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He does have the narrative (if you can even call it that) pretty badly confused - Bafort's character has nothing to do with the funeral home, and the head mortician is played by Brenda Epperson, who looks nothing like Bafort (there is another dead blond girl who resembles Bafort but isn't) - but this, "experiments in diegetic permeability, sound / image / silence relationships, and the metaphysics of film performance", is spot on as a summary of what Gallo is doing here. This and Enter The Void would make an interesting double feature: they're two of the most truly jazzy movies I've ever seen (structurally, that is, in their use of what we might look at as modulations of sound/image, opposed to the general idea that jazzy w/r/t cinema is just shorthand for choppy editing).

I hope this gets at least an NYC/LA release, it's a major achievement and deserves to a big screen.

Vincent Gallo: escort and sperm provider.

You gotta admit the guy has class.

Both of those have to be a joke, right?

"If the purchaser of the sperm chooses the option of natural insemination, there is an additional charge of $500,000. However, if after being presented detailed photographs of the purchaser, Mr. Gallo may be willing to waive the natural insemination fee and charge only for the sperm itself."

Either way, VG is fucking bonkers.

I think it's a joke. But I also think he would do it.

Of course it's a joke - he first put the listing for his sperm up a few years ago. It's nothing new. Gallo's obviously an easy individual to dislike, but at least he's creative in finding interesting ways to put people off. He seems to be someone who genuinely enjoys annoying people in interesting ways - but he has a personality that I'm drawn to. One day, while his band was playing a show in San Francisco that he'd promoted on his Twitter all week, he advised people who were in the crowd to go to the box office and ask for a refund, because they "suck tonight".

We suck tonight. I've asked the bar to issue refunds to whoever wants one.
9:34 PM Nov 22nd, 2010 via Twitter for iPhone from Duboce Triangle, San Francisco

Awesome.

Actually for stunts like that I find it impossible to dislike him. There's a certain degree of chutzpah there that I just have to admire.

Depressed that Hunter Thompson and Dennis Hopper are dead? Fret not! Vincent Gallo is still with us!

That just makes me more depressed.

There aren't many Calvin Klein male models as genuinely creative and fascinating as Gallo, that's for sure.

I've Google news and have been waiting patiently for news about any type of non-festival screening of Promises Written On Water. Does anyone know what happened to the film? Since I've heard about it's creation and read the review online, it's been the film I've been anticipating the most and I just kept hoping some sort of screening would've popped up in Los Angeles, but it doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.

I could be wrong but it sounds to me like Gallo isn't really looking to screen or distribute it. I'm dying to see it as well.

That's the word I thought I'd had heard. I'm half-tempted to write to their sales office and inquire about setting up a screening.

Reading through all these posts put a big smile on my face. And discovering somebody who stumbled upon his fabulous website for the first time is always hilarious (it's also selling all kinds of odd stuff besides his sperm).

As I think "Brown Bunny" is the best film to grace the cinema screens of the last decade (next to Malick's "New World"), I'm dying to watch his latest!!! But Gallo this fucking asshole probably won't allow us to! Well... at least I can always visit his website.

Btw, does anyone know how to get hold of any of his short films? [-o<

AlexHansen wrote:That's the word I thought I'd had heard. I'm half-tempted to write to their sales office and inquire about setting up a screening.

Maybe we should open a private club and organize a screening...

The following might be interesting for the people waiting for this movie to be screened. It is taken from the Danish Cinemateques website, who are running a Vincent Gallo series this month.

'Promises Written in Water' is not even mean for a release:"I do not want any of my new works to be put in connection with a marked or an audience of any kinds", writes Gallo, who did accept an actress demands about allowing two festival screenings.

Maybe he's going for a Matthew Barney-type thing, selling off the prints to private collectors for largeish sums... If he could pull it off, this would certainly be more profitable than trying to sell the film through the usual channels, especially given the film's reception at Venice and low commercial potential.

Anyways, I took my chances and e-mailed Gallo about the possibilities of ever getting to see this film. A short e-mail was responded with a short response:

Vincent Gallo wrote:I enjoy not showing it

Awesome.

Oedipax wrote:Awesome.

Not really.

I'd like to see the movie. I admire him for trying to make a work that he feels is uncompromised. One that he had complete control over and didn't get soiled by his big mouth in the press or market forces or anyone putting financial pressures on him or bad reviews.

Then he shows that asshole side of himself. "I enjoy not showing it" makes me think of him like some sort of Eric Cartman-ish figure. The boy on the block that no one likes but he has a porno magazine and everyone wants to see it but he won't show it to them.

I think he's a fine filmmaker and a good, dedicated actor and I think by not showing it he's really just a coward, afraid of being judged. He could avoid most of the corrupting things he claims to be the problem just by organizing sporadic screenings the way Crispin Glover does, but no, he's getting too much enjoyment from refusing to show it to people. Hell I bet in a year or so certain museums would be willing to show it and give Gallo a respectful context that he claims to seek.

If he has a long term plan like nothing suggests then ok but if he really plans to keep it to himself forever then fuck him.

Nah, I can't stand Gallo and even I will concede that that response was just perfect

Why would we have any right to see his movie? I realize that in the era of celebrity sex tapes we expect everything to be readily available to us, but it is absurd.

Zot! wrote:Why would we have any right to see his movie? I realize that in the era of celebrity sex tapes we expect everything to be readily available to us, but it is absurd.

The question is not why we should have the right to see the movie, but why we shouldn't.
Though frankly I have little interest in seeing the work of an overgrown man-child who covetously keeps "his movie" away from audiences, like a retiree endlessly polishing his vintage Porsche in a vacuum sealed garage. Sharing is caring, dude.

I didn't say we have a right to see his movie. If a person is talented and people have supported him financially through his work his entire life and they want to see his newest film and he doesn't want to show it, he's an asshole. That is all.

edit: Don't take this as an angry rant. I really don't care that much about this film, I'd just like to see it.

So, "asshole" is meant affectionately?