Buffalo '66

Year: 1998 - Lions Gate Films  Director: Vincent Gallo  Screenplay: Vincent Gallo and Alison Bagnall  Starring: Vincent Gallo, Christina Ricci, Anjelica Huston, Ben Gazzara, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Corrigan, Rosanna Arquette, and Jan-Michael Vincint

Gallo plays an ex-con, Billy Brown, on the day of his release from prison. Billy was in prison for five years after taking the rap for a crime he didn't commit.  Being the son off rabid Buffalo Bills' fans (hence his name), Billy had bet on the Bills to win the Super Bowl. When the Bills lost and Billy could not cover his bet; his bookie (Mickey Rourke) threatened to harm Billy's parents if he did not plea guilty to a crime committed by the bookie's associate. Amazingly, Billy hides the fact he is in prison from his parents by telling them that he works for the government and is out of the country much of the time. When Billy shows up in Buffalo after his prison release, he is intent on visiting his parents. To sustain his cover story, Billy kidnaps a young tap dancing student (Christina Ricci) to pose as his wife. Billy's plan is to show his uncaring parents that he is a good son. While in town, Billy also seeks revenge for being sent to prison by finding and killing the Bills' kicker who missed what would have been the winning field goal of that fateful Super Bowl. As you can see, this is a fairly familiar plot line.

Gallo's Billy is a pathetic and abusive motor mouth. He is obsessive about cleanliness although he looks rather dirty himself. He rudely confronts people as a way of rejecting others before they have a chance to reject him. His verbal abrasiveness is somewhat disconcerting and scary at first; as when he kidnaps Layla.  After one realizes that Billy is all bark and no bite, his rants become very humorous. We find that Billy's anti-social behavior stems from his relationship with his parents.  His mother, played by an unrecognizable Anjelica Huston, is totally devoted to the Bills football team.  She fanatically watches old games on tape with the same enthusiasm as a live game; as if she could will the outcome of the games to change. Billy's father (Ben Gazzara) is a former night club singer who is quick to anger about insignificant things. Billy's parents are such unloving parents, that they seem unconcerned with Billy's disappearance from their lives the last five years. To Billy's dismay, his parents seem more impressed with his false bride than with their own son. Gallo dresses Layla in a baby blue baby doll with blue eye shadow and blue tap shoes. It's funny that no one in the film seems to notice her outfit except Billy's leering father.  Maybe Gallo wanted Layla to appear as angel or a Fairy Godmother of sorts.

Christina Ricci plays Layla, the young hostage Billy abducts to pose as his wife. Ricci is terrific in the part of a reluctant and then willing partner in Billy's charade.  The motives of Ricci's character are one of the mysteries of the film. How she can fall in love with a man who kidnaps her and continuously verbally abuses her is really quite bizarre. Only someone with very low self-esteem and a need to please people would act the way Layla does. In this respect, Layla is similar to Billy, who is irrationally bent on trying to please his parents. She does her very best to play the admiring wife; so much so that she seems to believe it herself. This may be the key to Layla's character. She sees herself as a person who can change Billy's life by becoming the person he wishes he had in his life. Gallo has said that Buffalo '66 is essentially about acting.  Layla losing herself in her role may be what Gallo is talking about. Throughout the film, Billy is always coaching Layla on how to act the part of his ideal wife. He even gives her a fake name, like a stage name, of a former classmate - Wendy.
Layla approaches her role like a real trooper.  She goes so far as to embellish her character by improvising the story of her relationship with Billy for Billy's parents. The bickering that goes on between Billy and Layla is much like what occurs between directors and actors trying to work on a role.

Billy's only two friends in the world are a mentally challenged young man he affectionately calls "Goon" and a pin setter at a bowling alley. It seems Billy was a champion bowler as a child, a fact which he kept hidden from his parents. Billy shows off his ten pin prowess at the bowling alley where we are also treated to an entertaining tap routine by Layla. There also is a good scene in a photo booth with Billy directing the impish Layla on how to appear as a married couple "spanning time together".  Gallo shows Buffalo as a gritty, working-class city seemingly stuck in the seventies. Gallo uses a fast film stock favored by many films of the seventies to help convey that idea. Gallo shows us that Billy is actually returning to a life much like the one he left when he entered prison. He revisits his old  haunts (the bowling alley and Denny's).  Even his locker at the bowling alley has been preserved just like the way he left it.  When Billy sees a girl that he used to have a crush on in grade school, he still acts like he a rejected suitor. Convinced that his life is a hopeless mess, Billy sets his plans in motion to kill the former football player who lost the big game. To his surprise, Billy discovers that the kicker owns a topless bar in town.  While waiting during the intervening hours for his victim to show up at the club, Billy spends some quality time with Layla. Although she is tender and compassionate toward Billy, he seems to want to keep their relationship on a purely impersonal level. What Layla shows Billy, by her tender attention and praise, is a possible future different from his past.

The climatic scene in the film occurs when Billy confronts the Bill's old kicker. The former football player is a sad, obese, heavy drinking, balding middle-age man, who spends most of his nights at the topless bar. The old guy looks like Bacchus in his own private hell as he offers Billy a drink. Amid the writhing flesh, Billy has a moment of epiphany. He has been miraculously saved by a baby-blue angel.

Gallo uses several interesting devices in this movie. He uses split screen imaging, stills, insets for flashbacks, and a rotating freeze frame during the film's climatic scene.  Many critics jump on Gallo for these cinematic devices, calling them cheap, artsy tricks.  I think they are used very effectively here. Besides, I like artsy, cinematic devices. I say let us exploit the medium to its fullest! This isn't a documentary for God's sake!

This film is a fine directorial debut.  The acting is very good and Ricci, as always, is a lot of fun to watch. Although Gallo takes himself seriously as a film maker, this film does not take itself too seriously. Gallo could have made the film dark, like Fellini's La Strada, which dealt with a one-sided abusive relationship. I feel that would have been self indulgent. By letting the story play out the way it does in the movie, Gallo has made a very original movie.

*topless bar - A terrific song from the seventies by Yes, "Heart of the Sunrise", is loudly playing in the scene while topless dancers gyrate on a mirrored stage. I love this song. I listened to this album endlessly while a young and impressionable fifteen-year-old geek. Now instead of thinking of the fantastic artwork created by Roger Dean for the "Fragile" album cover, I will forever associate this song with half-naked women in a sleazy bar. This is unforgivable. back