Buffalo ’66 (1998)

(On Cable TV, May 2019) The Classic Hollywood system of making movies had, for the longest while, the fortunate side-effect of segregating responsibility of a film in multiple roles. In old-school Hollywood, the studio hired craftsmen to execute a vision, diffusing responsibility in case of failure. (The same remains true today for large tent-pole projects.) This diffusion of responsibility cracks when you turn to the director-as-an-auteur theory, and dissipates even further when a single person assumes writing, directing, producing, and often acting duties. At that point, the film is so aligned with a single person that it’s not only easy to find blame for what goes wrong, but it’s possible to dislike a person because of their movie. So anyway—here we are talking about Buffalo ’66, a film in which Vincent Gallo is the writer, director, composer and star. (Everything I’m reading about the film’s production history also suggests that Gallo effectively produced and cinematographed the film himself, despite not being credited as such.)  It’s not necessarily good news for Gallo that for most of its duration, the film is a near-constant irritant. Built on a shaky foundation of an unhealthy relationship (as an ex-convict kidnaps a girl to become his girlfriend), the film is voluntarily low-budget with a muddy cinematography and gritty-to-dirty atmosphere. Gallo isn’t that much more likable as a protagonist, apparently testing audiences to what they’ll still find acceptable in an intensely unlikable protagonist. But Buffalo ’66 does have its saving graces. The cinematography is frequently inventive, and Gallo works his film toward a redemption arc both for himself and for the narrative. Improbably enough, considering the film’s refusal to play to conventions, it ends up in something that feels like a happy ending, no matter what we can think of the terrifyingly bad way our lead couple gets together. So … congratulations are in order, I guess—Gallo could have made a thoroughly detestable film and didn’t, which does help us think better of him. (On the other hand, he did reportedly alienate nearly everyone involved in the film’s production from Christina Ricci on down, so there’s that…)