My Dinner with Andre (1981) was a truly prescient film and for anyone

who hasn't seen it its worth watching.

The film is set in a restaurant, where a struggling playwright, Wallace Shawn and a reclusive director,Andre Gregory have a long conversation about a very strange and lengthy spiritual quest Andre undertook.

Wallace, a pragmatic man is baffled but nevertheless intrigued with Andre who he hasn't seen in years and struggles to grasp Andre's many insights one of which is his belief that technology is "breaking down human interaction, to the point where humans have become zombies living in a psychotic dream world, pretending that everything is just fine."

Fast forward to 2005. Does anyone else think that 'zombies living in a psychotic dream world, pretending that everything is just fine" describes freepers to a tee?

What stayed with me since I first saw it in 1981 and which I believe to be so prescient was a soliloquy about a new dark age Andre believed was settling in America, where only tiny isolated pockets of people would keep knowledge alive. Furthermore, Wallace, a regular kind of guy can't fathom what Andre is getting at, in his mind everything is fairly okay because he has a girlfriend and an apartment.

"Andre relates his opinion that New York City (and, we suspect, urban America) has become the new model of concentration camp, one in which the prisoners are also the architects and the wardens, a camp from which liberation is almost impossible because it is not truly desired.

Wally agrees with Andre up to a point, but he simply cannot agree that the human condition is as bad off as all that. Wally is more content with the simple things in life: a cup of coffee in the morning, his girlfriend’s company, his apartment, a newspaper.

Wally is relatively content with what he has. His desires are simple, yes, but they are met. Perhaps this is the slavish blindness that Andre suggests it is, or perhaps it can be a truth unto itself. Content can lead to blindness, yet the search for sight may leave you blind."

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

-Aldus Huxley, Brave New World


http://www.filmchaw.com/films/mydinnerwithandre.htm

I saw the film a couple of years ago as a rental. ... and I loved it!

"Fast forward to 2005. Does anyone else think that 'zombies living in a psychotic dream world, pretending that everything is just fine" describes freepers to a tee?"

Yup, but not just freepers. It also describes the media and the poor people who are susceptible to propaganda... like the poor Hispanic woman in Houston who just doesn't understand why the price of gas is getting so unaffordable.

Once again, I just want to shout: YOU GET WHAT YOU VOTE FOR!

It's not China's fault for having a booming economy and buying gas. It is due to the Iraq war and Bushco's tanking of the economy and allowing the dollar to fall. It is due to America's continuing dependence on fossil fuels, instead of progressing into alternative energy and mass transit.

I HATE PROPAGANDA!


Sue

freepers. It pertains to all who lack curiosity and who lap up whatever is fed to them. Perhaps people who lack curiosity might actually want propaganda, preferring comforting lies that don't disturb their dreaming.

Google that, if you want to be disillusioned.

His father was editor of The New Yorker. Google that. Fascinating family history.

about the real Shawn or the real Gregory.

discovered he actually wrote the script which is based on conversations (some recorded) he and Andre had over the years. I never knew this.

That Shawn wrote the script and that he had these conversations with Andre adds such an interesting dimension to the film. That Andre nows lives off a banana fortune is also interesting because through-out their conversation Wally keeps saying that most people don't have the funds to go off into the world as Andre did and there is always the suggestion that Andre's opinions are not tied to reality.

because I can't find anything to verify it - maybe it is just a rumor or something. His wife is named Chiquita so either that is the link to the company or I am wrong and there is no connection. His parents were Russians who escaped Europe during WWII. They were wealthy but not the banana people. I don't know if it's his wife's family connected to Chiquita Banana or if I am just plain wrong.

heads up.

Google "United Fruit"

was scripted. It was just another interesting twist in the film that Louis Malle had the actors use their real names.

I remember that great movie! Wally just couldn't fathom his life without his electric blanket!

endure as wage slaves. Most working class types would be quite happy to at least get some sort of quality of life from their labor, like a decent place to live and decent things to put in that place, a few indulgences like maybe going to the spa occasionally for pampering, enough food on the table and enough money to enjoy some modest pleasures like vacations.

If these working class types could also count on health care when they need it, education for their children, old age security and safe neighborhoods, they would accept their lot in life without much complaint.

It has always struck me that the haves are really stupid to keep grinding the lower classes under their heels, keeping them struggling at a subsistence level. It only breeds unrest, crime, pestilence and disease, which is dangerous for everyone including the super entitled.

with the simple comforts. But like reviewer Moxon points out satisfaction with the simple things of life can lead to blindness about other issues. I think the film's message is that that there has been a dangerous split within America between those who are intellectual and those who are pragmatic.

Back in the days when videotapes were like hen's teeth, and I had a VCR and few tapes, someone gave me a copy of that movie because they HATED it. I used to put it on when I had trouble sleeping. Never saw the whole thing....

Hell, I should dig through some of my old boxes and give it another try. I never throw anything out!!!

film assuming that people like Andre are phony becaue they have a deeply introspective and intellectual approach to life which for many people is humbug. But I think that that bias is actually part of the film because Wallace is suspicious of Andre and thinks him loopy. Wallace was initailly very releculent to meet with Andre who he hadn't seen in years becasue he had heard from mutual friends that Andre had gone strange.

I think the only way to approach the film is too believe Andre's utter sincerity in trying to understand himself and his trying to reconnect to life.

As the review by Moxon points out "Andre is sick of the superficiality, the shallowness and dead intellectual snobbery, which he perceives all about him and even sees in himself.

He is looking for more than what he knows, he is seeking . . . he isn’t sure what. Enlightenment, catharsis, meaning, he craves it, but has begun, it seems, to despair of ever finding it. After each of his vividly told stories, he returns to self-disparagement, castigating himself for his self-involvement, wallowing in the misery of his own luxury, his own sense of self-satisfaction and numbness to the world’s concerns. "

We talk about it as the worst movie we ever saw.

The one character was good in the Princess Bride though.

but I'm not going to say his name bc he might end up with a red star on his door.

I loved that movie, and that was one term paper I actually enjoyed writing. I think I might rent it this weekend, thansk for the inspiration!

since it has so many layers both psychologically and philosophically. Its all well and good that I've inspired you to watch it again but now I'm jealous. :P

...before he was extinguished."

That one has stayed with me for 24 years. :scared:

to be remembered for years.

analogy as it seems to be disturbingly accurate.

I always get a big chuckle at the end of "Waiting for Guffman" when Corky talks about his "My Dinner with Andre" action figures.

I'm such a sucker, I'd probably by these figures if they existed. :silly:

that heads up. Waiting for Guffman is now on my list of must see movies.

for sale somewhere recently. Can't find it with a google, though.

I never get tired of watching it, and I always get something new out of Andre and Wally's words everytime I listen.

I'm going to buy me the screenplay. :think: