| My Dinner with Andre | |
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Film poster |
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| Directed by | Louis Malle |
| Produced by | George W. George Beverly Karp |
| Written by | Andre Gregory Wallace Shawn |
| Starring | Andre Gregory Wallace Shawn |
| Music by | Allen Shawn |
| Cinematography | Jeri Sopanen |
| Editing by | Suzanne Baron |
| Distributed by | New Yorker Films |
| Release date(s) | October 11, 1981 |
| Running time | 110 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 film starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, written by Gregory and Shawn, and directed by Louis Malle.
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The film depicts a conversation between Gregory and Shawn (not necessarily playing themselves) in a chic restaurant in New York City. Based mostly on conversation, the film's dialogue covers such things as experimental theatre, the nature of theatre, and the nature of life, contrasting Shawn's modest, down-to-earth humanism with Gregory's extravagant spiritual experiences.
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 to 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 worldviews articulated by the two men. Shawn reminisces during a taxi ride back home about his childhood and mentions that when he arrives at home he tells his girlfriend Debbie about his dinner with Andre, as Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1 plays in the background.
The idea for the film arose from Andre Gregory's attempt to have his life story chronicled by a biographer, and Wallace Shawn simultaneously coming up with an idea for a story about two people having a conversation.[1][2] Gregory and Shawn, who had become friends through the theatre, decided to collaborate on the project, and both agreed that it should be filmed rather than produced as a play.[1] 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 screenplay went through numerous developmental changes in location until being finalized as being set during a dinner at a restaurant. While Shawn was trying to find someone to direct the film, he received a phone call from director Louis Malle, who had read a copy of the screenplay via a mutual friend and insisted that he work on the project, stating that he wanted to direct, produce the film, or work on it in any capacity.[1][2] Shawn initially thought that the call was a prank due to Malle's stature and fame. Malle later suggested that the dinner setup would not work based on a rehearsal where Gregory was talking while eating.[1] Despite Malle's stature, Shawn argued over the length of the screenplay over the inclusion of numerous scenes that would have produced a three-hour film. Malle won many of the arguments which led to script cuts, but lost two arguments over scenes that were kept in the film.[1]
My Dinner with Andre was filmed in the then-abandoned Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. Lloyd Kaufman was the production manager on the film, and Troma Entertainment provided production support.[3][4][5]
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.
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