{"id":26129,"date":"2025-03-21T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=26129"},"modified":"2025-03-20T12:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T19:42:09","slug":"classic-corner-my-dinner-with-andre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/classic-corner-my-dinner-with-andre\/","title":{"rendered":"Classic Corner: My Dinner With Andre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the possible exception of Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/em>, the most exciting film released in 1981 was about two men having dinner. A continents-spanning epic set almost entirely within a stuffy restaurant on Manhattan\u2019s Upper East Side, director Louis Malle\u2019s My Dinner With Andre<\/em> has been referenced, parodied and satirized so often it\u2019s become part of our shared pop cultural fabric \u2013 one of those movies people know all about even if they\u2019ve never seen it. Yet the film has never really been imitated, because how could you even try? It\u2019s entirely sui generis<\/em>, the craziest idea for a movie you\u2019ve ever heard, and the unlikeliest sleeper hit of all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dryly synopsized: it\u2019s the story of two unknown theatre people arguing over a meal. Struggling avant garde playwright Wallace \u201cWally\u201d Shawn warily accepts a dinner invitation from his old friend and colleague Andre Gregory, a former stage world superstar director who back in the early \u201870s discovered and championed Wally\u2019s early work. The two friends haven\u2019t seen each other in some time. Gregory apparently had some sort of emotional breakdown and dropped out of New York society, disappearing on a five-year sojourn to far-flung lands on a vision quest to find answers about the meaning of existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The struggling Shawn has more pragmatic concerns\u2014like paying the bills, which his girlfriend Debbie is working as a waitress to do at the moment. The son of legendary New Yorker<\/em> editor William Shawn, Wally fondly recalls a childhood of comfort and ease during which all he thought about was art and literature. Riding in a spectacularly graffiti-strewn subway car on his way to dinner, Shawn\u2019s voice-over provides what\u2019s probably the film\u2019s most quoted line: \u201cNow I\u2019m 36, and all I think about is money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two men catch up in one of those fancy French restaurants that could only exist in certain neighborhoods of New York City. It\u2019s a liminal space populated by old money oddballs and a waitstaff of lifers who might as well be from Mars. Wally is wary at first, but Gregory is overjoyed to see his old friend. He\u2019s bursting at the seams with wild tales of Tibetan monks and frolicking with fauns in primeval forests. Gregory speaks quickly, with the rapt intensity of a New Age guru and the polished delivery of a classically trained impresario. The stories are so vivid we can watch them unfold in our heads, like a radio play or theatre of the mind. For the first few reels, it seems like My Dinner With Andre<\/em> might be a monologue, and then Wally finally decides he\u2019s heard enough and starts talking back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shawn\u2019s classically nebbishy appearance was one of the great sight gags in Woody Allen\u2019s Manhattan<\/em> two years earlier. Diane Keaton spends the movie speaking in hushed reverence of a former lover she never got over, a dynamo in bed who \u201creally opened me up sexually,\u201d and when we finally meet him, it\u2019s Wallace Shawn. Looking at the guy, it\u2019s impossible not to love him, and the version of himself Shawn plays in My Dinner With Andre<\/em> is a man grateful for life\u2019s simple pleasures. He argues that he doesn\u2019t need to climb Mount Everest, he\u2019d rather enjoy a nice cup of coffee and read The New York Times<\/em>. Wally\u2019s idea of a miracle is his electric blanket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To Gregory \u2013 or, at least, to the version of himself he\u2019s playing in the movie \u2013 such creature comforts are part of a con, lulling the modern world into thoughtless complacency. But then again, he can afford to think that way. One of the marvelous things about the movie is that it doesn\u2019t take sides in their philosophical debate, nor does it ask us to. There\u2019s no rancor here, nor any of the distemper that makes modern discourse such a nightmare. It\u2019s a genuinely thoughtful exchange of ideas between two old friends who have great affection for one another. Both finish the movie feeling appreciated and heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Louis Malle made more<\/a> great films<\/a> than most great filmmakers, but you never see his name on lists of legendary auteurs, probably because his style was so unrecognizable from movie to movie. My Dinner With Andre<\/em> was Malle\u2019s follow up to the wistful 1980 crime classic Atlantic City<\/em><\/a>, and the two films have nothing in common except their excellence. Malle always served his material with a fastidious craftsmanship that gave the illusion of effortlessness. Indeed, every aspect of this picture about two guys talking was meticulously worked out in advance. (Had it just been extemporaneous bullshitting, the movie would have been The Joe Rogan Experience<\/em> with smaller guys and bigger words.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shawn and Gregory borrowed an office at New York University and spent three months recording their conversations, emerging with a transcript that ran some 1,500 pages. Shawn then spent a year distilling it down to a three-hour screenplay, which director Malle cut another hour out of when he came aboard. Shawn claims that his original script was much colder and more overtly satirical, but the director\u2019s affinity for he and Gregory as people colored the final product. This warmth might be why My Dinner With Andre<\/em> has become a comfort movie for so many. It\u2019s such an enjoyable picture to revisit every few years because you really like spending time with these guys. Whenever I watch it again, it feels like I\u2019m catching up with old friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That restaurant that seems like it could only exist in New York City didn\u2019t actually exist and wasn\u2019t in New York City at all. My Dinner With Andre <\/em>was shot in an abandoned hotel in Richmond, Virginia. The waiter, Jean Lenauer, was a Viennese WWII refugee working as a film archivist at the Museum of Modern Art who had been recommended to Malle by photographer Richard Avedon because he had such a memorable face. (It wasn\u2019t until the cameras started rolling that they realized he had no idea how to wait tables.) The old building no longer had a functioning HVAC system, so the winter shoot was warmed by space heaters. The actors wore long johns, and upon Gregory\u2019s lap throughout the filming, irony of ironies, was an electric blanket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film faltered in its first week of release, but soon found two high profile champions in critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Why a movie about two not-particularly-photogenic dudes arguing for two hours would appeal to these gentlemen will perhaps always be a mystery, but their tireless promotion of the picture kickstarted a word-of-mouth phenomenon that kept My Dinner With Andre<\/em> in theaters for more than a year. They\u2019re how I first heard of the film. For this young viewer, Sneak Previews<\/em> was a gateway to an intriguingly adult world where smart-sounding grown-ups watched grown-up films and spoke about them intelligently afterwards. It was my first glimpse of a cinema beyond Disney cartoons and Star Wars<\/em>, where sophisticated adults went to see movies about people eating supper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Treating himself to a cab ride home, Wally looks out the window and realizes that he\u2019s looking at the world a little differently after his dinner with Andre. You may find yourself doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“My Dinner with Andre” is streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a> and Max<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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