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For the introduction to this regular series about film and how the best movies change our lives read the introduction below….
On a personal note: Please excuse grammatical errors, typos, repetition, and any general nonsense, and such in this post. I am getting a bit older now, and I have about 20,000 pages of information that must get published before I leave the mortal coil. I simply write and publish more than my humble editors are able to correct. If you find enough errors you are welcome to contact me about being an editor of my work.
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Q. Lewis, what is the most introspective, and philosophical film you have ever seen?
A. There are many, however the one I am most fond of is My Dinner with Andre (1981). I say this because in the late 1980s I actually had lunch with Andre (the Andre of this film) at a Yoga Ashram. Go figure?
More about the film…
Genre: Comedy-Drama
Director: Louis Malle
Cast: Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn
The Plot:
The actors play fictionalized versions of themselves sharing a conversation at Café des Artistes in Manhattan. The film's dialogue covers such things as experimental theatre, the nature of theatre, and the nature of life, and contrasts Wally's modest humanism with Andre's spiritual experiences.
Andre Gregory is the focus of the first hour of the film when he describes some of his experiences since giving up his career as a theatre director in 1975. These include working with his friend, director 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 by St.-Exupéry. He worked with a group in a small piece of performance art on Long Island, which resulted in Andre's being (briefly) buried alive on Halloween night.
The rest of the film is a conversation as Wally Shawn tries to argue that living life as Andre has done for the past five years is simply not possible for most people. He relates ordinary pleasures, like having a cup of coffee. Andre responds 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. Wally reminisces during a taxi ride about his childhood and mentions that when he arrives at home, he tells his girlfriend Debbie about his dinner with Andre. Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1 plays in the background.
Running time: 111 minutes
Language: English
Color: Color
Personal Comments: This highly acclaimed film was the go date movie in 1982 for every human potential, personal development, and self-help seeker and guru. The idea for the film arose from Gregory's effort to work with a biographer on his life story, and Shawn's simultaneously coming up with an idea for a story about two people having a conversation. Gregory and Shawn, who had become friends through theatre work, decided to collaborate on the project. They agreed that it should be filmed rather than produced as a play.[4] Although the film was based on events in the actors' lives, Shawn and Gregory denied (in an interview by film critic Roger Ebert) that they were playing themselves. They said that if they remade the film, they would swap the two characters to prove their point. In an interview with Noah Baumbach in 2009, Shawn said,
“I actually had a purpose as I was writing this: I wanted to destroy that guy that I played, to the extent that there was any of me there. I wanted to kill that side of myself by making the film, because that guy is totally motivated by fear.”
The screenplay went through numerous developmental changes in location; in the final version, it was set during a dinner at a restaurant. While Shawn was trying to find someone to direct the film, he received a phone call from French director Louis Malle. He had read a copy of the screenplay via a mutual friend and insisted that he work on the project, saying he wanted to direct, produce the film, or work on it in any capacity. Shawn initially thought that the call was a prank, due to Malle's stature in the film industry. Malle later suggested that the dinner setup would not work, based on a rehearsal where Gregory was talking while eating. Shawn argued throughout screenplay development for more scenes, which would have resulted in a three-hour film. Malle won many script cuts but lost two arguments over scenes that were kept in the film.
Interestingly Troma Entertainment a company famous for producing low-budget independent films, primarily of the horror genre with elements of farce, parody, gore, and splatter provided production support. The filming was done over a period of two weeks and edited to appear as if occurring in real-time. The set was created to look like the iconic Café des Artistes in New York City.
The Takeaway
The film has become a reference point in one form or another throughout popular culture including in The Far Side comic, by Gary Larson, The Simpsons, in various horror films, the television show Touched by an Ange, The mockumentary film Waiting for Guffman, The Family Guy and many others.
The Trailer:
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Author: Lewis is a writer, teacher, and master results-oriented life coach. He is a former member of the acclaimed National Board of Review for Motion Pictures. The author of over twenty books he offered regular film revues on his talk show on NPR Affiliated WIOX91.3 FM. He can be contacted at LewisCoaches@gmail.com
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