Vincent Gallo is a man of many talents. And they're all on show in Buffalo '66, which you can catch over the next week at the Broadway Cinematheque.
On April 11, 1961, Vincent Vito Gallo came into the world in Buffalo, New York - but his name and reputation were built down the road in the Big Apple. It was there that he moved after dropping out of high school at 16, and he has never really looked back.
Dreaming of life as a musician, Gallo soon met up with a bunch of like-minded individuals, among them the ill-fated artist Jean Michel Basquait, with whom he played in a band (Gray). Gallo would later make a cameo, as himself, in the film Basquait (1996). As well as playing in The Plastics, Bohak and Bunny, Gallo played around with Super 8 films and became an artist in his own right - there have so far been 15 one-man shows of his artwork in New York.
Seemingly not content with an already impressive CV, Gallo branched out into modelling, making the most of his moody good-looks and enigmatic reputation and featuring in ads for both Calvin Klein and Hush Puppies. By the mid-1980s, he had expanded his interests into cinema - with immediate success. First up was a role in the independent film The Way It Is (1984), for which Gallo also composed the soundtrack - an effort that brought him the Best Music Award at the 1984 Berlin Film Festival. He landed a small role in Goodfellas (1990) and has been in more or less constant demand since - mainly in fringe-style productions.
According to some reports, he even knocked back roles in Reservoir Dogs and later Boogie Nights. But he stole the show in the delightful Palookaville (1996) - a tale of hapless would-be gangsters - for which he received a mere US$10,000 (HK$77,900). By the next year, he was paid US$100,000 for his role in Truth Or Consequences, N.M - giving him enough loot, no doubt, to add to his much-loved collection of vintage hi-fi gear. He writes constantly for hi-fi trade magazines in the US and boasts a collection of more than 5,700 videotapes.
And, if a scouring of the internet is anything to go by, delights in creating some mystery about just what he is doing, and what he is all about. Consider this quote from the Village Voice in 1996: 'I came to New York to be a legend, and within five minutes of realising I was an interesting kid and other people thought so, I had given myself a nervous breakdown. I was 26 years old before I knew what it was like to have an ordinary day.'