It involves a man kidnapping a woman so she'll pretend to be his wife for his parents, a main character who's mean to everyone around him, and the worst meeting the family scene that one can imagine. I've shown Buffalo '66 to women on dates, few of whom actually liked it.
There's a needy tension that arises when a guy shows a date a movie he mistakenly thinks she'll like. The films aren't bad necessarily, they're just abject date movies: Falling Down, Blue Velvet, Goodfellas, Godfather, True Romance, Synecdoche, New York, and Your Friends and Neighbors. But you'd only show that last one if you want her to leave.
It's not that all women dislike the above films, it's simply they make less than ideal choices during the delicate courting process, and why she sometimes glances at you afterwards like she's been catfished by your personality. Those moments are priceless, and better than innocuously enjoying a film together. You can watch a safe movie that caters to both your tastes and encourages hand-holding. But what if a movie inspires defensiveness, an argument, and the woman realizing you're an idiot, but in an adorable way? Few films achieve this effect like Vincent Gallo's wonderfully original Buffalo '66.
It begins like any good date should, with Gallo as Billy getting released from prison and desperately needing to pee. The guards won't let him back in to do so, so he bounces from pee rejection to pee rejection, eventually finding a place at a tap dancing class, where he kidnaps Layla, played by Christina Ricci. The goal is simple: He wants her to pretend to be his wife and make him look good in front of his awful parents.
Details of Billy's past arise. He lost $10,000 on the Buffalo Bills' missed field goal during Super Bowl XXV, and because he couldn't pay the bookie, agreed to do time for another guy. As a free man, he plans to murder the kicker after the kidnapping and then kill himself, as if the kicker hasn't already been through enough. (The film is a perfect accompaniment to 30 for 30's Four Falls of Buffalo).
None of the above is where my exes got irritated. The eyes began to gradually roll just as they did for some women during Passengers with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt: when the kidnappee starts to like her captor. This is what one might describe as the classic “But you don't know him like I do” genre. Billy gives Layla little reason to like him other than the fact that Gallo looks like a heroin-chic Calvin Klein model from the 90s (and he was). Even during the kidnapping, he's not the kindest of captors, rude to her throughout and later critiquing her awful performance while meeting his crazy parents.
But she senses in him what the film itself is radiating with: an urgent need. It's a quality that in such characters negotiates the line between potential aggression and wanting a little love to soften that self-destruction. Many of the above films are male fantasies. When a jackass like myself screens a film featuring an irritable character with a hostility to everything that's good, he's inadvertently showing all his cards. She knows I'm not going to kidnap anyone, but can see the parallel flaws with a hopefully sympathetic understanding, buoyed by the happy ending for Billy and Layla.
We show dates our favorite movies ostensibly because we think they'll like them. Yet often the film is the way we feel about the world or how it ought to be, and the way we like to see ourselves. It's rare for a person on a date to share everything wrong with them, and that's where great bad date movies like Buffalo '66 come in. They do the talking for us. Then they sit by idly during the post-film squabble.
I've shown plenty of friendly date films. But some of the best memories I have involve the ones that didn't go great, leading to fun bickering where each person learned more about each other than they otherwise would have. A good bad date movie is a way to dispense with meaningless small talk. It's not going to end the relationship that night. There are plenty of other opportunities to inevitably screw it all up later.