The last time writer/director George Gallo was in Flagstaff, he was at a bar.

It was during the filming of his 1988 script, Midnight Run. He recalled, “I was with one of the actors, John Ashton. We were getting all tanked up in a bar right across the street from the train station. I was catching an overnight train home to L.A. I didn’t want to fly home, and I figured I’d just get drunk and get on the train and get a sleeping compartment and go to sleep. I remember liking Flag quite a bit.”

Gallo will be returning to Flagstaff via his latest film, titled Local Color. Opening Friday, April 25, the film recounts the director’s own experiences as an 18-year-old aspiring painter who finds guidance and wisdom from an aging artist the summer after his high school graduation. In an effort to pay tribute to those who have inspired him, Gallo (who wrote Bad Boys and The Whole Ten Yards) has written and directed a film addressing the topic of art and expression.

“The film is based very much on what happened to me personally when I was 18 years old,” Gallo said. “I graduated high school in 1974 and wanted to continue my art training. At that time, there really wasn’t much in terms of practical, grounded training in the world of representational art. It was all abstraction, and I was more of [a] traditionalist. There was really no place to study.

“So I ended up studying with a brilliant Russian impressionist. I became his student, his apprentice, and he was the master, obviously. But he had become an old drunk by the time I met him, and his better days were behind him. He didn’t like what the world had become, didn’t like what the world of art had become and had decided, in a kind of conscious effort, to drink himself to death.

“But I came along full of youthful exuberance, and saw the true genius in the work that he had done, and wanted him to teach me. His whole thing was basically ‘f-ck you, get out of here, leave me alone, let me die.’ And the movie is pretty much about the kid trying to get the old man to believe in life again, and so then he can pass the baton on to the kid.”

Local Color also explores the filmmaker’s then-taxing relationship with his father, George Gallo, Sr. Gallo refers to his father as a working-class guy who couldn’t imagine his son making a living in the arts.

“He was of a different generation,” Gallo said. “The idea of making a living at painting or writing stories didn’t sit very well with him.

He always understood ditch digging or being a cop or getting a city job. That was his reality.

“I wanted to be an artist and he just didn’t get it. It led to a great deal of arguments and fighting in our house, which I think is pretty clear in the movie. Here he had this kid with his head in the clouds, a really artistic kid. And he’d look at me and he’d be like ‘where the f-ck did you come from?’

“So that was my reality that I grew up in. I was quite headstrong, and obviously I succeeded ultimately. Was he proud of me in the end? Yes. He’s a very proud father. He just didn’t think I could pull all this sh-t off. And when I look at my life, I can’t believe I pulled a lot of it off.”

Gallo was no older than most students at NAU when he sold his first screenplay. He recalled, “I started studying a lot about filmmaking, and took a shot at writing a script when I was about 20 or 21. I got incredibly lucky. I sent the script to a cinematographer by the name of Arthur J. Harding. He passed the script along to a producer, Martin Bregman, who did Scarface, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico… all these big Al Pacino movies of the day. They purchased the script.

“I started bouncing back and forth between screenwriting and painting, because the screenwriting thing became very lucrative to me rather quickly. I was very lucky. So I started writing screenplays, painting pictures, writing screenplays. Eventually I saw an opportunity to direct. Imagery and directing obviously go hand in hand, and directing is obviously linked to storytelling.”

Gallo has felt a certain untruth to artists as portrayed in films.

In Local Color, he saw the perfect opportunity to bring to life the true art of being a painter to the big screen.

“A lot of times, I see artists working in movies and it’s kind bullsh-t. It’s just not realistic because whoever is making the movie doesn’t understand what it’s like to be an artist for real.

“Being a painter, I wanted a very specific truth. I’ve stood in a field for hours just learning the technique, and I wanted infuse, to the best of my ability, what that whole process is like.

“Part of being an artist is just keeping your heart and soul open to alternate points of view.”

Local Color will play as a limited engagement at Harkins on April 25. Gallo expects students of every type to relate to the film’s message.

“I think anyone who is trying to learn anything, be it art, music, political science, whatever it is, I think it’s a movie that will connect well with the student population. Especially in an artist-based community,” he said.