‘I’m asking you to come there and make me look good…’
I’d never heard of Buffalo ’66 until Wet Leg mentioned in their excellent single, ‘Wet Dream’. The sleazy male protagonist of the song asks of the speaker, ‘Baby, do you wanna come home with me?/I got Buffalo ’66 on DVD’ as a way to use his knowledge of cult cinema as a seduction aid – something that I can absolutely guarantee doesn’t work. I had heard of writer-director Vincent Gallo, however, albeit mainly because of the controversy around his second film, Brown Bunny (which features an infamous unsimulated sex scene between Gallo and co-star Chloe Sevigny). Buffalo ’66 kinda confirms that Gallo is a bit of a dickhead, but there is no denying that film still feels pretty fresh and unique even 25 years later…
Billy Brown (Gallo) is forced to take the blame for a crime he didn’t commit after losing big money betting on the Superbowl (Mickey Rourke shows up to steal a scene as Billy’s bookie – he was paid $100,000 in cash for his troubles). After getting out of prison, Billy kidnaps Layla (Christina Ricci), a tap dancer, and forces her to pretend to be his wife to impress his parents. Layla is young and impressionable, and she ends up falling for Billy despite the fact that he treats her like a piece of shit (in an example of art imitating life, Ricci has complained many times that Gallo bullied her on set – despite the fact that she was a 17-year-old kid working away from her mother for the first time in her life).
Despite the fact that Gallo is an annoying screen presence, I will say that he brings a vulnerability, even a sympathy to Billy, that is vital to the success of the film. Despite the fact that Gallo described Ricci as a ‘puppet’ who ‘did what she was told’, she is by far the best thing about this movie and the only real reason to watch it at all. It’s a breakout performance from a truly generational actor who is now rightly seen as screen icon. Here she is sweet, seductive and impossible not to root for. While her love for Billy may seem baffling, over the course of the film it becomes clear that she is so lonely that she would fall for anyone who pays her even a lick of attention.
Buffalo ’66 is the kind of low-budget, independent cult film that were everywhere in the ’90s, but have since died away. Gallo is a tough person to like, but his debut feature is worth seeking out.
