Four filmmakers Vincent Gallo loathes: “He hasn’t made a good film in 25 years”
Perhaps even more controversial than Vincent Gallo are Vincent Gallo’s opinions about these four filmmakers. After relocating to New York City in 1978, he became infamous for his provocative and frequently disturbing street performances. Through one such performance Gallo was introduced to underground filmmaker Eric Mitchell, who cast him as the lead in 1985’s The Way It Is. Since then, Gallo has written and starred in films like Buffalo 666, released two albums on Warp Records, performed at a professional level in Grand Prix motorcycle races, and sold his sperm as conceptual art.
When it comes to fellow New York filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola, Gallo has some pretty strong opinions. “He’s the biggest fraud out there,” he said of Jonze. “If you bring him to a party, he’s the least interesting person at the party, he’s the person who doesn’t know anything. He’s the person who doesn’t say anything funny, interesting, intelligent… He’s a big piece of shit.”
Right, so not friends then. It’s possible there’s a little bit of competitive rivalry going on here, but that doesn’t explain why Gallo held so much disdain for Martin Scorsese, who was already a world-famous director by the time he came onto the scene. “I wouldn’t work for Martin Scorsese for $10million,” he said. “He hasn’t made a good film in 25 years. I would never work with an egomaniac has-been.” You know who Gallo reminds me of? Jean-Luc Godard, whose bitterness also manifested itself in vitriolic attacks on his contemporaries.
Gallo’s most scathing and troubling criticism, however, was reserved for Lost In Translation director Sofia Coppola, the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola. “Sofia Coppola likes any guy who has what she wants,” Gallo said. “If she wants to be a photographer, she’ll fuck a photographer. If she wants to be a filmmaker, she’ll fuck a filmmaker. She’s a parasite just like her fat, pig father was.”
Gallo’s dizzyingly misogynistic attack on Copolla comes as something of a surprise, given that he worked on her father’s 2009 film Tetro. The actor’s comments emerged in 2010 after Hikari Takano posted a secretly-recorded audio interview online. Gallo subsequently sued Takano for making the recording of him “mocking Francis Ford Coppola’s weight” and criticising Spike Jones and his wife Sofia Coppola public. According to the Courthouse News Service, Takano interviewed Gallo in 2003 for a Japanese men’s motorcycle publication, with the actor claiming that he secretly recorded their conversation before the formal interview began. Unsurprisingly, it ruined his relationship with the Coppolas.
