I've been enjoying the new Steinlager ad on TV, starring Vincent Gallo.
I don't have a huge interest in advertisements, and liquor ads are no different. But I had followed and been duly appalled by a presumably well-meaning group of Kiwis - led I think by Gary McCormack - who were moaning about the choice of young Vincent for the part.
Their argument, or at least 'perspective” since it hardly constitutes an argument, was that since Gallo isn't especially famous Steinlager should have hired a Kiwi for the ad. We have – as the chattering chorus of pinheads insisted on reminding us – lots of good actors here who could have played the part and are at least as well-known as Gallo.
Perhaps the Kiwi lobby was simply being disingenuous. Did they seriously think it was about how good or famous the actor was? Didn't they think to possibly Google Gallo and find out something about him before pitching dumb ideas? Pressed for details, someone even suggested that Michael Hurst should have done it.
Well, Vincent Gallo may not be the best-known actor in the world. But he is a striking performer, known as a maverick and renegade, one who has had very public fights with critics and the media, culminating in his second film as director, Brown Bunny, being resolutely booed at the Cannes Film Festival. It contains a scene in which Gallo and co-star Chloe Sevigny (Big Love) have explicit - real, not simulated - sex (though not by Bill Clinton's definition of the word).
Michael Hurst, in comparison, is on National Radio for an afternoon talking about how he likes to read a good book.
At the peak of this ruckus I actually heard one of the pinheads whining that Gallo 'doesn't even drink Steinlager” (thus shattering the myth that no-one seriously believes any more that celebrities use the products they endorse. Or, more accurately, would use them if they didn't get them for free).
Vincent Gallo takes over the Steinlager spot from another actor/director with a volatile and individual reputation, Dennis Hopper. One could note that Hopper didn't drink Steinlager either, having quit all alcohol in 1983.
Seeing Gallo on the box the other night made me think of Hopper and what a loss it was when he died (cancer) two months ago at the age 74. Hopper was always an unpredictably intelligent presence, his wild and well-lived past seeming to bring an extra layer of complexity to any appearance. He was also an acclaimed painter and photographer, an artist in every sense of the word.
Truth be told, Hopper was never trusted with the reins of enough films to really gauge his quality as a director. He made eight in all. There's Easy Rider of course – more a social phenomenon than a great movie – and much later Colours and The Hot Spot, the sadly butchered Backtrack (Catchfire) and my personal favourite Out of the Blue, but that's all that will really be remembered.
What I find interesting on the acting front is that Hopper, for me, never really fired until he sobered up in the 80s. He just seems wimpy and nervous in all those early films, which stretched from Rebel without a Cause to Cool Hand Luke and a hundred others. He was always a busy studio player. But aside from his mercurially brilliant turn in Apocalypse Now I can barely think of a top performance.
But – after he kicked the booze, and god knows what else – the floodgates seemed to open: River's Edge, Hoosiers, Speed, True Romance, Rumble Fish, Chattahoochee, Paris Trout, Red Rock West, and, partnering with weirdmeister David Lynch, a villain who indelibly etched his psychoses into the minds of everyone who saw him. The monstrous Frank Booth from Blue Velvet seemed so real that people were afraid of Hopper for years afterwards. The combination of visceral energy and barely contained violence, along with the haunted longing that had come to Hopper's sad soulful eyes is not something easy to forget.
But crazy Dennis is gone now, and with his passing the world is in a small way a less interesting place. I'm gonna miss him.