I was impressed with the movie as an art piece.
I thought he might be pretentious but when he spoke he came off as being a very funny and down-to-earth guy, who happened to be an artist with a film he cared about. He said "Everybody calls me a lazy pretender but I spent all my money and worked 20-hour days for 3 years in a row to make this film.
How lazy is that?"
After the movie he showed Ebert's initial bashing of the film. He and Ebert have since met and he took half an hour off the Cannes version, including a suicide ending, and people (including Ebert) like the film better now -- as an art piece. Gallo said that he is not trying to be an artist as a filmmaker, rather, he understands that the core of cinema is to be entertaining -- hence the cuts. As an entertainer he is trying to tell a story, if he gets it just right, at least one person will be entertained by the story, and then he is done.
He really seemed like an accessible, funny, down-to-earth guy. His screen persona is a projection of his inner demons, but I think he is very much in control of that projection, and doesn't let it infect is day-to-day interactions with people. (At least publicly with people he doesn't know; I don't know what it was like for Chloe Sevigny to be his girlfriend.)
The BJ scene was integral to the film. Sevigny used to be his girlfriend, so it wasn't like he hadn't been there before and was using his director's position to get some action. I've seen worse on the Internet, and nobody makes a big deal about that.
I thought he might be pretentious but when he spoke he came off as being a very funny and down-to-earth guy, who happened to be an artist with a film he cared about. He said "Everybody calls me a lazy pretender but I spent all my money and worked 20-hour days for 3 years in a row to make this film.
How lazy is that?"
After the movie he showed Ebert's initial bashing of the film. He and Ebert have since met and he took half an hour off the Cannes version, including a suicide ending, and people (including Ebert) like the film better now -- as an art piece. Gallo said that he is not trying to be an artist as a filmmaker, rather, he understands that the core of cinema is to be entertaining -- hence the cuts. As an entertainer he is trying to tell a story, if he gets it just right, at least one person will be entertained by the story, and then he is done.
He really seemed like an accessible, funny, down-to-earth guy. His screen persona is a projection of his inner demons, but I think he is very much in control of that projection, and doesn't let it infect is day-to-day interactions with people. (At least publicly with people he doesn't know; I don't know what it was like for Chloe Sevigny to be his girlfriend.)
The BJ scene was integral to the film. Sevigny used to be his girlfriend, so it wasn't like he hadn't been there before and was using his director's position to get some action. I've seen worse on the Internet, and nobody makes a big deal about that.