Vincent "Rape Eyes" Gallo. Eyeballing me from his new Belvedere Vodka ad.
Now, I'm undecided on whether I like him or not. Don't get me wrong. He's hot. Creepy hot. But hot all the same. I like his films. I've told you about Buffalo 66 before, and I quite enjoyed The Brown Bunny, despite thinking it's a ruse.
The more I know about him, the more confused I become. He is, after all, a man of many talents. "As well as an actor and director (of, most famously, Buffalo 66, hailed as one the best independent movies of the 1990s), Gallo has also been a model for Calvin Klein, a motorcycle champion, a breakdancer and hip-hop impresario ("I was the first white homeboy on earth"), an expressionist painter, mumbling folk singer and - something he is less keen to advertise on his CV - a go-go dancer in a gay strip club and a rent boy on 52nd Street."
He says things like this, which is good...
"I’m a futurist. I’m interested in profound vision.”
"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."
And he writes songs like Honey Bunny, with lyrics like this:
We're like dreamers
In nice colors
Childlike dreamers
Underwater
In nice colors
Childlike dreamers
Underwater
He dated Cat Power. She wrote him a song called Mr. Gallo.
"I like Cat Power, especially the song Mr. Gallo. I would like any band that did a song about me. Even though that good looking Cat Power chick, Chan Marshall, wrote some nasty words. What could she do? She loved me. I would've done the same thing if I loved me. Anyway, that chick's a superstar. I should've stayed with her," he said.
And then he goes and ruins it all by doing things like this. Which, on the whole, I think is hilarious. It's just the bigotry at the end. Ick. Although apparently it's all a put on, a dig at holier than thou Hollywood icons like Susan Sarandon.
This is a wonderful article about him. The interviewer thinks he's "all mouth and no trousers". I've seen The Brown Bunny. I have to disagree.
