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Alan Smithee wrote:Jack Nicholson did sit on the passenger for twenty years. He simultaneously didnt like the studio cut and wanted to own a film the way one owns a painting. One big difference with this is you may own a Picasso but anyone can see a reproduction in a book. The passenger was pretty much gone for all that time. CinemaScope has a good article on it.

The Cinemascope article you linked to contradicts what you're claiming. Here's what it says:

Cinemascope wrote:According to Nicholson’s attorney Ken Kleinberg, the actor had long wanted to purchase the worldwide rights to a film he loved as an art collector might; if he wasn’t able to hang it on a wall, he could at least protect the film from potential corporate skullduggery and exercise some control over its proper exhibition.

Note that "exercise some control over its proper exhibition." The article then goes on to talk about Nicholson's licensing of the film to Warner Home Video and then adds "Nicholson was unhappy with all suitors for a theatrical and subsequent DVD release until discussions began with Sony Pictures Classics in early 2003, with a deal finalized in May 2004." In other words, he wasn't trying to prevent the film's release, he just wanted the film to be released properly.

So there's no connection between what Nicholson did with The Passenger and what Gallo's doing with Promises.

I also seem to remember that Nicholson deliberately waited for all existing rights deals to expire before producing what he considered to be the definitive version. Although he notionally acquired all rights in 1986, several distribution deals still had some years to run, and he couldn't do anything about those as they were legally-binding contracts that had been signed earlier.

And, like Zedz, I had no problem seeing the film in the 1980s and 90s - in fact, in Britain the three English-language films Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point and The Passenger were much easier to see than any of the Italian titles, which left UK distribution for a very long time until a late-90s revival.

John Cope wrote:Never to be seen again.

Makes sense, actually.

Very few, if any genuinely unconventional films will have a significant audience anyway -- even within the "arthouse" crowd. So why waste time and money releasing your film the conventional way (only to see it get shrugs from critics)? Better hold onto it and release it later. Maybe after some buzz builds about Gallo's "lost film." Maybe at a retrospective ten, twenty years from now. Maybe on DVD/Blu-Ray through his website.

Is the guy on the right in this old school video really "Prince" Vince Gallo?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOhRE4wDK6w" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yup. Trouble Deuce.

I couldn't find a better place to post this, sorry if there is:

Some here might be interested in this screed from Vincent Gallo in which he explains why he will not be releasing his last two completed films, attempts to clear up many misunderstandings that have accumulated around his work and his person over the years, and surprises no one in letting us know what he thinks about Trump. He also includes some lengthy childhood memories.

As a longtime reluctant defender of The Brown Bunny, his comments here honestly make me think I'll just have to give it up, since his intentions as articulated in the above are worse than even some of his most vocal critics have attributed to him.

Gee, but all he did was call for a mass genocide

As opposed to a minor genocide?

As if I wasn't already embarrassed enough to be from Buffalo, this guy periodically reappears to underline that fact...

........WHO would buy that?!?!?!?!?!! Maybe someone with no limbs and no use of their senses who wanted to become a slightly better screenwriter? By eating it? In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

I can't imagine a more diametrically opposed personality to the criterion forum. I must have dreamed it, but I thought that he came out as copping to the majority of his abrasive persona being ongoing performance art, but I guess if the sperm selling is still ruffling feathers years later, why not embrace it.

He admits quite regularly to that. Doesn't make him any less boring though.

how does he pay the rent these days?

Modeling, it sounds like?

he also sells rare guitars

I for some reason know lots of people who know Vincent Gallo, have had encounters with Gallo, or have worked with him at some point (I've ever spoken to him extensively before in passing). From what I understand, he bought lots of property in Los Angeles' Arts District about fifteen years ago, and about ten years ago, it started transforming from low cost artist lofts and poorly kept galleries, and morphed into another outdoor mall filled with pointless boutiques and over-priced food. I was told that all of that has covered his cost of living.