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Speaker 2: Remaining a live man like this man letting butterfly flappin
in wing big ban in a forced man it go
cause a tree fall, letting five thousand miles away man,
nobody see nobody else.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: You got directed.
Speaker 3: Go back a night on the Pan.
Speaker 4: All right, Andrew Edwards, Welcome back to the Jay Burdens Show.
Speaker 3: How you doing, man good? I'm glad to be with
you again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we are continuing our much vaunted UH movie
review series. Uh, you picked the last one ish kind
of You gave me a list and I just dictated
to you were doing this week, and we are doing
the nineteen ninety eight Comma or like comedy, maybe romance,
maybe film Buffalo sixty six. So a little bit of
context on this.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: This is one of my brother in law and my
wife's favorite movies. They love it. I had, literally I
had no preconceptions about either this movie or Vincent Gallo,
the director, star writer, And the first time I went
through it, I couldn't take it. I tapped out at
about the fifty percent mark. It was just too bizarre,
too weird, too uncomfortable. And then the second time I
sat back through it and genuinely enjoyed it. I don't
know if I necessarily have the greatest argument as to
why I enjoyed it, but as part of that, I've
sort of also become fascinated by Vincent Gallo as sort
of the world's most insane film all tour. He is
reviled by many people, which is sort of funny. But anyway, Andy,
I'll kick it back to you. I'm curious to get
your thoughts. We were talking a little bit about, you know,
your kind of initial reaction upon seeing the movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, maybe for our listeners, I mean we give them
a little bit of you know, the intro there isn't
It's an indie movie, so it isn't like there's a
highly complicated plot, and the emphasis is really on these characters.
And I note a couple other things just to kind
of set the table for anybody who does want to
see this movie. I noticed going back, I must have
seen this like in nineteen ninety eight. I think it
was was that right, nineteen ninety eight. It comes out,
but I don't remember any of it, and Burden says
to me, we're doing this movie, so okay. So I
sit down after a very long day, and likewise I
didn't make it fifty percent. I wanted to tap out
at about I don't know, like really the minute that
Vincent Gallo's character gets out of jail, which is how
the movie opens, you know, you're like, man, this guy
is just gusting, Like this is not somebody that I
can identify with, and and therein begins what is really
a great movie in many ways, but is extremely difficult
anyway for me. For me to get through. One thing
to note is he's going for a kind of like
seventies John Cassavetti's uh feel and vibe, and that's that's
something pretty interesting because he he goes, he brings in
Ben Gazara as his dad, who worked with famously John
cassavettis on a number of movies, including what I think
is Cassavetti's best, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and
he's in some other ones. But I think that that
plays into how the movie has has situated itself in
like popular cultural, popular culture or history. Uh, he's Vincent Gallo,
isn't like you were saying earlier. I mean, he's polarizing,
but he's got a lot of respect from a lot
of people too. So for the audience. Once again, guy
gets out of prison and immediately wants to go over
and see his parents, who this is all said in Buffalo,
which is kind of awful, You know that, Like the
weather is very gray, and it's just every everything about
it is kind of depressing and weird, which may be accurate.
I've never been to Buffalo, have you been?
Speaker 4: It's it's an accurate depiction. It is okay, I'd be sure.
I don't know for sure. I'd be shocked if it
wasn't filmed there, because if not, that is exactly what
Buffalo looks like.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I looked into it a little bit and
apparently it is at least almost all shot in Buffalo,
and a ton of is shot actually in Vincent Gallo.
The director writer is from Buffalo, and a lot of
it is shot in his parents' house, in his actual
the house that he grew up in. And I will
maybe I'll set that the rest of that aside and
finish this idea. So against for the listeners, like, not
much really happens in terms of plot. He wants to
go see his mom and dad. He immediately kidnaps this
girl and then dig go over to his mom and
dad's house and we find out that he's he's been
in jail because he was sort of set up to
take the fall for another guy in this betting scheme.
He does his five or seven years or something, he
gets out and there he is, he has nowhere he has.
He's pretty young, and I mean, I guess he's supposed
to be maybe thirty or something like late twenties. And
from there, yeah, like what do you think, like, not
much really happens. It's really about this guy's internal thing
and the relationship between him and the girl.
Speaker 4: So you're right, and that is sort of the you know,
the a plot right him you know, meeting this girl.
It's sort of a inversion of the classic rom com
trope where you know, he when he was away in jail.
We find this out later in the narrative, used his
mentally disabled friend Goon, who is a background character in this,
to basically send his parents letters, right, you know, like
postdated so that they would think that he is, you know,
living this life as a you know, man of mystery, right,
flying all around the world. And as part of this,
he's married. So he gets out of jail, which is
sort of played up in this kind of like sad
pathetic way. You know, he's just you know, trying to
The whole inciting incident is he's trying to find a bathroom, right.
He runs into this dance studio and that's where he
sees this girl, Leila, kidnaps her, demands that she drive
him to his parents' house, and this is where you
get kind of the comedy of it, because he is
vacillating between completely normal conversations and insane threats, threatening to
kill her, just badgering her constantly, and she is, relatively speaking,
a normal person compared to you know, Vincent Gallo, kind
of chewing the scenery and so, you know, that's the
inciting incident to the main plot. But in the background,
we find out that he was put away for betting
on the Buffalo Bills at the I think it's isn't
at the at the super Bowl. Yeah, and you know,
at this this notable super Bowl, he put ten thousand
dollars on the Buffalo Bills to win. You know, the
best kicker in the league misses the field goal right,
screws the game, screws him. And so when he gets
out and he's concocted this plan to you know, go
find this kicker and shoot him. And so that's sort
of the b plot. The background, the interactions between you know,
Vincent Gallon and Leila are just off the rip, incredibly uncomfortable,
like he's threatening her with the most insane threats over
very minor things. This is a very quotable movie. One
of the funniest parts is, you know he's kidnapped her,
you know, from this dance studio, which is shot in
kind of a comedic way, like he's just dragging this
girl past like a bunch of eight year old girls
like doing ballet. But he goes out to her car,
he shoves her in the passenger seat, he gets in
the driver's seat, and we find out that, you know,
she drives, you know, a manual. Weirdly enough, this is
funny that this car was at the time sort of
a comedic ship box. Now those old eighties Corollas are
worth like fifteen grand, bare minimum. Just a funny aside
has this massive blowout right where he talks about I
don't know how to drive shifter cars. I drive luxury cars.
Do you know what a luxury car is? I drive cataloged,
just berating this almost completely silent woman, which you're right,
it's incredibly uncomfortable, but man, it is it is pretty funny.
It is chewing the scenery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God, there's so many scenes like that. I thought
you were going to go for the one where he's
talking about he's threatening her, you know what he will
do if she runs off, But the whole time she
never gives there's zero indication that she's ever going to
run off, which is part of the comedy. Right Like
he does kind of violently grab her, which I came
back to towards the end in you know, sort of
like a primitive sense. He establishes this like absolute base
level relationship with her right there, and he there's sort
of like this indication, well, you know, maybe he's going
to abscond with her a raper, and it turns out
to be the absolute opposite of that. Right at the end,
his like, mommy problems are so profound that when when
the time comes when this relationship gets like quote intimate,
we can get there to that, because that's its whole
other thing. But the way that heh he describes what
he's going to do to her, you know, I'm going
to take a big bite out of your cheek and
then shot it out. He there's no capacity when this
within this guy to actually do this to her, and
there's no indication from her that she's actually going to leave,
and so it sets this bizarre tension that is you're right,
like kind of comedy gold where you wonder, like, what
what are these people doing? What is really happening here?
When she He's not going to come through on any
of these threats. He's totally inept and she doesn't even
want to leave and she's just met him. Like, what's
going on with that part of it? What did you
make of the Christina Ricci characters just kind of giving
over to that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's interesting because she is, in a weird way,
incredibly passive, right, she's just along for the ride, and
you know, someone that's just artifsts, right, it's a moody
or whatever. But I do think that it is It
is incredibly interesting, especially because she seems to be basically
the only person in the world who actually pays attention
to Vincent Gallo in any capacity at all, and he's
otherwise sort of, you know, completely ignored. And I think
it's interesting because you sort of see this distinction between like,
and it's funny me I haven't even using his real
name because it is there are kind of questions about
how autobiographical this movie is, right, but you know, Gallo's
kind of very incomplete projected self image and how everyone
else actually sees him because you know, up to the
very beginning, you don't actually know really what's going on.
You know, you are not given the sort of context
about you know, taking the dive and the bet and
all that, right, and so you know, you're sort of
in real time learning that this guy is kind of
just a massive loser. Like his best friend is special needs,
his parents hate him, he doesn't really have anything going
on in life other than you know, this relationship with
with Leila. And what's interesting, and we'll get into this
at the end of the movie, is that his sort
of core motivation is sort of killing the guy who
sent him to prison, right, this kicker. Yeah, and that
is sort of the one animating thrust throughout this entire movie,
and he is able to sort of discard that for
this relationship in a way that's oddly touching given the
griminess of this movie. Otherwise, I want I actually to
get back to your much earlier point about you know,
sort of the the echoes to the seventies. It's kind
of interesting thing. So obviously this was the late nineties,
so it's a little bit ahead of the curve. But
in my mind, really the two thousands through the twenty
tens are like kind of this this weird like the
emergence of kind of retro futurism, Like you see this
in car designs, right, Like the class like the new Mini,
the Volkswagen Beetle, all of those being brought back as
kind of echoes to a previous era. So in film
as well, I mean to be honest, a lot of
Tarantino's work is again calling back to the kind of
grind house look. Robert Rodriguez, you know, basically made a
career on doing exactly that. But I think it's interesting
as well because I actually hadn't even thought about that,
but once you mentioned it, like, there are multiple features
of this that are basically out of you know, a
movie twenty years earlier, right, the whole the whole fact
that this guy, like, I mean to be honest, the
way he's dressed, but the you know, the the prominence
of bowling, right this, that whole scene is sort of
dripping in it. And uh, yeah, it's funny. I would
not have noticed that, but you're you're kind of spot
on on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of the first things that I
noticed because it's shot in film too. I mean, it
must have been shot in film. I don't think that
digital was really even available at that time. And you're right,
I mean the clothes, the weird like platform boots, these
red he's wearing this drab, kind of totally gray out
fit and it's all skinny.
Speaker 4: The boots are kind of Thomas seven seven. You can
see him where in those boots.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good point, they really are again. And then he
has these like almost like ruby slippers, sort of just
one splash of color. And uh, some of the techniques
too that I actually liked. Some of the lighting techniques
he seems to homage maybe maybe David Lynch with eraser Head,
although David Lynch uses this technique later in his career too,
where he a spotlight sort of erupts into the naturalistic
lighting and you know, draws us into some sort of
a dream scenario. That's one he uses that technique of
where he which I thought was I have. I usually
don't like that sort of stuff, you know, like gimmicks
or whatever, especially maybe now as you point out, like
it's it's almost like it's gone through one loop back
and then another, and in each loop back it maybe
gets a little bit I don't know if it's compressing
into some like truth or if it's kind of getting deluded.
I'm really not sure. But he uses this technique of
many screens within the screen and I have to admit
that was pretty all right.
Speaker 4: Andrew Edwards, Welcome back to the Jay Burdon Show.
Speaker 3: How you doing, man good. I'm glad to be with
you again.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So we are continuing our much vaunted movie review series.
You picked the last one ish kind of You gave
me a list and I just dictated to you before
doing this week, and we are doing the nineteen ninety
eight Comma or like comedy, maybe romance, maybe film Buffalo
sixty six. So a little bit of content text on this.
This is one of my brother in law and my
wife's favorite movies.
Speaker 3: They love it.
Speaker 4: I had, literally I had no preconceptions about either this
movie or Vincent Gallo, the director, star writer, And the
first time I went through it, I couldn't take it.
I tapped out at about the fifty percent mark. It
was just too bizarre, too weird, too uncomfortable. And then
the second time I sat back through it and genuinely
enjoyed it. I don't know if I necessarily have the
greatest argument as to why I enjoyed it, but as
part of that, I've sort of also become fascinated by
Vincent Gallo as sort of the world's most insane film
all Tour. He is reviled by many people, which is
sort of funny. But anyway, Andy, I'll kick it back
to you. I'm curious to get your thoughts. We're talking
a little bit about, you know, your kind of initial
reaction upon seeing the movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, maybe for our listeners, I mean we give them
a little bit of you know, the intro there isn't
it's it's an indie movie, so it isn't like there's
a highly complicated plot, and the emphasis is really on
these characters. And I note a couple other things just
to kind of set the table for anybody who does
want to see this movie. I noticed going back, I
must have seen this like in nineteen ninety eight. I
think it was was that right, nineteen ninety eight. It
comes out, but I don't remember any of it, and
Burden says to me, we're doing this movie, so okay.
So I sit down after a very long day, and
likewise I didn't make it fifty percent. I wanted to
tap out at about I don't know, like really the
minute that Vincent Gallo's character gets out of jail, which
is how the movie opens, you know, you're like, man,
this Guy is is is disgusting, Like this is not
somebody that I can identify with, And therein begins what
is really a great movie in many ways, but is
extremely difficult anyway for me, for me to get through.
One thing to note is he's going for a kind
of like seventies John Cassavetti's feel and vibe, and that's
that's something pretty interesting because he he goes, he brings
in Ben Gazara as his dad, who worked with famously
John cassavettis on a number of movies, including what I
think is Cassavetti's best, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie,
and he's in some other ones. But I think that
that plays into how the movie has has situated itself
in like popular cultural, popular culture or history. He's Vincent
Gallo isn't like you were saying earlier. I mean, he's polarizing,
but he's got a lot of respect from a lot
of people too. So for the audience. Once again, guy
gets out of prison and immediately wants to go over
and see his parents, who this is all said in Buffalo,
which is kind of awful. You know that, Like the
weather is very gray and it's every everything about it
is kind of depressing and weird, which may be accurate.
I've never been to Buffalo, have you been?
Speaker 4: It's it's an accurate depiction, it is okay, I'd be sure.
I don't know for sure. I'd be shocked if it
wasn't filmed there, because if not, that is exactly what
buffle looks like.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I looked into it a little bit and
apparently it is at least almost all shot in Buffalo,
and a ton of it is shot actually in Vincent Gallo.
The director writer is from Buffalo, and a lot of
it is shot in his parents' house, in his actual
the house that he grew up in. And I will
maybe I'll set that the rest of that aside and
finish this idea. So against for the listeners, like, not
much really happens in terms of plot. He wants to
go see his mom and dad. He immediately kidnaps this
girl and then dig go over to his mom and
dad's house and we find out that he's been in
jail because he was sort of set up to take
the fall for another guy in this betting scheme. He
does his five or seven years or something. He gets
out and there he is he has nowhere he has.
He's pretty young, and I mean I guess he's supposed
to be maybe thirty or something like late twenties. And
from there, yeah, like what do you think, Like, not
much really happens. It's really about this guy's internal thing
and the relationship between him and the girl.
Speaker 4: So you're right, and that is sort of the you know,
the a plot, right him, you know, meeting this girl.
It's sort of a inversion of the classic rom com
trope where you know, he when he was away in jail.
We find this out later in the narrative, used his
mentally disabled friend Goon, who is a background character in this,
to basically send his parents letters, right, you know, like
postdated so that they would think that he is, you know,
living this life as a you know, man of mystery, right,
flying all around the world, and as part of this
he's man. So he gets out of jail, which is
sort of played up in this kind of like sad
pathetic way. You know, he's just you know, trying to
The whole inciting incident is he's trying to find a bathroom, right.
He runs into this dance studio and that's where he
sees this girl, Leila, kidnaps her, demands that she drive
him to his parents' house, and this is where you
get kind of the comedy of it, because he is
vacillating between completely normal conversations and insane threats, threatening to
kill her, just badgering her constantly, and she is, relatively speaking,
a normal person compared to you know, Vincent Gallo, kind
of chewing the scenery. And so, you know, that's the
inciting incident to the main plot. But in the background,
we find out that he was put away for betting
on the Buffalo Bills at the I think it's isn't
at the at the super Bowl, Yeah, and you know,
at this this notable super Bowl. Yeah, he put ten
thousand dollars on the Buffalo Bills to win. You know,
the best kicker in the league misses the field goal right,
screws the game, screws him. And so when he gets
out and he's concocted this plan to you know, go
find this kicker and shoot him. And so that's sort
of the b plot. The background, the interactions between you know,
Vincent gall and Layla are just off the rip, incredibly uncomfortable,
like he's threatening her with the most insane threats over
very minor things. This is a very quotable movie. One
of the funniest parts is, you know, he's kidnapped her,
you know, from this dance studio, which is shot in
kind of a comedic way, like he's just dragging this
girl past like a bunch of eight year old girls
like doing ballet. But he goes out to her car,
he shoves her in the passenger seat, he gets in
the driver's seat, and we find out that, you know,
she drives, you know, a manual. Weirdly enough, this is
funny that this car was at the time sort of
a comedic ship box, and now those old eighties Corollas
are worth like fifteen grand bare minimum. Just a funny aside,
has this massive blowout right where he talks about, I
don't know how to drive shifter cars. I drive luxury cars.
Do you know what a luxury car is? I drive catalogs,
just berating this almost completely silent woman, which you're right,
it's incredibly uncomfortable, but man, it is it is pretty funny.
It is chewing the scenery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God that there's so many scenes like that. I
thought you were going to go for the one where
he's talking about he's threatening her, you know what he
will do if she runs off, But the whole time
she never gives there's zero indication that she's ever going
to run off, which is part of the comedy, right
Like he does kind of violently grab her, which I
came back to towards the end, and in you know,
sort of like a primitive sense, he establishes this like
absolute base level relationship with her right there, and he
there's sort of like this indication, well, you know, maybe
he's going to abscond with her a raper, and it
turns out to be the absolute opposite of that. Right
at the end, his like, mommy problems are so profound
that when when the time comes when this relationship gets
like quote intimate, we can get there to that, because
that's its whole other thing. But the way that heh
he describes what he's going to do to her, you know,
I'm going to take a big bite out of your
cheek and then shift it out. He there's no capacity
when this within this guy to actually do this to her,
and there's no indication from her that she's actually going
to leave, and so it sets this bizarre tension that
is You're right, like kind of comedy gold where you wonder, like,
what are these people doing? What is really happening here?
When she he's not going to come through on any
of these threats. He's totally inept and she doesn't even
want to leave and she's just met him. Like, what's
going on with that part of it? What did you
make of the Christina Ricci characters just kind of giving
over to that? Yeah, Well, it's.
Speaker 4: Interesting because she is, in a weird way, incredibly passive, right,
She's just along for the ride, and you know, some
of that's just artificts right, it's a moody or whatever.
But I do think that it is It is incredibly interesting,
especially because she seems to be basically the only person
in the world who actually pays attention to Vincent Gallo
in any capacity at all, and he's otherwise sort of,
you know, completely ignored. And I think it's interesting because
you sort of see this distinction between like, and it's
funny me I don't even using his real name because
it is there are kind of questions about how autobiographical
this movie is, right, but you know, Gallo's kind of
very incomplete projected self image and how everyone else actually
sees him, because you know, up to the very beginning,
you don't actually know really what's going on. You know,
you are not given the sort of context about you know,
taking the dive and the bet and all that, right,
and so you know, you're sort of in real time
learning that this guy is kind of just a massive loser.
Like his best friend is special needs, his parents hate him,
he doesn't really have anything going on in life other
than you know, this relationship with with Leila. And what's interesting,
and we'll get into this at the end of the movie,
is that his sort of core motivation is sort of
killing the guy who sent him to prison, right this kicker,
and that is sort of the one animating thrust throughout
this entire movie, and he is able to sort of
discard that for this relationship in a way that's oddly
touching given the griminess of this movie. Otherwise, I want,
I actually to get back to your much earlier point
about you know, sort of the the echoes to the seventies.
It's kind of interesting thing. So obviously this was the
late nineties, so it's a little bit ahead of the curve.
But in my mind, really the two thousands through the
twenty tens are like kind of this this weird like
the emergence of kind of retro futurism, Like you see
this in card designs, right, like the class, like the
new Mini, the Volkswagen Beetle, all of those being brought
back as kind of echoes to a previous era, but
also in in film as well, I mean to be honest,
a lot of Tarantino's work is again calling back to
the kind of grind house look. Robert Rodriguez, you know,
basically made a career on doing exactly that. But I
think it's interesting as well because I actually hadn't even
thought about that, but once you mentioned it, Like, there
are multiple features of this that are basically out of
you know, a movie twenty years earlier, right, the whole
the whole fact that this guy, like I mean to
be honest, the way he's dressed, but the you know,
the the prominence of bowling, right this that whole scene
is sort of dripping in it, And uh, yeah, it's funny.
I would not have noticed that, but you're you're kind
of spot on on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of the first things that I
noticed because it's shot in film too. I mean it
must have been shot in film. I don't think that
digital was really even available at that time. And you're right,
I mean the clothes, the weird like platform boots, these
red He's wearing this drab, kind of totally gray outfit
and it's all skinny.
Speaker 4: The boots are kind of Thomas seven seven. You could
see him wearing those boots.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good point, they really are again. And then he
has these like almost like ruby slippers, sort of just
one splash of color. And uh, some of the techniques
too that I actually liked. Some of the lighting techniques
he seems to homage maybe maybe David Lynch with eraser Head,
although David Lynch uses this technique later in his career too,
where he a spotlight sort of erupts into the naturalistic
lighting and you know, draws us into some sort of
a dream scenario. That's one he uses that technique of
where he which I thought was I have. I usually
don't like that sort of stuff, you know, like gimmicks
or whatever, especially maybe now as you point out, like
it's it's almost like it's gone through one loop back
and then another, and in each loop back it maybe
gets a little bit. I don't know if it's compressing
into some like truth or if it's kind of getting diluted.
I'm really not sure. But he uses this technique of
many screens within the screen, and I have to admit
that was pretty pretty useful and pretty cool way to
kind of, you know, he would transition into backstory, and
he would transition like kind of to show the interior
of his character's mind. And I guess overall, you know,
it seems like in reading up on the movie that
Gallo wrote the script ten years earlier and didn't really
expect to be the director. But I don't know how
true that is when I think about Vincent Gallo and
like what he has become. But then again, I don't know.
I was hoping to go back to you because this
aspect where you don't really know, like how much of
this is Vincent Gallo and how much isn't and then
how much because this has been you know, he's been
queried on this point many many times. I don't think
he's giving like the truth. I don't think Vincent Gallo
the man is concerned about the truth. What do you
think when you take this whole package in, I feel
like this is more like the younger generation. He's kind
of preempted gen X, and he's kind of picked up
on your guy's stuff, like a layer deeper than maybe
gen X experienperience is it where he's using irony and
I begin, what do you think? What do you make
of all that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there are several things there. I mean, it's
become kind of trite to refer to someone as almost
a performance artist, but let's be honest, that's what Vincent
Galo is doing. His personal website is insane and really funny,
and you could just imagine him grinning because it has
some of the most insane offensive one of one hand
painted T shirts. For instance, It's like, and I'll have
to beat this, but it's like, you know, like Barack Obama,
it just says faggot giant red block letters. He has
an application where you can apply for five hundred thousand
dollars for a natural or artificial dose of his sperm,
provided that you're attractive enough, and it's like a like,
I'm not doing it. It's like a three page rant
about who will and won't meet his criteria, including entire
races and continence. He is not interested in so like
you look at that and you're like, all right, clearly
he is to a certain degree playing a bit right.
He is, you know, deliberately sort of casting himself in
opposition to Hollywood, you know, while at the same time,
you know, being surrounded by you know, you know, high
fashion all that. So he's not truly this sort of
he's I don't believe he is truly the character he portrays.
But as regards kind of like the the irony of it,
I think that's a very interesting element one of the
things that and that's sort of I guess in my
mind what I find irritating in the conversation around this
movie is you have a lot of kind of pearl
clutching responses that say, oh, you know, Vincent Gallo is
just horrible to women in this movie. This is a
you know, a misogynistic movie. And it's like, well, I mean,
if this person actually existed and actually did this shore
but I think that that's almost a too direct reading
of this film. And I think that you know, from
my mind, what we're what we're sort of seeing is
you know, this man who's sort of marked by profound abandonment.
So the and I don't know if it's actually true,
but it feels like the longest section of this movie.
It is sort of like the cinematic equivalent of having
your your fingernails pulled out, uh is you know the
scene at his parents'.
Speaker 3: House, Yes, this girl, it's so bad.
Speaker 4: It goes on forever like, it's genuinely so uncomfortable. And
his parents, particularly his mother, is literally obsessed with the
Buffalo Bills. You know, their house is decorated in that manner.
She's watching rerun while they're at the table. And to
almost a comedic degree, his parents, particularly his mother, are
uninterested in Billy, that's you know, the name of you know,
Gallo's character. They're slightly interested in in Layla a little bit,
not very much, but I mean really that is her
entire life.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Again, this is sort of those you know, it's so
over the top, it's sort of played for a joke.
The moment where they you know, this girl asks, oh, well,
can I see a picture of Billy And they're going
through there, you know, their their photo album and it's
just her with an increasingly obscure list of people connected
to the Buffalo Ells. You know, it starts off with
players then like you know, SYSI athletic directors, and then
it gets to you know, like the caterer and the
bus driver and of of course, right it's played for
a joke. But when they finally go to see you know,
Billy's photo, it's it's somewhere else. It's all folded up
in gross and you know, we get this kind of
again slightly comedic, over the top childhood trauma where his
dad you know, chokes his puppy to death in front
of him for barking too loudly. And interesting enough, that's shot.
I don't know if it actually the aspect ratio changes,
but that's another time where we see that sort of
frame within a frame and it shot almost like eight
millimeter film, right, like it has that sort of film
autests are going to get on me for that, but
it looks like you know, kind of a handheld you know,
film camera. Yeah, you know, kind of interestingly done. And
so with regards to the you know, kind of the
irony of this, it's like, well, obviously he's sort of
playing it up, hamming it up. This is comedic in
a certain sense. You know, it's so over the top,
and we'll see that, you know, even in the conclusion
to the movie. But also I think that there is
something interesting being said there about this kind of the
culture of distraction and abandonment, right, this idea that you know,
his his mother in particular, is so much more obsess
with something that is fake and not real. You know,
that is this kind of like TV you know experience
that she is completely and totally disconnected from her son.
And as these people have no doubt heard me complain
about the last two weeks, we've been just buried in
snow here, and so my wife and I have been
walking to most places just because it's you know, safer.
Speaker 5: And more reliable.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: And while we were walking you know, through the ice,
she was you know, she was talking about this movie
and just kind of speculating about how it is could
be reinterpreted, as you know, politics and culture have shifted, right,
because there's a certain reading of this which is the
kind of you know, very generic TV bad you know,
it rots your brain kind of reading. But I think
it's it's interesting one to the degree that like we
genuinely see this exact same dynamic with many people of
the kind of you know, boomer and silent generation with
you know, news of all type, but also right, like
the skinner box in your pocket, you know, this sort
of like you know, device of distraction which kind of
pulls you away from you know, your actual human connections.
And clearly this is marked Billy, right, you were talking
about again his kind of you know, mommy issues, right
he is. That is the hole that he is sort
of trying to fix. H one other moment, and you
know you mentioned the kind of film gimmicks, and I'll
kick it back to you. There's a there's sort of
a bizarre scene. Uh, and Billy's dad is just lecherous
this entire time, like almost a ludicrous degree.
Speaker 3: It's just like.
Speaker 4: Feeling up this moment. And you know, he invites her
into another room to listen to him sing Yeah, and
he basically just lip syncs Frank Sinatra, I believe on
a record player for almost an unbroken two minutes as
he stares into the camera like he's on stage at Vaudeville.
Very bizarre scene. So I'll kick it back to you Edward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, extremely bizarre and very uncomfortable. Right, Like there's this
the whole time. I maybe I saw this long time
ago and I'm not sure that I ever did see
the whole movie, but this time I'm just waiting for
him to try and rape her or make a move
on her. In some sense, there's this just awful undercurrent
to the whole thing, like established at the level that
now lecherous dad and young girl with you know, half
of her chest exposed. They're back in this back room
and Billy is just looking at the one picture that
they have of him. She has that his mom has
this whole catalog as as you mentioned, of all of
her absurd buffalo Bill's connections, and they have one single
picture of their son. And when they switch over to
the Ben Gazzara character, his dad and by the way,
evidently this is another one of these these crossover weird
misunder I don't know how we understand this. Evidently, Vincent
Gallow's dad really does have some incredibly beautiful singing voice,
and he is this guy who's I mean, you imagine
sitting in some you know, like depressing basement imagining what
he could have been. And that's Vincent Gallow's actual experience
of Evidently his dad is just this maniacal asshole, like
over the top and real like that's what Vincent Gallow's
experience of having a father is. And evidently his mother
is not too far from this over the top vision
that he presents in the film. But yeah, it thinking
about it and talking about it with you now I
realize Gallo is pulling more from David Lynch in terms
of his style and technique than I ever noticed before.
I have seen his other Is It Brown Bunny is
his other kind of controversial film, and those are probably
the only they may be his only two movies, but
I have seen that one, but I did not realize
how much of the Lynchian ethos esthetic that he is
just borrowing from fully. And it's in that scene with
the puppy, it's like it's almost just note for note
Lynchi and how he's moved or altered the visual just
enough and then gone into this type of absurd level
of violence. And you know, part of the discomfort in
watching it now I think wasn't wasn't like available to
viewers in it wasn't available to me. Okay, this level
where it's kind of common to hear of these just
horror stories of how bad parents are. I mean, I
don't I look at normal parents around me now and
I have to I have to be critical of them.
They're not hitting like a standard benchmark where and I'm
talking about people at church, people who are otherwise pretty
good citizens. I'm still looking over at them saying, Jesus,
this parenting is really substandard. So if you go back,
you know, this is thirty five years I one thing
that stands out about this is and part of why
Vincent Gallow must be kind of hated is, Dude, he
saw this like narcissism of the female and the corruption
of the mother figure, evidently through his own experience, which
is horrible and tragic and probably explains why he's such
an asshole himself now. But that was so like, that
was thirty years ahead of the curve, and it's points
like that where at the end of the movie, I
really had that moment of I had to reevaluate a
lot of my not very developed conceptions of Vincent Gallo
as an artist, as you say, like he's a performance artist,
he's associated, he's made albums, he's doing all sorts of
really strange things and not strange and just unusual, and
maybe maybe he deserves maybe some more credit than he's
been given. Because I guarantee you that if we were
to go back in the record and look at reviews,
nobody could have I don't think taken on that vision
of the mother as so just she's the worst to me.
I mean that scene that you mentioned where they're at
the table is so hard to take. And it's not
because of like personal stuff related to me. I think
it's every human being watches this and it's like, this
dude has literally nothing. I mean, his mom doesn't even
give a shit about him, and his dad, of course,
is terrible.
Speaker 4: So two things there. One that's kind of interesting again
about the character of his mother is that you know,
his dad is this sort of you know, quiet but
still domineering presence, but he occupies a very small space
physically within the house. You know, he has his his
room right where he goes to sing, but you Billy's
mom runs the roost, right Her stuff is everywhere that
you know, the Buffalo Bill's memorabilia is on every part
of the house, and even you know, when Billy leaves,
you know, she's in the kitchen and his dad is
retreating back to kind of his little cave.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that that's a very interesting dynamic to bring
up as well. Now obviously there's again the kind of
over the top, you know parts of this. One of
the things that she brings up, you know, at the
table is how upset she was that she was giving
birth to Billy when the Bills were at the Super
Bowl in nineteen sixty six and she missed, you know,
the big moment. Yeah, and she says, you know, I
think that's why. I think that was the curse. You know,
I was there with them for the whole season, and
then I wasn't and they lost the big game. But
there's actually kind of a an interesting dynamic between you know,
her and Layla, where Layla is, for some reason inexplicably
trying to do a very good job of pretending to
be you know, Billy's devoted fiance. You know, she's you know,
saying how much she likes him, you know, telling the
story of how they met, all the things that normal
parents would be concerned with. She even says like, oh,
we're having a baby, which is obviously not true. She's
just lying. But throughout the entire thing.
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Speaker 4: Billy's dad is just like eyeing her up the entire
time shamelessly, and Billy's mom is at the table turned
the opposite direction, watching a taped game from twenty five
years ago, right like getting up and cheering during the
whole thing. And it's this this moment where you and
I think you are supposed to both hate and sympathize
with Billy because he is he's despicable, right, He's just
the worst. And he even like halfway through this conversation
he gets up to go burrate goon his best friend,
who is You're living at home with his mom.
Speaker 3: He has like.
Speaker 4: That this shoot, the shot composition on this insane. He's
got like like open containers of like giddy pigs in
this like disgusting room. The shot is him shirtless with
to be polite, his underwear slightly too far down his body,
and it's shot from like his chest to like his knees,
like you you he's just disgusting.
Speaker 3: Shot flats is awful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's just in the other room berating this
simple minded kid for you know, not giving him the
information as to where this you know kicker who who
you know flubbed the big game is.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: So, you know, Billy eventually, you know, gets that information,
he decides to, you know, leave this is you know,
roughly about the kind of fifty to fifty mark and
you know, Billy goes to uh, you know the this
you know, bowling Alley, and you know, it's his first
time out of jail. The guy he talks to, you know,
says like, oh, yeah, we kept your locker for you,
all your stuff, and this is I don't want to
say this is one of the most bizarre scenes, but
it's up there. This is this scene is there's a
whole lot going on. So we get a couple of things,
which is one, you know, Billy goes in and we
see his you know, his lockers undisturbed. He does seem
to have some sort of you know, like friendship connection
to the guy who runs it, right uh, And we
get a couple of things in his locker. We get,
you know, a whole bunch of sort of memorabilia of
him as a highly talented youth bowler, bowl one who bowls.
I don't know what the term of that is sort
of echoing in what we see in his father's room, right,
the idea of this kind of untapped potential derailed by life,
and also Chekhov's school picture, right, a picture of a
girl and when uh, you know, Leyla asks about he goes, oh,
you know, it's some girlfriend I had. You know, I've
had a lot of girlfriends or whatever.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: He starts bowling, and he's bowling a perfect game. He
she asks if he can, if she can take a turn.
She gets a strike, and at that moment, he's his
concentration is ruined, right, he can't do anything. There's a
very bizarre scene where she tap dances and seemingly this
sort of dream state. Yeah for again like two minutes.
I don't really have an explanation for that. It's a
very odd scene.
Speaker 3: It is, well, it's it's again this like Lynch technique
where right, like the spotlight, the unnatural spotlight hits the
otherwise naturalistic lighting and we're just in the stream sequence.
I don't mean to cut you off, but I just
wanted to say there again, you're right the other since
I did interrupt you, I just wanted to mention that
that scene like changes the whole game for me with
respect to Billy, because you realize, like, wait a minute,
this dude has something like a really he's like, like
you say, like a bowling savant or something. He's got
this very like like they say the third place or whatever.
He's he's a loser at school, he's a loser at home,
but he goes to this bowling alley evidently and he
becomes like this stud. I mean, the dude behind the
counter is it seems to evidence like genuine admiration and respect,
and Vincent Gallo kind of changes into this like a
gangster suave, like like a like a real dude, and
then he just hits strike after strike up to strike.
And it occurred to me, like part of I don't
mean to jump too far ahead, but it just occurred
to me as I was watching this, like, oh, Billy's
whole thing here in terms of like the parents that
don't love him, and you know, his diminished avenues in
life or what have you. He makes this bet on
his mom's dream, you know, the Buffalo Bills is to
come through, and this derails everything. When he had this
opportunity if he really had the ten grand, which it's
not clear if you ever even had the ten grand
to make the bet which gets him in so much trouble.
But he could have bet. He could have like, you know,
the expression like bet on yourself, like believe in yourself,
which in some way does manifest at the end of
the film, where he's he's kind of been able to
wend his way through the little you know, like the
psychic forest that he's been dumped into by these completely
insufficient parents who have left him. Like on the one hand,
he has this vision of females in general, which is
it's just putrid. I mean, you could not if you
had this mom like and you and you wind up
at all functional, it would be a miracle. And if
you have this dad likewise, you know, to think that
you could find it within yourself to be good at something.
So I just wanted to throw in that for me.
When he when he shows that he there's a part
of him that is cool, that is capable, and and
he has his talent of bowling, and he may have
had the opportunity to to bet that ten grand on
himself and go a whole other way anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's that's sort of an interesting thing as well, right,
that he was he was doomed by in a way
kind of ultimately seeking you know, approval from his approval
from his you know, neglectful mother, Like that is ultimately
the thing that's sort of damned, you know, trying to
you know, fill that void directly.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: So you're rounding out the scene at the bowling alley. Uh,
there's another eminently quotable and incredibly bizarre scene where you know,
he decides like I want you know, he drags her
into a photo booth, you know, and basically it's like,
all right, I gotta get I gotta have photos to
send my my parents, right, and we gotta keep, you know,
changing the background so it looks like we're in different
places or at different times. That obviously that that has
flawed with it. But it's this sort of scene where
they're together, you know, in this cramp photo booth, kind
of shot from the camera's pov in the photo booth,
and you know, it goes through the first time, and
he's just furious with her. It's like no, no, no,
we're a couple that likes each other but doesn't touch.
We span time together and just just says that in
minor derivations throughout the entire thing. You know that he's
interestingly enough because this will you know circle background. He's
furious with her for wasting his money, right, the idea
that we had to go through this process of getting photos.
It's like fifty cents, right, in consequential amount of money. Uh.
But yes, they they you know a bit, they leave
the bowling alley, uh and you know head out to
I believe they go to Denny's next. Is that the next?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: And so this is a again we see you know
both you know, kind of Chekhov school portrait and this
kind of view of you know, Billy as this this
kind of social outcast, because you know, while they're there,
he runs into this girl, right, the girl from the photo,
and we find out that not only has she played,
it's this kind of like comically awful shallow person dating
some like like soulless corporate suit. You know it even
kind of taunting. Billy is like, oh, you're that weirdo
who followed me around. I don't even know your name.
And you know, he's having this sort of hushed conversation
with Laila while the other couple is making out in
the back in this Denny's and it gets kind of
more and more over the top, and it's never again,
it's all out of focus really, So you're like watching
this like very hushed, serious conversation while there's just this
like flailing going on in the background. Again, Uh, incredibly
uncomfortab Well, you know, they leave and they head basically
you know, one of the things that they've talked about, uh,
you know, while they're driving around, and while she's driving
him around in her car is you know, she says like, oh,
you know, like do you want to come back to
my place? He you know, kind of throws her off,
says no, and well we're at Denny's. He's been you know,
constantly looking at the clock right trying to figure out like, okay,
like when can I go to this this I think
it's the strip club like off the side of the
highway where this buffalo Bill's retired kicker you know, owns.
And so, you know, when they leave the Denny's right.
He basically like says like all right, like we're done,
you can go home now, goes to the payphone, calls
this strip club and finds out, oh, the guy's not
into not He doesn't come in until two am. It's
like eight or whatever. He's like, all right, fine, I
guess we can go get a hotel. They go back
to again. It just absolutely horrible hole in the wall motel.
Like it's it's just grim and dirty, and the whole
thing is like it almost has this green cast to it. Yeah,
and you know, the two of them go back. Clearly
she is envisioning, you know, romantic entanglement. He is not
at all. There's a very funny moment where he wants
to go take a bath and so you know, he
gets into the he gets into the bath and she's like, oh, hey,
you know, can I come in? And he's just aghast.
He's like, no, you cannot, you know, I want to
be in the bath. And it's it's again, there's never
any time for this, you know, to be comedic. It's
just sort of something you notice. But you know, as
she sort of wears him down, we see this you
know evolution where it's like okay, we can come in,
but you can't look. So she's like, you know, got
her hands over her eyes, and then you know, it
kind of cuts to the next stage of the conversation.
They're in the bath together and you see her, you know,
presumably wearing and then the pants over to Billy and
he's wearing a shirt. It's just a very funny, like
background joke through the whole thing. But as that, you know,
as that develops, right, the two of them, I mean
literally just sit in or like lay in bed next
to each other. Again, they're they're sort of shot in
this way where you can see he is incredibly uncomfortable
with this. He's sort of you know, arms together on
the opposite side. But you know, ultimately the time comes
for him to go to you know, confront the man
who sent him to jail maybe, and so as he
he gets up to leave, you know, she's like, hey, like,
what are you doing? You know, where are you going?
AND's go, you know, I was going to bring you
if I bring you some coffee, something that she had
expressed interest in earlier, and she says like, okay, we'll
just like if you're not going to come back, just
tell me. He's like, yeah, I'll come back, and while
going through his items in you know, this locker, this
bowling alley, he pulled out, you know, a tiny little
pocket pistol, right like one of those tiny little Saturday
night specials. It is, again, kind of comediically small, and he's,
you know, as he walks out of the hotel, which
we realize now is across the street from this strip club. Uh,
you know, we see him pull out the gun and
is you know, as he walks in, he calls Goon again.
Now I don't remember what Goon's actual name is, but
a major theme in their interaction Rocky, yes, is that
Goon doesn't want to be called Goon anymore. He wants
to be called Rocky, and Billy has been making fun
of him the entire time, again being very cruel to
this disabled man. Ironically enough, by the way, I don't
you notice this, One of the things he criticizes Goon
slash Rocky for is always doing exactly what his mother
tells him to, which I thought was a very interesting
thing that you know, Billy identifies that in Goon, not
in his own experience, but he stands outside and basically,
you know, says, you know, all right, good, like you
can have all my stuff, kind of signaling that he's
going in on a one way mission. So we've covered
a lot of ground there and before we get into
kind of the the climax, I'm curious if there's anything
you wanted to add.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, because one of the few things that
I've I made some notes about was this issue of time.
It pops up again and again and again. Where it
really is made obvious in that scene in the little
photo booth where he's saying something about you know, the present.
He's screaming at her to put on some sort of
facial expression that will evidence this idea of we span time,
we're married, that's not you know, not you're a whore,
not now any of this other stuff. Now you want
to kiss me, We spend time, and he hits this,
hits this beat over and over and over. There's you
know