Vincent Gallo Likes Em Young

The Boldface column of today's NYTimes captures the light banter between Chloe Sevigny and Vincent Gallo at the premiere of Brown Bunny:

"'Yeah, (Chloe Sevigny) has weird hair. But I thought she was the most pretty girl I had ever seen, and I really mean that. I really thought that that was the person that I'd hoped to see my whole life. And for some reason, because I hadn't made a film yet, I wasn't thinking of making a film, I thought we would look nice together in a movie.'

"'And then we chitchatted a little at the party,' Mr. Gallo continued. And she was nice. She was nice to me' - to Chlo�, You were nice that night, yeah!' - back to the audience, 'and I had a big crush, but she was very young at the time'' (17, by our calculation, and Mr. Gallo, 30) 'and uh, anyway, we had our ups and downs over the years. I had thought of her when I did Buffalo 66, but I felt that we should be in a better film than that.'

"'You owed me $500,' Ms. Sevigny said. The audience hooted. 'Yes. Yes. Yes. Good,' Mr. Gallo responded, 'That was a lot of money in those days. I hadn't become rich yet.'"

Like school on Saturday ... But The Corsair is fascinated by Gallo's obsession with casting very-close-to-jailbait leading ladies. Chloe was 17 at the time they met. What's up with that? Christina Ricci ended up starring in the ill fated Buffalo 66, which led to their estrangement. How did the two fall out?

We go to US Weekly, way back in '98, to see Gallo's oily, feral vole-like MO:

"US Weekly: How did Gallo persuade you to do Buffalo '66?

"Christina: He ran for a block in the rain to get me matches for my cigarette. He's like a professional charmer. He can seduce anyone."

And we go back to a Mr. Showbiz interview:

"Buffalo 66 is supposedly very close to your own background in Buffalo. How close?

"Vincent Gallo: Ten years ago I'm driving cross-country in a car with 100 of my cassettes, and at the end of the B-side of some punk-rock thing there's this old, dirty, sun-baked tape, and I hear that recording of "Fools Rush In," and I'm stunned at my father's [singing] talent and my 13-year-old engineering skills. And that's the inspiration for the whole movie that and my feeling about Christina Ricci the moment I first saw her in Mermaids. I knew at that point, driving in that car, that one day I would make a movie, and that there would be a scene in it of the father character singing that song."

Hello? Ricci was 8 years old in Mermaids. The Corsair thinks that maybe Gallo and Mary Kay LeTourneau have a lot in common.