Resonance: Can you remember your first job ever?

Gallo: Yes, I remember it well but let me open quickly by saying that I don't see my creative work any differently than I see all the jobs that I've done in my life. I don't feel differently about when I was a dishwasher than when I was directing a film. I don't have that sort of pretension. I never lived my life doing a job sort of biding time waiting for the world to feel great about me and make me a special person. You'll never hear me call myself an actor or an artist or a musician or any of those ugly words. I'm just a worker. Yes, I remember my first job. My first job was a self-employed job. I began making money or earning a living by being self-enterprising. I had discovered that pharmacies sold cinnamon oil for some sort of medicinal purpose. It cost 50 cents for one ounce of cinnamon oil and I shoplifted several packages of toothpicks. I would take a stack of toothpicks--about 25 to 30--and they fit in the opening of the bottle. I would shake it up and then I would remove them and dry them off on paper towels and I started my first business of Vincent Gallo's Cinnamon-Flavored Toothpicks. I sold them for a penny each. This is the early 60s; I was only 6 years old. When I wound up selling enough to make $10 back, that was my first way of making money on my own. It was a huge amount of money and it took me nearly half a school year to sell that many. I had all my teachers and everybody in my class addicted to these toothpicks. I finally cleared about $10 profit, which took a couple of ounces of cinnamon oil to do. My first job let's say.

I lived in a very poor slum of Buffalo that was one-third Black, one-third Italian, and one-third Jewish. Some Polish Jewish, some German Jewish, but Jewish, which is odd, because I don't know any other part of America that has working-class Jewish slums like that. The one thing that the Jewish community was good for for me at the time was that they were very willing to pay other people to do manual labor even though they were blue collar themselves. They were very happy to pay people to mow the lawn, to shovel the driveway, to fix their children's bikes, to do some handy work and odd jobs around the house. I was very, very willing to do that. So from the age of about six or seven until I left Buffalo I was known as a person who was reliable and hirable in that way. I could fix, or build, or make or repair or brutally, aggressively work at anything. I don't remember ever turning down a job and I don't ever remember not pursuing as much work as possible. I must have shoveled 30,000 driveways in blizzard storms in Buffalo and mowed 50,000 lawns while I was there. Every Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah season I got an opportunity to assemble bicycles or to put together whatever weird, esoteric toys or games or things they got. I made a lot of money doing things like that and I would refer to my uncles who were all handy men whenever I was stumped with a broken lawn mower or broken bicycle; I developed a lot of skills at the time.

The first actual job that I had paying by the hour with a scheduled time period was with my brother for this place called the Motel for Dogs which was also a part of John's Diner, which was also a part of John's Service Center and Gas Station. They would use leftover scraps from the diner and grind them up in big grinders and make the food for the dogs. My brother and I worked four hours before school in these blistering, dark mornings of Buffalo; I was 9 years old and he was eleven. We would go there and take all the scraps from the restaurant and put all the plates in the dishwashing machine. We would then take the food that we scraped out of the plates and run it through this big grinding machine that would turn it into this sort of dog food. Then we would let all the dogs out, hose down all the pens with these big hoses, refill all their bowls with water and pick up all the shit that we'd hosed into this one area. We'd scoop a chunk of food for each one of these dogs and let each one of them out for a little while while were doing this. We worked four hours before school and four hours after school--basically full time--while I was in elementary school. I did that job until I was 12 years old, at which point I became employed by two people. One, by this wiseguy who had been in jail and was out on a sort of work-release program. He started a business soliciting subscriptions for the weekly newspaper. He would take a bunch of kids in a station wagon and we would go door to door trying to trick people into subscribing to the news by convincing them that some of the money was going to charity, which I guess somehow it was. I was extremely good at this job; I could out-sell the other four kids. I would sell more than the other four kids put together by forcing people, tricking people, conniving people to just filling in their names on the form. I would do that in the night and then on weekends I'd work for a guy who had a janitorial service stripping floors and cleaning office buildings and supermarkets. I did that job until I left Buffalo. At one point before I left Buffalo--just before I turned 16--I had my own business card because he told me if I was able to solicit any new customers he'd give me a commission on that. So I had my own business card, which I still have a couple of copies of: Complete Janitorial and Maintenance Services, Representative Vincent Gallo.

R: Why do you think you were so much better at selling than your comrades?

G: First of all, I hustled since I was a kid. I had every girl in the neighborhood nude and every guy in the neighborhood stealing from their parents.

R: Well, you're still trying to get girls nude, according to your website.

G: I don't know why but it makes me feel loved or special if girls take off their clothes for me. Not that I'm interested in looking, because I don't even look, I'm not sexualized by it, it just makes me feel like I'm special to them if they'll do this thing for me.

R: Right...

G: I had by far the most money and the most things of anyone in the neighborhood without my parents giving me one penny. My father to this day--I'm 39 years old--has never given me a penny or bought me a dinner or a piece of clothing, or given me a gift. There was just no way that I was going to have a shitty goalie mask, or a shitty football helmet, or not the cool white cleats or not the first aluminum bat. From the very start I was very aggressive at hustling and surviving.
R: Was it a natural inclination to be industrious or do you think it was more of a reactionary thing?
G: Well, I liked remote control airplanes; I was obsessed with aquariums. I wound up having thirty-five aquariums. So most of my industrious nature was purely for hobbies that had aesthetics, or science, or concepts behind them, or musical instruments. I recorded my father singing "Fools Rush In" for the soundtrack to Buffalo 66 when I was 12 years old in my own bedroom with my own recording equipment. I was obsessed with those hobbies and I needed money to support them and that's where my survival nature, my industrious nature, my hustling abilities kicked in. I can make money going to the dentist, if that's what I want to do. I've had that personality a long time. The thing is, I'm not driven by power or luxury so I didn't become an $80,000,000 dollar a year actor. I didn't become a $100,000,000 dollar a year musician because I wasn't interested in mainstreaming myself to have a lifestyle that I wasn't interested in. But I made sure I had a $100,000 dollar guitar 15 years ago though the way that I got it was certainly not to pay $100,000 dollars for it. I have 15,000 albums; I have 7,000 movies. None of those things were bought with Hollywood money or easy money. I was a dishwasher when I put most of those collections together, or a cement layer, or metal worker, or I did plaster work in Fresco or furniture making--jobs like that.

R: So, suffice to say, you never resented having to do day job work?

G: I never thought of it that way. If you wanted to hire me for a movie I have an extremely rigid rate that I would work for, period. I know my market value. But if you wanted to hire me to design your house or fix your bike I would not say no to the work. I still do those things, I still buy and sell, I still fix things, I still build things for people. I just got hired as an architect for somebody's home here in Beverly Hills. If in the process of building that house they wanted any unique metal work or unique plasterwork that was still within my capacity I would probably rather do it myself and bill for it. No, I don't resent it, and I'm disgusted by the young generation of kids who have such a deep resentment because they don't have this peripheral, social success that they think they deserve. I was a waiter in a restaurant in New York for two years. Ten fucking years later at the Cannes Film Festival my strongest memory of the festival was when this rich fat-faced, fuck-faced movie producer was talking to me about Arizona Dream. He looked at me and said, "You know something, did you used to work at that restaurant?" And I said yes and he said, "You know something, you were the best fucking waiter in New York." I was proud because I thought, "Wow, man, I really was the greatest waiter in New York." I'm from another generation. People have no context as to what a good lifestyle is. They're completely lost. All they do is continue to juxtapose themselves against the richest class of people and feel disappointed and in agony for their brutal life because they don't have a private plane. I worked every day of my fucking life at everything. I don't have a maid, I don't have a gardener, I don't have a mechanic, I have a dentist, that's it. And I would do it myself if could see.

R: Most artists in this issue don't feel that their day job is something that detracts from their creative life.

G: I loved my job, and I was proud of every job that I had. I did the best job that I could at every job, and I was never fired by anyone. I showed up and I never was late and I never missed a day. I didn't feel that anything took away from my creative work. I did paintings or music in my free time. Those were just things that I did to occupy my free time that people started to notice and pay me money for. I mean, somebody asked me once to be in a movie and I said, "Well I'm working as a dishwasher seven days a week. I work in the night, if you can film all my scenes in the day, sure I'll be in that film." An art dealer was told to see some of my paintings and she gave me a show. But I was doing those things just to stay out of my head, stay out of my thoughts. I never had a head shot, things like that. I have a very active mind that goes into a lot of doubt and negativity and fear and I stay busy 24 hours a day not to have those feelings. Anything creative I did was a sort of hobby to stay out of my thoughts. The fact that it evolved into a career or into a body of work was purely coincidence and accidental.

R: Do you think your environment shaped your inner drive and industriousness, or do you think you were just born with it?

G: One basic nature is physiological and that basic nature is transformed and transcended by interactions and incidental conflicts, primarily from your parents or your guardians or the people who are in your life in that direct way when you're a child. Partly you get it by having a direct relationship and partly you get it by observing them. So, yes, my basic nature was very driven, very hardworking, very active. I had a very active mind right from the start. But my parents had very low expectations for me. They were shocked if I won a football game, if I made the all-star team in hockey, when I won the science fair. When I took my IQ test my parents were shocked by the results because they only saw me always as somebody who maybe one day could get a good job in a hospital as a janitor or become a plumber. They would have been very surprised if I surpassed even being an employee and got my own plumbing business going. So that low expectation was a very big conflict with the way that I felt that I could lead my life. And surely that must have pushed me a little harder in those blistering blizzards to shovel a little faster.

But there's a lot of things that could have made it so that I wound up...crime was really where my basic nature rested through most of my childhood. There was one point when I was 14 years old when I was connected with some serious crimes, let's say. Serious crimes, not shoplifting--real robberies, real gun things. There was one point where I could have really moved towards being a more straightened out guy in the sense of organized crime. I would have definitely been killed because I'm a very independent personality. There was a point at that age where I could have easily moved closer to that lifestyle and because of one incident in particular I moved far away from that. I'll tell you exactly what it was. I was stealing Cadillacs, $200 bucks each, with a friend of mine. We would steal about six a week and then we would front them to this guy who I was also working for in this other legitimate job. We took three Cadillacs in one day and I went to work with him at this other job and I thought he'd be really proud of me and he sort of ignored me and was cold. The next day he picked me up earlier than any of the other kids and he told me that he wanted to go for donuts and coffee with me and he told me about his life in jail. He told me what had been done to him sexually; he told me that he went to jail at 18 years old and what it was like to go that early and come out of jail so late in his life. And he told me that he believed in me as a person who was better than that. That was the mid-seventies where it was very uncool to the other hippie pretty girls to do anything like that. It was very much about peace and harmony and being positive in those ways and I had this whole other support group that would admire me and nurture me if I was more interested in music and film and togetherness. The look on my boss's face that day when he told me about his experience and how he felt he wasted his life--he made me move towards this other community of people that were more productive in the things that they wanted out of life. They were less money and status aggressive; they were more interested in building things towards a better world. I know that sounds like a bunch of crap but that's where I found myself spending most of my time, with the sort of arty, weird freaky underground of people with very new, progressive thinking. One day I was in a sort of gangster world and the next day I was hanging out with Lydia Lunch and Cindy Sherman in Buffalo, New York, playing in a goofy band. I had already liked music, I had hundreds of records and I had already played music but deep down I was just a criminal. So I was lucky to move towards those other things, but I never thought of those things as a job or career, never. To this day, to this day if somebody says career to me I don't know what they're talking about; I'm just a worker. A person, you know, doing the best job that I can at whatever job they're offering to me.

R: When you were a kid--before you even started working--what did you want to be when you grew up?

G: I wanted to have somebody love me forever and I wanted to be a person in a relationship with a family; that's all I ever wanted. So there you have it, I have a failed life. Honestly, all I fantasized about was having a girlfriend, being married and having kids. What I did for money to support that family was very abstract because I just imagined it would be some hardworking job. I liked sports so I fantasized about being great in sports but not as a career. I only fantasized about being on the highest level to where I was at that moment: being the best pitcher in my Little League. I didn't think about being on the Yankees one day. I didn't have that kind of vision like that. If you talk to any of my relatives no one would say, "Oh, he always wanted to be in movies; oh, he always wanted to be an artist; oh he always wanted to be in a band. Oh, I remember him, he always wished that he was going to be a fireman."

R: At this stage, having experienced and produced so much, what are you interested in doing next?

G: I really believe that if I work hard and I put my mind to it I may wind up designing one of the best houses that has ever been designed. So I'm very excited about this opportunity to be the architect for this home in Los Angeles. Of course I'll have to use a licensed architect to stamp my drawings but I've been hired as the architect. That's the only thing that I was thinking about right now. Of course I'm going to make another film soon but, if I tell you the honest truth, if I close my eyes and I fantasize the way people fantasize about their life, not caring anymore is my fantasy. Not caring to be the best at anything or to do a great job or to get it perfect or to get it my way or to get it right. To just be free from any of that, really be free from that sort of antagonism. That's what I hope to achieve.

R: Can you explain how you started welding and working with metals when you were a kid? I'm also interested in hearing how you ended up in New York last month.

G: I loved the metal shop and I worked in New York for awhile as a metal worker. I was good at that, it's one of the few things that I had natural ability at; of everything else that I worked pretty hard at it was one of the things that came easy to me. And then I got a chance to help out a little in the September 11th disaster. I was actually in Toronto on my way home. I had to drudge across the Canadian border back into fucked up Manhattan as the flames were still burning.

R: How did you hear that metal workers were needed?

G: Oh, just through some friends of mine who do that for a living. The first couple days of demolition were pretty extensive. The initial work force worked at shortening the length of steel so that they could be put in dumpsters and carried away. The basic, initial move was to clear away some of the larger debris or get it cut down to size to be carried away. So that's what initially was done. The job became more complex and I don't know much about it because I'm not down there. When that first happened it was very hard for them to mobilize so quickly the amount of people that they needed. Soon after the initial chaos it's a very well organized, very well managed. It's like any other construction site now. But in those first couple days all kinds of people were helping doing all kinds of jobs. There was people just lifting things. It was pretty incredible down there. I don't know what's going to happen there, you know? There's a lot of damage there. There's a lot more damage than people are aware of. Real structural damage with drainage, with phone lines, with electrical lines, with sewage lines, with reinforcing walls--just the whole way they built Battery Park City. I mean, that's a sort of man-made piece of land, you know? There's much more damage down there than you'd think. Those buildings were a quarter of a mile high and one acre wide each, filled up. I mean, you can't even imagine what it looked like.

The first day that I went to New York City I went down there [to the Twin Towers] with a person that I had just met in New York. The first thing that we both agreed on was that we would both be alive one day when those buildings came tumbling down. It was just something about those buildings that it didn't surprise me much that that happened. It just seemed inevitable. They seemed to be built for that. When it happened it disturbed me at how natural it seemed that that might happen. It's just something about those two buildings that were perched so oddly, they were so cumbersome and so distinctive, they were just very odd. I wish that never happened. I'm uncomfortable talking about it because I don't want to come off as a do-gooder. I'm not a very charitable person; I'm not a left-wing socialist. I'm not Al Pacino mumbling the lyrics to some stupid song. Please don't anyone think of me as a charitable person. My intentions are good for the world and I think good things but I don't want to be perceived as any less human and any less self-motivated than anyone else.

R: What is it about the material of metal that you're drawn to? I know that you use metal as canvasses as well.

G: Well, I'm drawn to its reference to the Industrial Revolution and the melancholy of the faded 20th century. It reminds me very much of all the melancholy in Buffalo, New York. The vulnerability of metal to rust and oxidation reminds me of the vulnerability of my childhood in Buffalo. It reminds me of the seasons, of the cold winter, of the harsh fall, of the long, cold spring. It reminds me of the aesthetics of the 20th century and all the things I liked about the 20th century and its productivity and industry. I like it also because the type of paint that I like to work with was always intended for finishing metal. I like lacquers, I like acrylic enamels, I like pretty industrial paints; I like painting motorcycles and bikes and things like that. So my interests in art were very much affected by that.

R: I'm interested in some of your movie-oriented endeavors and I also wanted to ask you a couple of things about your album.

G: I originally was going to call my own band of just myself Bunny; I was going to release an album under that band name but it was going to be just me. Lukas Haas joined that effort and we stopped playing music together a couple of years ago, unfortunately, because I enjoyed playing music with him. I did my album on Warp Records just under my name Vincent Gallo and the record's titled When. The record's been out a couple weeks, but it's just Vincent Gallo. My next film is called The Brown Bunny and that's a title that I've had for a long time. I'm playing Christmas day and a couple days after Christmas in Tokyo and I've had requests to play several cities in America. And if I can go through the grueling drudgeries of the experience of going to Europe then maybe we'll do some shows there, too.