Monday, September 24, 2012

My Dinner With Andre BY ROGER EBERT January 1, 1981

One of my all-time favorite movies... I ran across this review, by happenstance. I have not seen the movies in ages; however as a result of reading the review, I will look forward to watching it again soon...

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (PG)


My Dinner With Andre BY ROGER EBERT / January 1, 1981

The idea is astonishing in its audacity: a film of two friends talking, just simply talking—but with passion, wit, scandal, whimsy, vision, hope, and despair—for 110 minutes. It sounds at first like one of those underground films of the 1960s, in which great length and minimal content somehow interacted in the dope-addled brains of the audience to provide the impression of deep if somehow elusive profundity. "My Dinner with Andre" is not like that. It doesn't use all of those words as a stunt.

[...]

The two people are André Gregory and Wallace Shawn. Those are their real names, and also their names in the movie. I suppose they are playing themselves. As the film opens, Shawn travels across New York City to meet Gregory for dinner, and his thoughts provide us with background: His friend Gregory is a New York theater director, well-known into the 1970s, who dropped out for five years and traveled around the world. Now Gregory has returned, with wondrous tales of strange experiences. Shawn has spent the same years in New York, finding uncertain success as an author and playwright. They sit down for dinner in an elegant restaurant. We do not see the other customers. The bartender is a wraith in the background, the waiter is the sort of presence they were waiting for in "Waiting for Godot." The friends order dinner, and then, as it is served and they eat and drink, they talk.

What conversation! 
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