By Bel Radford
Like any film Vincent Gallo has conjured, Buffalo’ 66 is steeped in narcissism. Gallo stands on stage and essentially cry-wanks in your face, captured on 35mm film, It’s a blatant display of self-aggrandising and a masturbatory pat on the back (or dick) – perhaps best surmised in one of the beginning scenes of the film, in which Gallo beats up a man in at the urinal next to him for staring – and exclaiming – it’s just so big! Naturally, it is my favourite film, ever. There is a job-lot of chin-scratching discourse and pacing back and forth over the success of Gallo’s attempt to curate an ‘art film’, and his portrayal (and in-film treatment) of his deuteragonist, Christina Ricci, but before discussing such a heated debate one should be familiar with the plot of Buffalo’ 66.
In the rotted, snowy streets of New York we lay our scene. Billy Brown (Gallo) has just been released from prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Following a montage of greyscale, grainy overlays chronicling Billy’s 5 years locked up – cue crying in shower – cue mugshots – cue piano tune (written by Gallo himself) lamenting on being such a lonely, lonely boy. We then cut to a scene of Billy running into every nearby shop locally available maniacally searching for a bathroom which he finally finds in a dance studio (where the aforementioned urinal scene takes place). Gallo is all sharp shadowed brows and spindled limbs – speaking in staccato whines and quips, the cold daytime shots of New York were, to me, reminiscent of a more expansive and somewhat hollowed colour grading akin to Wong Kar Wai’s ‘Fallen Angels’. It’s all set up to feel very alien. Billy is strange looking, strange speaking, running around this apocalyptic cold expanse. After relieving himself, he calls his mother from a payphone – declaring he’s just touched down from a nondescript work related trip, staying at a fancy hotel, and wants to introduce his family to his wife. Wife? You ask – well Billy proceeds to snatch a girl walking out of the bathroom – wife acquired! Her name is Layla (Played by a 17 year old Ricci), wearing a powdery blue babydoll dress, silver sparkly tap shoes and a white shrug cardigan. Layla is bemusingly passive – obliging Billy’s demands to drive him to his parents house, pretend to be his wife (under the alias Wendy Balsam) and to essentially ‘make him look good’ – promised with the reward of being his best friend. Billy then has a panic attack sort of episode on the porch before his parents open the door – and we are greeted with worlds best mum and dad.
After serving Billy courses of food he is allergic to the vast majority of, Billy’s mum explains to Layla her devotion to the Buffalo Bills, recounting how the only game she missed was the day Billy was born, sighing how she wishes she never had him as they eat platefuls of tripe (cow stomach lining, for the less culinary inclined). Billy’s dad is a retired singer, now part-time pervert, occasionally motorboating Layla under the guise of a fatherly hug – ‘ you know, daddy really loves his new little sweet young daughter!’ It is difficult to say whether Billy’s father really looks at Billy during the entire dinner scene, but we do get a fond flashback scene of him killing Billy’s childhood dog, Bingo. During the Godard-like dinner scene montage, it’s my belief that this is where Layla really falls in love with Billy. Mummy AND daddy issues? Bless. She takes it upon herself to declare that Billy is her boss at the CIA, where she worked as his typist, and that they have a child on the way. The parents aren’t overly affected, watching the Buffalo Bills game over Layla/Wendy’s shoulder, but it’s a tender moment.
It transpires that the reason Billy went to prison was in order to keep a bookie from hurting his parents, a bookie whom he owes $10,000 after betting the Buffalo Bills would win the 1991 Super Bowl – presumably in an attempt to connect with his emotionally negligent mother. We discover that the next chunk of the movie is a manhunt for Scott Woods, the disgraced Buffalo Bills kicker whom Billy blames for losing the Super Bowl, in turn losing everything, who now owns the local strip joint, Billy learns that Woods doesn’t show up at the strip club until around 2 in the morning, so we then see Billy and Layla killing time, shuffling through his hometown. The meat of the film here becomes tender, and warmth pervades the vignette of scenes as the neon city signs are woken up by the dark, we arrive at the bowling alley where Billy’s countenance softens oh so slightly, it seems to be the place in which Billy spent the majority of his youth. This is my favourite scene of the film, for a great number of reasons really: the first being Billy’s incredible outfit, a striped grey and black wifebeater, with tight flared trousers, and patent red platform cowboy boots. The harshness of his nose, his jaw, his eyes as he hits strike after strike, his body is all angles. We then pan to Layla, ambling around, a noncommittal observer – the lights dim and all is a deep red, with her silver tap shoes spotlighted, she then breaks the fourth wall by tapdancing to King Crimson’s ‘Moonchild’ – the baby blues of her dress, eyeshadow and tights chime in accordance with the song’s vibraphone and chatter of symbols, puncturing a tight staccato through the hollow grey of the film. The scene operates as a rare invitation to Layla’s interior world, underscored by a warm and deep loneliness, top-noted by innocence.
‘Lonely moonchild, dreaming in the shadows of the willow’
The next scene, arguably the film’s most famous, is their time in the photo booth – shot through the photobooth camera, we’re peeking through a small, grainy rectangle in the centre of the screen. Layla sits on Billy’s lap and is chided over several attempts to take photos, first for sticking out her tongue, then for kissing him on the temple – ‘we’re a couple that doesn’t touch’. Billy is scared, albeit moved by Layla’s burgeoning empathy she bludgeons him with, he consistently berates Layla in his broken, repetitive and disjointed sentences while she peers back doe-eyed and unaffected. Like Layla, it’s quite difficult to see Billy as venomous, he comes across as a gentle yet imperilled piece of shit with a frustration that hurls itself toward any moving target – it appears he wants to be loved, and he slowly allows himself to feel what it may be like, they have a bath together (clothed, naturally) then lie in silence next to each other awkwardly-limbed, like discarded barbie dolls. A dulcet saxophone seeps into the background of the scene, as they touch hands – snatch them away – touch again – eye contact – look away – then kiss. It’s brief and angular, reminiscent of Billy’s bowling, but then he folds in on himself and lets himself be held.
Billy then wakes up at 2:08, we’re reminded of his sacrificial mission. As he sneaks out, he wakes Layla:
‘I really like you
I’m gonna be really sad if you don’t come back.
Unless you tell me
If you’re not gonna come back, just tell me, don’t lie to me.
Are you going to come back or not?’
Layla declares her love for him as he closes the door. Next, is one of the greatest examples of scoring in the history of film (I believe) and even if you won’t ever watch this movie – I completely urge you just to skip to 1:38. Heart Of The Sunrise by Yes begins to play as Billy walks into the velvet-clad strip club in slow motion, topless dancers (in granny pants – weirdly) lit up in icy neon and surrounded by fat, wobbling men – it looks like a scene from the Twin Peaks backrooms with an incredible prog rock bassline. Billy pulls out his pistol and shoots Scott, then himself – everything is still, yet the camera pans around the scene and then away to some faraway vision of Billy’s largely unmoved parents watching a Buffalo Bills game on his grave, naturally.
But what’s this – we pan back in – it was all a dream! Rejoice! Billy flees and runs to a shitty 24-hour café where he buys Layla a hot chocolate (large) and a special heart cookie. It’s a truth universally known that narcissistic homicidal depressed maniacs can, in fact, be fixed, girls. The movie ends with a still of Layla and Billy in bed, sleeping, and holding one another.
Now there’s plenty of discourse surrounding its semi-autobiographical nature, as Gallo himself grew up in Buffalo, New York and had similar parents – in fact, in the premiere of Buffalo 66, attended by those who knew the family, continually burst out laughing in recognition of the parents’ depictions. Gallo describes Billy as a character portraying feelings true to those that Gallo has felt himself, and the last five minutes of the film are him on a really good day. So, in essence, Gallo Dr Frankenstein-ed Billy using the darkest parts of himself to depict what he could have been. The semi-autobiographical nature of the film, paired with its total self-indulgence, (the fantasy of its plot is apologised for by its atmosphere, which is uncontestably beautiful) persuades many watchers to land in the ‘this film is a piece of shit’ camp. Many firmly situated in this camp owe it to Gallo’s deeply bemusing online presence; he famously advertises himself as an escort on his website, in which he writes,
‘I, Vincent Gallo, star of such classics as Buffalo 66 and The Brown Bunny, have decided to make myself available to all women. All women who can afford me, that is. For the modest fee of $50,000 plus expenses, I can fulfil the wish, dream, or fantasy of any naturally born female’ (transphobia duly noted), he goes on to say: ‘Heavy set, older, red heads etc can have me if they can pay the bill (…..) However, I highly frown upon any male having even the slightest momentary thought or wish that they could ever become my client. No way, José. However, female couples of the lesbian persuasion can enjoy a Vincent Gallo evening together for $100,000. $200,000 buys the lesbos a weekend. A weekend that will have them second-guessing.
Gallo is also selling his sperm for $1,000,000 (cash or check only, mind you). Owing to his online ramblings, nobody would really be surprised if Buffalo 66 is really just his incel wet dream, an intangible simulacra in which Layla represents the fantasy of unconditional female care in spite of the woes and hardships of being a man of the narcissistic variety. Gallo, in interviews following Buffalo ‘66’s release declared Christina Ricci to be on cough syrup – or just drinking heavily – throughout filming, however it’s clear he just didn’t like Ricci, who has since called him a raving lunatic. It is obvious Gallo is a bad man, whether his persona is some kind of reactionary performance art or tasteless extremism, it still pulls us back to the age old question – can we separate the art from the artist?
Many Substack articles frame Buffalo ’66 as a chronicle of misogynistic romanticism, yet I like to think Layla is, in fact, the only character with real emotional agency in the film, taking emotional charge of each scene she inhabits. Billy does not overtly assert a coherent or sustained form of male domination (though his frankly futile attempt at kidnapping her cannot be ignored) and is objectively desexed. This leaves us with the question: if Billy is not meaningfully exerting control over Layla, does she instead function as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl – existing to facilitate his self-actualisation? While the film undeniably traffics in a dated belief in the transformative power of a woman’s love, Layla is neither narratively contained within a neat psychological arc nor positioned as someone who ultimately ‘fixes’ him. It’s interesting, and awkward to position their dynamic – I think Gallo as a person, and director enormously taints what could be interpreted as two people, a strange encounter, and an unlikely sweetness.
Nonetheless, it is my favourite film, ever. I think I put this down to the outfitting, the prog-rock scoring and the cinematography that synthesise to create such an offbeat, alien, experimental yet extreme atmosphere. If you have, or are planning to watch the film, you’ll note the downright strangeness of the dialogue, it’s stilted and devoid of natural cadence in a way that’s blackly comic, Billy is merely the body of a broken child. I sustained a very emotional reaction when watching Buffalo ’66 for the first time, so maybe you will too – my legs and eyes both pricked, I felt wrought with an urgency I couldn’t quite articulate, pioneered by excitement. I was seeing something totally new and weird and epic – look guys are you seeing this? holy shit, guys, are you fucking seeing this? – pan round to ten minutes of a man trying to find somewhere to piss. Hey, whatever moves you, moves you.
Featured Image: Muse Productions