My Dinner with Andre
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| My Dinner with Andre | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Louis Malle |
| Produced by | George W. George, Beverly Karp |
| Written by | Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn |
| Starring | Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn |
| Distributed by | New Yorker Films |
| Release date(s) | October 11, 1981 |
| Running time | 110 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 movie starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, written by Gregory and Shawn, and directed by Louis Malle.
The film consists almost entirely of a long conversation between two acquaintances in an upscale restaurant in New York City. It is based largely on actual conversations between Gregory and Shawn, and covers such subjects as experimental theatre, the nature of theatre, and the nature of reality.
Gregory is the focus of the first hour of the film as he describes some of his experiences since he gave up his career as a theatre director in 1975. These include working with his friend Jerzy Grotowski and a group of Polish actors in a forest in Poland, his visit to Findhorn in Scotland and his trip to the Sahara to try and create a play based on The Little Prince. Perhaps Gregory's most dramatic experience was working with a small group of people on a piece of performance art on Long Island which resulted in Gregory being (briefly) buried alive on Halloween night.
The rest of the film is a conversation as Shawn tries to argue that living life as Gregory has done for the past five years is simply not possible for the vast majority of people. In response, Gregory suggests that what passes for normal life in New York in the late 1970s is more akin to living in a dream than it is to real life. The movie ends without a clear resolution to the conflict in world views articulated by the two men.
The movie was filmed in the then-abandoned Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. Although the film was based on actual events in the actors' lives, Shawn and Gregory denied (in an interview by film critic Roger Ebert) that they were playing themselves, and stated that if they remade the film they would swap the two characters to prove their point.
The Boston Society of Film Critics Awards awarded the film the title "Best American Film" in 1982 and awarded Gregory and Shawn its prize for best screenplay. Roger Ebert, along with his TV partner Gene Siskel, had also praised the film and helped bring public attention to it; in 1999, Ebert added it to his "Great Movies" essay series.
[edit] Parodies and homages
- My Dinner with Andre was parodied by Andy Kaufman and wrestler Fred Blassie in My Breakfast with Blassie (1983).
- "My Coffee with Niles", the final episode of Season One of Frasier, is clearly inspired by My Dinner With Andre.
- In the episode of The Simpsons, "Boy-Scoutz N the Hood", Martin Prince plays an arcade game based on the film.[1]
- In Waiting for Guffman, Corky St. Clair, played by Christopher Guest, shows off his My Dinner with Andre action figures during the tour of his shop.
- In "The Zoo Story" episode of Frasier, Niles and Martin accidentally switch movies they rented, one of them being My Dinner with Andre.
- A special feature on The 40 Year Old Virgin DVD features Seth Rogen and porn star Stormy Daniels in a parody entitled My Dinner with Stormy.
[edit] External links
- My Dinner with Andre at the Internet Movie Database
- My Dinner with Andre review by Roger Ebert
[edit] References
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