opening shots and spends the first several minutes of his directorial debut staggering around Buffalo trying to find a place to take a leak. After failing to find succor in a bus station, a coffeeshop, an alley, and at the gates of the big house itself, while lurching through a dance studio to a restroom he pauses to kidnap Christina Ricci, whom he has decided on the spur of the moment is ideally suited to play the role of his wife during the visit he is about to make to his parents, Ben Gazzara and Anjelica Huston. Why he should be concerned about the impression he will make upon them is unclear, since they seem hardly to remember him and are disinclined to pay as much attention to the returning prodigal and his cover story about a government job that has kept him away for five years as to the football game running in the background. Indeed a demented obsession with the Bills appears to be a family trait, and it develops that our hero’s sojurn in the joint was precipitated by his default upon an unfortunate bet placed on Buffalo in the Super Bowl; whereupon his loanshark [Mickey Rourke] suggested that a timely guilty plea to save embarrassment for “a friend of ours” might be an offer he couldn’t refuse. Since this was the game the Bills lost by the margin of a missed field goal in the closing seconds, Gallo now [as he explains to his only friend, a retarded guy named Goon] has no purpose in life save to seek out and kill the kicker, who operates a topless bar located across from the seedy motel where he and Ricci end up after a romantic evening spent bowling and dining at Denny’s. Here the further progress of their relationship is impeded by the revelation that his entire previous experience with women has consisted in stalking Rosanna Arquette throughout high school. And, clutching a revolver, he steps out into the night to meet his fate.
This summary, unusually complete though it may be by my standards, does at best imperfect justice to the weird hilarity of this film; I’ve left out Gazzara’s lipsynched rendition of a loungelizard standard for the benefit of Ricci, the twisted composition of the homecoming dinner, and the sight of Goon talking on the telephone in his underwear, let alone a dozen other goofy details. This flick is priceless. Don’t hesitate to check it out.
____________Hours of idleness (9/8/98)
