My Dinner with Andre has Wallace Shawn as Wallace, a struggling playwright who goes to a French restaurant after an old friend in the theater world, Andre--played by Andre Gregory--invites him to dinner. Andre has dropped off the radar for a bit, and now he's telling Wallace about all of his experiences. As Wallace listens, he tries to take in everything Andre's telling him, but also respond to some of his revelations with his own weltanschauung. Is an electric blanket a comfort, or an indulgence that prevents one from experiencing life?
I don't really know the answer, but I really enjoyed this. For someone who complains about films not having enough action, or for being over 90 minutes, you wouldn't think I'd enjoy a film like this, but it all really worked for me. I loved Andre's anecdotes. I loved Wallace's responses. I loved the waiter looking askance at them and just wanting to serve them their food, or the rest of the staff closing down the restaurant in the background. I loved the shots of Andre talking and listening to Wallace while his reflection appears in the mirror behind them. The thing is, when I complain about a film having more talking and less action, or being over 90 minutes long, I'm complaining because the talking isn't interesting, or the film has no reason to be longer than 90 minutes. When it's filled with something that interests me, the talking can go on as long as it's sustainable. Roger Ebert in his review made a great point: "In another sense, they are simply carriers for a thrilling drama--a film with more action than 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' What 'My Dinner With Andre' exploits is the well-known ability of the mind to picture a story as it is being told. Both Shawn and Gregory are born storytellers, and as they talk we see their faces, but we picture much more..." And I think that's the ultimate success of My Dinner with Andre, that a film with no action can have so much action.
From an April Fools' perspective, it is fun to throw in a My Dinner with Andre in among Andy Sidaris films, PM actioners, and schlock horror with Julie Strain and Brinke Stevens. The thing is though, from a DTV perspective, My Dinner with Andre only has $5,073 listed on IMDb as the box office gross, which, accurate or not, puts it well under my limit for what I consider DTV enough for the site. Granted, it probably has pulled in more money than that, but the independent spirit is still there. What's fascinating is the different ways the craft of film making is undertaken to give us such extremely different results through the same medium. Here we have Louis Malle meticulously crafting scenes so in the mirrors it looks like we're seeing a busy restaurant in the background. Compare that to Spiro Razatos in a 90s PM flick putting together some of the best action scenes, leading to him being one of the best in the business currently. Film can be so many things, and so while this is an April Fools' post because My Dinner with Andre is so different from the kinds of films we post here, in the end it's all still film and there to be enjoyed.
Recently I had a chance to go to a French restaurant when the president of our product at work took us out to one. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been in one, but the idea of it, escargot, red wine, a dish like coq au vin, now combined with the idea in this film of sitting there in a large cardigan sweater talking about whatever, just seems so fantastic. I don't know if this movie would have been as endearing to me if I hadn't been to a French restaurant as recently. Like Wallace Shawn though, I don't have a lot of money, so it would be me taking the subway here in Philly--which isn't as bad as what we see in New York in the early 80s, but it's not fantastic either--and probably hoping someone like Andre Gregory or the president of my product would be treating me. Even going alone, sitting at a table, drinking my wine and eating my way through the courses, sounds nice enough. It's another great piece of why this works, the setting of the French restaurant stands out as an oasis amidst the harshness of New York at that time. To complete the picture we have the waiter, Jean Lenauer, who in his expressions and mannerisms, shows us that as much as this is an oasis for the patrons, it never fully is for him, yet he still takes pride in keeping up the appearance of the oasis for everyone else.
With such a prodigious acting career, I was curious if at any point Wallace Shawn had had a film here on the site, but it doesn't look like it. Same with Andre Gregory, but he was closer, having appeared in the Sly Stallone/Wesley Snipes action classic Demolition Man. Louis Malle was someone I was introduced to in high school, when we watched Au Revoir Les Enfants in French class. Later, when I had my Matt, Movie Guy Tumblr, I did a blurb on Elevator to the Gallows, which I watched one Saturday with Mon Oncle and Jules and Jim when I was snowed in. It's a funny thing, Tumblr, I go back to it from time to time, but it's like an old abandoned restaurant or something, posts strewn around like old furniture and cooking equipment, collecting dust, capsules of time. It's not like MySpace though, which no longer exists like it did, Tumblr is there for you to visit, some kind of former digital boom town whose population has shrunk exponentially, but everything remained intact for the rest of the world to experience.
Finally, seeing the Lloyd Kaufman and Troma tags is probably setting off your April Fools' radar, but those are actually legit tags. Louis Malle actually used Lloyd Kaufman and his fledgling Troma production studios to help him with the New York production of the film. Wonders never cease, right? Just three short years later he'd be producing Toxic Avenger. One of the things I realized about the Lloyd Kaufman tag: I tagged him for his appearance in Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, but never went back and tagged the Troma films he was involved in. With that done, he now has 10 tags on the site, though the Troma film with the most views on the site, Buttcrack, is the only one we've covered that he wasn't credited on. So he was credited on My Dinner with Andre, but not Buttcrack. Again, wonders never cease.
And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get My Dinner with Andre on HBOMax, or you can buy the Criterion DVD. It's a unique film, one that I really enjoyed, but you may not, and that's okay too. Either way, happy April Fools' Day everyone!
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082783
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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