My Dinner with Andre

Structure

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 Gregory'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 Gregory has done for the past five years is simply not possible for most people. He relates ordinary pleasures, like having a cup of coffee. Gregory 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.

Production

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. 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 film. 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.

My Dinner with Andre was filmed in the Jefferson Hotel, which was then vacant, in Richmond, Virginia. (The hotel has since been restored and reopened as a luxury venue.) Lloyd Kaufman was the production manager on the film, and Troma Entertainment 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.

Reception

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel gave high praise to the film on Sneak Previews; the producers told Ebert that their praise helped keep the film in theaters for a year. Ebert later named it as the best film of the year. In 1999, he added it to his Great Movies essay series. He said, "Someone asked me the other day if I could name a movie that was entirely devoid of clichés. I thought for a moment, and then answered, My Dinner with Andre." The Boston Society of Film Critics Awards ranked it as the "Best American Film" in 1982, and awarded Gregory and Shawn its prize for Best Screenplay.

Note

Throughout the film Shawn references his "girlfriend Debbie". Though not actually identified, Debbie is the acclaimed short story writer Deborah Eisenberg, although she had not begun publishing stories at the time of the film. Eisenberg is also an extra in the film, one of the diners Shawn eyes when he first enters and is standing at the bar waiting for Gregory.

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