Hollywood Director Gallo to Speak in Chester
So wiseguy? Whaddyawannado? Whack the guy? Send him to sleep with the fishes? Take him to a concrete plant in Jersey? Okay, we’re talking mafia-speak here, a dialect in which George Gallo has written a lot of movie scripts. Some of them have become wiseguy classics, including his first, called appropriately enough Wiseguys. The film starred Danny Devito and Joe Piscopo. Then came Midnight Run with Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, followed by 29th Street with Danny Aiello and Anthony LaPaglia and then Bad Boys with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.
But Gallo, who lives in Los Angeles, is about more than tough guy films. He is also a noted landscape artist and he will be sharing stories of his life as a painter as well as his escapades as a screen writer, producer, director, and musician on Wednesday, Sept. 23 in the garden at local artist Leif Nilsson’s Spring Street Studio in Chester.
The event, An Intimate Evening in the Garden with George Gallo and Friends, will feature not only Gallo reminiscing about his varied adventures in motion pictures and painting, but also Nilsson, photographer Caryn B. Davis, and Chester artist Claudia Post, who was responsible for bringing Gallo to the East Coast.
Post is organizing a Friday, Sept. 25 bus trip from Chester to New York for the opening of Gallo’s Salmagundi Club show. He will also be guest artist at the opening reception of Lyme Art Association’s annual New England Landscape Painting Exhibition on Friday, Oct. 2, from 5 to 7 p.m.
In addition, Gallo will give two live painting demonstrations, first on Saturday, Oct. 3 at the Lyme Art Academy and then on Sunday, Oct. 4 at the Spring Street Gallery, along with Nilsson.
Among those who have Gallo paintings in their private collections are actors Robert De Niro, Gary Sinise, and Mel Gibson.
“For a long time I wasn’t really showing too much, just painting for my own enjoyment,” Gallo explained, “but when you work with people, you talk about things, about what you do. They saw my work and that’s how it happened.”
Ultimately one of the people who saw Gallo’s work recommended him as a participant in an annual program taught by leading artists called Weekend with the Masters. His appearances have now led to a book, Impressionist Painting for the Landscape: Secrets for Successful Oil Painting by Gallo and Cindy Salaski.
“People must like it—all our events have been sold out,” he said.
Gallo describes himself as an artist in the tradition of Pennsylvania Impressionism. When American artists who went to Europe in the 19th century to study with the great French Impressionist painters returned to this country, those who settled in different areas developed distinctive styles of painting. Pennsylvania impressionism consists of large landscape works painted outside with nature itself as a model.
“It’s large canvasses, capturing light, aggressive painterly work,” Gallo said.
He developed his technique when he was 18 and apprenticed himself to George Cherapov, a Russian-born New England landscapist. He thought he was launched on a career as an artist. But then in his early 20s, he contracted mononucleosis and couldn’t go outdoors to paint. Confined to the house, he decided since he was a movie buff, that he would try to write a screenplay. When it was finished, he had no idea what to do next; then he remembered the name of a cameraman he had seen in the credits of the 1970s television series Serpico. Gallo called him. The cameraman had some advice.
“He told me if I was calling a cameraman I really didn’t know anything about movies,” Gallo said.
Ultimately the script made its way to a producer who bought it.
“It was edgy, funny, reflected my Italian-American upbringing,” Gallo said.
It was never made into a movie, but it changed Gallo’s life nonetheless. He left his East Coast roots and moved to California where has lived ever since. But despite 30 years in Los Angeles, his voice has not made the transcontinental leap. He still sounds like a New Yorker.
“Out here, you tend to hang around with people who came from the same place you did,” he explains.
At the moment, Gallo has several films and television series in the works, including a movie called The Comeback Trail written Josh Posner.
“It’s The Producers meets Get Shorty,” he explains about the plot that involves murder to collect insurance money for a failed production.
He’s written a television series for the History Channel about the escapades of a minor wiseguy named Gianni Russo.
“He ran with the mob guys and he witnessed so many things,” Gallo said.
Gallo has had some tangential contact with people he assumes were mob figures over the years, but his fascination with wiseguys started as a small child with a neighborhood man an aunt told him belonged to La Cosa Nostra. Today, he is less interested in writing about the flashy mob bosses like the late John Gotti than in the men who lurk in the shadows.
“You never really know what those guys are up to; it’s more interesting,” he said.
And do the characters he writes about resemble the real mobsters themselves?
“Well, probably just the same way the guys who jump on horses in cowboy movies resemble real cowboys,” he admitted.
An Evening in the Garden with George Gallo
From 6 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 23 at the Spring Street Gallery in Chester. Suggested donation of $50 includes wine, beverages, hors d’oeuvres, desert, and coffee. To reserve a space for the event, send a check to Claudia Post, 19 Hickory Hill Drive, Chester, CT 06412.
For more information on An Evening in the Garden with George Gallo or the Friday, Sept. 25 bus trip to New York or the workshops on Saturday, Oct. 3 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Lyme Art Academy, call Claudia Post at 860-510-2056 or email claudiapost1@hotmail.com.
For information on the Sunday, Oct. 4 workshop at the Spring Street Gallery in Chester, contact Claudia Post (above) or visit www.nilssonstudio.com.