The tale of a recently released prisoner who kidnaps a young girl and passes her off as his wife, Vincent Gallo’s 1998 film “Buffalo ’66” is still regarded as one of the greatest independent films ever made. But making it was quite the challenge, star Christina Ricci told HuffPost Live on Thursday.
When host Ricky Camilleri asked about “Buffalo ’66” and described Gallo as “exacting,” “precise” and “demanding,” Ricci made what was clearly a conscious decision to play nice. “Those are positive spins to put on it,” she said. “That’s a nice way to put it.”
Gallo has made it clear in the past there was no love lost between he and Ricci. Two years after the film’s release, he described the actress as “an ungrateful c–t” who was “basically a puppet. I told her what to do, and she did it.”
Ricci told HuffPost Live the entire experience of shooting the movie was a challenge, from Gallo’s on-set conduct to the nature of the production itself. She explained:
That was very confusing because it was my first movie away from home, or without my mother. [Gallo] didn’t want my mom to come. He wanted me to be up there by myself. I was 17 and I had never worked with anyone like this and I had never worked on a movie that was that low-budget before. I’d always worked on things where the more money, the more structure, the more protections in place, all this stuff. But I spent most of that movie trapped in a car with a raving lunatic.
That time in a car was particularly rough. Ricci didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, and she remembers Gallo’s displeasure well. “Every take, right before they called cut, the car would stall out and he would scream at me,” she said. Still, despite those personality clashes, Ricci said she had fun making the film.
“It’s an experience, and I had friends on the job, and I was young enough, really, to also just step back and be like, ‘This is crazy, guys. This is really nuts. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m just gonna keep going,'” Ricci said.
Seventeen years later, Ricci appreciates the final product of “Buffalo ’66” and considers Gallo “a real talent” despite her negative experiences with him.
“It’s unfortunate because I think people have definitely shied away from seeing those movies because of the way he’s presented himself in the press and stuff,” Ricci said. “But I’ve worked with tons of people who have all kinds of different behavior, and you really have to look, at the of the day, at: What did I create? What was I a part of? And I think that’s what’s going to last and be really important.”
Ricci stars in the new miniseries “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles,” which premieres April 5 on Lifetime.
Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Christina Ricci here.
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