I have to confess that my slightly less sympathetic view of Andre is colored by my own experiences living in NYC for 20 years. My Dinner With Andre I watch the movie my dinner with Andrea several times. I’ve always felt I’ve been closer to being in Shawn’s shoes but that also means I am intrigued with some of Andre’s ideas and conclusions. There's a very conscious foregrounding of the contrapuntal interplay between the rhythms of the conversation and the rhythms of the dinner being served, the inner world which is always a kind of fantasy being imposed upon, shaped and sometimes destroyed by the outer world of quotidian reality. Maybe the movie should be entitled "a monologue with Andre". It rented all the time at our video store. The movie is a document of the fruits of their labor. It plays out like two people talking about life. Do you think, in general, that most people agree more with Shawn or are there more people who suck up the words of Andre? Engage with it and let it flow over you and you'll be rewarded. Thanks for the recommendation. It feels to exist outside the sphere but firmly wrapped around it, exposing a genuine passion for cinema, theater and scriptwriting while also bound in the reality of the world. It is people walking around Mont St. Michel in France while having a philosophical conversation. MY DINNER WITH ANDRE is one of the greatest movies of all time because it works on a seemingly infinite number of levels. I'm not even sure I can explain this film. Almost as soon as he gives this speech, the waiter walks over, asks if everything's OK, and Andre is a bit curt to him. This is incredibly key to the film's brilliance. Many of us have had these conversations and probably many of us have been on both sides of this conversation. I don't think I understood it when I first saw it, but I was struck by the audacity of it, just two guys sitting at a table having a conversation. But I had no understanding of what the praise was actually for. What “My Dinner With Andre” exploits is the well-known ability of the mind to picture a story as it is being told. Andre Gregory plays Andre and Wally Shawn plays Wally, and they have a conversation based on actual conversations about actual people and events in their lives, but the final product is very much a fiction ("slyly satirical but also dead serious,"" as you describe it). My Dinner With Andre may not be for everyone but it is a great film whether you have knowledge of theater techniques or not. For most of that time, my life was way closer to Shawn's - aspiring writer, struggling to make ends meet, taking day jobs to support myself and still never able to afford to eat a restaurant like the Cafe des Artistes. I'd say this film is all about subtlety and contrast, with a touch of good old story telling. Andre Gregory has a supporting role in Henry Jaglom's "Last Summer in The Hamptons", where he plays a very similar character, basically himself, I imagine. There's a part that I still can't understand but it seems important to the overall message of that particular part of the movie. The actors play fictionalized versions of themselves sharing a conversation at Café des Artistes in Manhattan. Community also did a good episode which referenced this film. I don't think the movie means means to proffer Andre's monologue straightforwardly as a philosophical argument. It doesn't ask for anything except our attention. It's one of those movies that rewards the viewers for being perceptive and having the personal experience to relate to it. When I watched this film as a younger man (20s), I identified - more like aspired to identify - with the Andre Gregory character: traveling all over the world and having all kinds of new agey consciousness-raising adventures and expounding on the vacuous emptiness of modern-day life. He talks about how he worked on this building (I think it was in Norway, or Sweden, or some European country.) Does he really expect Wally to believe half of what he says? Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn, and a bunch of other great theater actors got together over a period of years to perform Chekov's "Uncle Vanya" for themselves, just for fun. Andre actually struck me as a pretentious dilettante. A female doctor wins the bid for Andrew, but then refuses to go on a date since she is too busy. You can feel the inspiration taken from theater in the creation of this masterpiece. Pejorativez suggests it should be entitled "a monologue with Andre," but I think that title misses what the movie is mostly about, which is Wally's reaction (and mine and probably yours) to a lot of what Andre says. This post is going to be a little different from anything I've done in the past though, as I'd like to discuss two related pieces of media at the same time. It's much different in tone, but in some ways it's like Beckett or Pinter - long conversations with weird twists and turns and lots of philosophical/psychological implications. The Ebert review points out how effortlessly and vividly we imagine the scenarios the two men detail to us. We may not be using the same words but the point remains - we're all guilty of buying into things and we're all guilty of being cynical. The reason for this is because they're both so intertwined in… And the imagined film is not only different for every viewer, it can also be different every time you watch the film. My Dinner with Andre poster by artist Matthew Owen. What can it be compared to? Its simple setting, its elegant design and the depth of conversation these two theater directors get involved in makes for a truly tasteful film. A detail that stuck out to me for the first time last night was when Andre goes on a long tangent about how the doorman at his apartment building calls him Mr. Gregory, while he calls the doorman Jimmy, and how this is an artificial class distinction and that he has arrogantly made himself superior to his doorman. So we wait the whole film for this guy to respond with an alternative viewpoint and when he does its somewhat halfhearted. And overall the film is brilliant. I can no longer recall my mindset going into my first viewing but it seems to me I first watched it due to the praise it got. One one hand you have a lot of interesting philosophical dialogue, but on the other hand it is very self serving and slightly exaggerated regarding the new world order. When Andre was talking about his burial, the whole atmosphere changed. I think every detail of this movie, not just the conversation itself but every composition, camera move and cut (and also the sound design as mentioned by A Light Spark, and the Satie piece at the end), is carefully planned and so beautifully executed as to make the craftsmanship invisible. Could there possibly be any real meaning or power in the rituals he describes? Just saw this two months ago because Richard Linklater mentioned it as an inspiration for Before Sunrise (which is a personal favorite of mine). Advertisement. My Dinner with Andre Awards and Nominations. The conversations are far more dense than what they have in Before Sunrise, but just as engaging. But now watching this film as an older man (ahem, NOT in my 20s), I realize I identify a whole lot more with Wallace Shawn's character, who has a somewhat insular life, but doesn't think you have to go to a commune on a mountaintop on Tibet to feel a sense of heightened aliveness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W75UKtgifF8, (Dan Harmon is clever - I wonder if he'll ever make anything outside someone else's frame of reference?). out of the restaurant, so to speak. I think I understand it, and the characters, a lot better now. Part of that is just life experience and being closer in age to these two men. Do you know what he was talking about and do you know if this building is real? One of those movies that often gets mentioned as one of the greats, but probably not actually watched by too many people. One one hand you have a lot of interesting philosophical dialogue, but on the other hand it is very self serving and slightly exaggerated regarding the new world order. Both Shawn and Gregory are born storytellers, and as they talk we see their faces, but we picture much more: Andre being buried alive, and a monk lifting himself by his fingertips, and fauns cavorting in … How do you nail this film down? He talks about how they built this roof that wasn’t attached to the main structure of the building. Directed by Louis Malle. You could even extend this to behaviors relating to gender and sex. So when I was finally ready to give some of my time to My Dinner with Andre, I was completely taken aback. I had always heard how amazing this film was from every critic and pseudo-intellectual I came across while in college. One of my favourite films, really get swept away by it every time I watch. The show obviously just gave it a ringing endorsement and I do too. Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont. "My Dinner with Andre" is not like that. Honestly it was very confusing to follow and didn’t make any sense at all to me. He just sits there and goes along for the ride, much like the audience. Loved the film. My Dinner with Andre (1981) I know this isn't classical, but I think those in the sub who enjoy the introspection and discussion present in many classical works would enjoy this movie. But it’s not so much that I’m looking for “talky” films but rather looking for films that wax philosophically about life, love, death, spirituality etc. So I can only guess in retrospect, that I was likely expecting a movie on a much larger scale. It is enrapturing in the same way any great yarn is, but at the same time, by setting these occurrences in the real world, it invites the reader to weigh in on what they think of all this. The dynamics between the two and ebb and flow of the conversation is captivating and so well done. The lack of challenge from Wally is the one aspect of the film I didn't like. A couple years ago, I borrowed all of my friend's Criterion DVDs and Blu-rays. I've seen it and absolutely loved it after the second viewing. That's not delusional in the sense of insanity, though it might be in a more banal sense. The lack of conflict, while certainly adding to the realism, makes the movie less entertaining. If you liked ANDRE, VANYA ON 42ND STREET is well worth your time. Love this film. In that sense we're trapped within the many confines and limitations of our own creation. I also didn't think it had said anything particularly special to me. It’s one amazing story after the next. Reddit gives you the best of the internet in one place. Just the overall, lasting impression that their performances were awesome. Him going along with everything creates an anticipation of a backlash at some point. I wanted to smack him. Or Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, which, like this, is more whimsical. Excellent description of reality in 3 minutes in this clip from a 1981 movie called "My dinner with Andre" that's as good as the movie "They Live" Somehow they were able to build this roof so that it could open up but also remain completely secure, all with only some stones holding it down. My Dinner with Andre is a pretentious bore explaining the meaning of life with no meaning. After a while we take pride in our culture and see other cultures as lesser (monoculturalism / cultural elitism). Waiting for Guffman is another great movie that gets referenced, but I suspect not too many people have seen it either. (Courtesy Film Independent) Actor/comedians Mulaney and Kroll will be both starring in and directing the staged reading. It proves to me that there is more to our lives than the mundane tasks of surviving in this dog-eat-dog world. My Dinner with Andre - A MOVIE FROM 1981 PREDICTS OUR CURRENT WORLD Andrew is an eligible bachelor placed on auction to raise money for medical research. Anyone else have anything they'd like to add, talk or discuss in regards to this film? As a fan of "My Dinner With Andre", I got a pretty big kick out of seeing the "same guy" in a different movie! It's an experience - images, sounds, words, emotions. I only know it from its mention in Waiting for Guffman . Oh man that's a blast from my Intro to Philosophy class past. It may seem different to Tarantino's dialogue because his characters are hipster gangster types more likely to snarky snappy patter, while Shawn and Gregory are theater professionals and therefore more likely to "monologue.". Even though this seems like it is changing slowly, When Andre talks about our "overlords" he may be talking about a hegemonical structure where those in power influence the public by restricting discourse to a limited number of acceptable topics via tools such as the media. u/my-dinner-with-andre: Press J to jump to the feed. Agreed. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Very similar feel. The film is storytelling - it's getting together with a friend and living vicariously through their adventures, just as one can so easily place oneself in the "wine-dark seas" of Homer's Odyssey, or the battlefields and encampments of the Iliad. From the point of view of a typical educated Westerner, Andre seems delusional. My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 American comedy-drama film directed by Louis Malle, and written by and starring Andre Gregory (Andre) and Wallace Shawn (Wally). I think I'll give it another go somewhere on down the road because maybe I just wasn't in the mood at the time I watched it but how could one not love Wallace Shawn? A fascinating freeze-frame of cosmopolitan culture, MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ remains a unique work in cinema history. It doesn't use all of those words as a stunt. "Both Shawn and Gregory", he says, "are born storytellers, and as they talk we see their faces, but we picture much more". "Yeah" he snaps, annoyed at being interrupted. I think part of the beauty of the film is that neither one is right and / or wrong. I actually enjoyed it so much I bought the screenplay and acted it out to myself. With Roma Downey, Della Reese, John Dye, Keene Curtis. Yet at the same time it is one of the biggest failures in film because it only succeeds in connecting to the most insightful of its audience. My Dinner with Andre: As Relevant Today as It Was Back in the Day A college president wrote an essay recently about good teaching , and one of the lead instructors reminded me of … Like Andre, none (well, most) of these people were really bad or mean-spirited people, they just didn't get that most people didn't have the luxury to, say, take six months to live in the Sahara on the off-chance that they'll be inspired to create a new work based on the Little Prince. I really liked the notion that the free thinking phenomenon burned bright and fast in the 60s but died afterwards and ever since civilization has been on a downward spiral. Andre Gregory has a supporting role in Henry Jaglom's "Last Summer in The Hamptons", where he plays a very similar character, basically himself, I imagine. Does it even belong in a genre? My Dinner with André In this captivating and philosophical film directed by Louis Malle, actor and playwright Wallace Shawn sits down with his friend the theater director André Gregory at a restaurant on New York’s Upper West Side, and the pair proceed through an alternately whimsical and despairing confessional about love, death, money, and all the superstition in between. With Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn, Jean Lenauer, Roy Butler. Regarding the scene you linked, I find the idea that the citizens of a city are their own guardians as well as slaves very interesting because it reminds me of how robot like our behavior can be, seen from an outside perspective, and whenever a person does not conform to our behaviors/culture (creative clothing, weird personality) we collectively pressure the person or group to conform to our norms. My Dinner with Andre is one of those films you may well hear about, because it is really pretty different. After his long monologue about how wrong he is to treat the doorman this way, he is automatically dismissive of the waiter, displaying the same heir of superiority he just criticized about himself. My Dinner with Andre Posted on December 13, 2011 by Kristen Merino A couple of days ago, as I was laying on the couch recovering from the worst stomach flu in the history of humanity, I had the distinct pleasure of re-watching one of my favorite films, My Dinner with Andre , written by and starring Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory , and directed by Louis Malle. When I watched it I didn't enjoy it. I know there’s plenty of “movies similar to my dinner with Andre” posts; and I’ve seen the Before Trilogy, & I love Rohmer’s films. It is an interesting film. It was the inspiration for the first season finale of Frasier as well. This is an important thing to consider with this movie. Playing variations on their own New York–honed personas, Shawn and Gregory, who also cowrote the screenplay, dive in with introspective intellectual gusto, and Malle captures it all with a delicate, artful detachment. There's a certain amount of satire in it. More importantly, the 2 characters are somehow "believable." But over the course of the conversation we become put off by his philosophy and suspicious if any of it is true. However, this is quite hard to prove and I'm not about to side with Andre here. But then, some things he spouts are nonsense, like comparing the New York lifestyle to living in a concentration camp. Watching it last night, it made me think of that book "Eat Pray Love" that was such a hit about 10 years ago. Two old friends meet for dinner; as one tells anecdotes detailing his experiences, the other notices their differing worldviews. Does it even belong in a genre? The entire movie is a two-person conversation. Are they connected in any way to the ritual we're witnessing (dinner with an old friend at a formal restaurant) or the one we're enacting (watching a movie)? So I think Shawn has a tighter claim to moral uprightness and consistency, but Andre’s willing curiosity to explore trains of thought that go to strange places is appealing in its way. I really, really tried with this film and I just couldn't get into it. Get through the first 30m, the latter half gets really philosophical. The background noise became less apparent, and his words alone could give you the chill (if you are the sensitive type). I assume most of us identify with our gender/sex and want to see ourselves as strong masculine males or soft feminine females, while we loathe anything and anyone that runs contrary to our expectations. My Dinner With Andre is one of the most thought-provoking films I’ve seen. But now a few years on I still remember scraps of their conversation so it can't have been all bad. (In case he's reading this: I'm "sorry".) I tried. There was something about it that was just as strange as anything in a David Lynch film. The u/itsMyDinnerWithAndre community on Reddit. I've always been ambivalent towards this film. I love this movie too. One thing I really liked about this film is that you're actually seeing 2 films at once: the film presented on screen, and the images you imagine in your head as you listen to their conversation. I have to confess that my slightly less sympathetic view of Andre is colored by my own experiences living in NYC for 20 years. As a fan of "My Dinner With Andre", I got a pretty big kick out of seeing the "same guy" in a different movie! ...and as I fell to the floor, I pooped my pants, Jeff, I wondered if anyone else was gonna do it haha, I haven’t seen it. My Dinner with Andre is like this- it has the power to wipe away negativity in my mind by allowing me to get absorbed in the dialogue between Wally and Andre in such a way that I can refocus my mind on a higher plane of being. Reading a lot of the other comments here, I notice that a lot of people that aren't awed by it take a similar approach to people who dislike a film like Waking Life - trying to treat it as something to "get" intellectually, looking for something to learn, or for a character to be proven more right than another character, or wondering what school of thought the ideas can be classified into. They're both very smart and full of shit in equal measures. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, Press J to jump to the feed. Andrew tries to teach her to enjoy the life God gave her. out of the restaurant, so to speak. It's slyly satirical, but also dead serious - managing to pull of one of the most nuanced films of all time. At first we are intrigued by what Andre has been up to the last few years. It's no surprise that it's parodied on The Simpsons and Waiting for Guffman. For most of that time, my life was way closer to Shawn's - aspiring writer, struggling to make ends meet, taking day jobs to support myself and still never able to afford to eat a restaurant like the Cafe des Artistes. "Both Shawn and Gregory", he says, "are born storytellers, and as they talk we see their faces, but we picture much more", and so I saw it in that sense as a return to the oral tradition. But I take him to be something of a caricature of the bourgeois liberal who glorifies a return to nature as a salve for his alienation and existential angst. I feel like the audience is Wallace. But just because there's a lot of talking, doesn't mean it's a class where you'll be quizzed at the end. They are alive on the screen, breathing, pulsing, reminding us of endless, impassioned conversations we've had with those few friends worth talking with for hours and hours. They tend to be much darker and more surreal, but both wrote plays that are essentially two characters talking for almost the whole play. Is what he describes just a weak-minded escape into fantasy (a frequent criticism of the theater down through the ages) or is there something more to it. I've always been ambivalent towards this film. I still haven't given them back, and watch them from time to time. My Dinner with Andre (1981) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Oscars Best Picture Winners Best Picture Winners Golden Globes Emmys Women's History Month STARmeter Awards San Diego Comic-Con New York Comic-Con Sundance Film Festival Toronto Int'l Film Festival Awards Central Festival Central All Events And like Shawn, I knew my fair share of artists whose success was largely attributable to the fact that they had big fat trust funds to fall back on while they "struggled." Among his more notable editing credits are 2001’s “Children Underground,” 2002’s “Sister Helen,” about a nun working with prisoners on death row, 2013’s “Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner,” about the actor who appears in Louis Malle’s acclaimed 1981 film “My Dinner With Andre. My Dinner With Andre: Conspiracy Theory Scene August 07, 2020 /r/videos I saw this film because of the Community episode but to be honest: I didn't get it or Tarantino spoiled character conversations for me. The one thing I don’t understand is that one part that Andre talks about toward the end of the film. News & Discussion about Major Motion Pictures, Press J to jump to the feed. Is he lying, or making fun of Wally, or making stuff up to entertain them (after all, they're both men of the theater, and that's part of their job), or has he completely lost his mind?