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Business Stationary Mart - My Dinner with Andre
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List Price: $29.98
Our Price: $69.99
Your Save: $ ( % )
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Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
Starring: Wallace Shawn, Andre Gregory, Jean Lenauer, Roy Butler (II)
Directed By: Louis Malle
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9781572523302
Format: Color
ISBN: 1572523301
Label: Fox Lorber
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Fox Lorber
Release Date: 1998-08-25
Running Time: 110
Studio: Fox Lorber
Theatrical Release Date: 1981-10-11
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Thoughts
Comment: This movie should be Shown in All High Schools and THEN,
debates should be had for weeks.
then, DROP it. let the mind simmer in its soup and
you have the buildings of the mind and soul foundations.
what each CHILD needs, before age 18.
in asia, all this talking, is nothing new.
but in your world, this is New.
so be it. Let the rights for this movie be free
and see how many show it on tv, and other media.
pls push the rights owners... to free it .. soon.
world needs Thinkers, right now, more than the billions
who enjoy and think life is only about violence, as
if tv and movies are helping these feeble minded zombies.
this movie is a Last cry for help to humanity.
to THINK.
best wishes
k
Customer Rating:
Summary: Yummy!
Comment: Call me a formalist, but sometimes I like to turn down the volume and soak in the splendid visuals.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A radical concept...2 adults talking about things that really matter, and still matter...
Comment: Normally, I should dislike a film like this. I don't like talk fests, and honestly, from a cinematic standpoint, this film is quite boring. But the screenplay, direction, acting, and conversation are so outstanding that this flaw seems so inconsequential. The difference I think between modern talk fests and this film is that Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn (who wrote the screenplay themselves) are so interesting, multi-faceted, complex, and engaging, as opposed to current talk fests, where the characters are so amazingly self absorbed and do not see (or refuse to see) the world around them. Andre and Wallace are also real, breathing intellectal types, as opposed to being pseudo-intellectual and smarmy, like a lot of characters can be in current day talk fests. Andre actually talks about this in the film, on how most of the time we don't see the world around us, that we are so myopic in our viewpoint, that we don't see the forest, only the tree. A lot of the things they talk about are the BIG questions, the real questions, not whether C3PO from Star Wars was gay, or what the world's grossest poop joke is. There is hardly any mention of politics, which makes the film resonante even more deeply, as there is no explicit political material in the film.
I remember seeing this film when I was in high school, and being respectful, but honestly, not understanding a word of it. But now as teh world and I get to know each other better, I see it in a completely different way, and it has become even more profound, beautifully simple, and really moving, both emotionally and intellectually. This is a tremendous film, one of Louis Malle's best, and worth the accolades that is has received over the years.
Customer Rating:
Summary: They eat, they drink, they talk about things that really matter.
Comment: Louis Malle's 1981 film, My Dinner with Andre, involves a 110-minute dinner conversation between two likable New York intellectuals (Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory) over roast quail in an upscale restaurant. Shawn is a struggling actor, who spends his time thinking about art and culture. He is a modest, down-to-earth skeptic, who enjoys life's simple pleasures: a cup of coffee, the New York Times delivered to his door, and having dinner with his girlfriend. By contrast, Andre is a new-agey world traveler, who reportedly talks to trees and insects and cries during Ingmar Bergman films. ("I could always live in my art," he says, "but not in my life.") They eat, they drink, they talk--that's it. All of the film's action occurs in their conversation, though theirs is not the kind of conversation you'd ever overhear from someone talking on a cellphone. They discuss topics ranging from experimental theater and the nature of theater, to the nature of reality. Along the way, it becomes evident that they are comparing notes on their inner journeys as they grow older and perhaps wiser in the world. This is ultimately a film about how the dynamics of love and friendship enable us to talk and talk for hours about the things in life that really matter, oblivious to the time and the surroundings. Such conversations, in my opinion, make life worth living. The resulting film is witty, humorous, enchanting, and profound, and will appeal to anyone who likes films in the genre of Woody Allen (Manhattan).
G. Merritt
Customer Rating:
Summary: My EVOLVING Dinner with Andre
Comment: I have loved this movie since I first saw it on PBS in Los Angeles (well, Downey, actually, but the PBS station was in Los Angeles). And I am glad, now, that I bought my DVD from AMAZON before inflation set in because I could never afford to lay out $135.00 even for THIS movie. (Get the VHS until someone re-releases it on DVD---Wally doesn't need the money what with THE HAUNTED MANSION and THE PRINCESS BRIDE and the new JACK AND THE BEANSTALK. But if you absolutely HAVE to have a DVD of this and just can't wait and you can AFFORD this price...it isn't a waste.
And I'll tell you why. This is a VERY unusual movie. It is a film that functions much like "The Alexandria Quartet" by Lawrence Durrell.
The reason I say that is not because these two masterworks have anything in common plotwise. It is because a slight shift of perspective (which is what Durrell was playing with through his work) brings you to a different experience of the film.
When I first saw this film I was still pretty much the hippie and I was DOWN with Andre Gregory. I mean, I'd travelled around through the 60s and 70s---hung out with people like Alan Watts and Terrence McKenna, devoured books like THE MASTER GAME by de Ropp and BE HERE NOW by Ram Dass and IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS by Ouspensky and I knew all about Findhorn and all of that so I KNEW what Gregory was getting at. And Wallace Shawn was (to my perception at the time) a sweet guy but definitely L-7, you know? Squaresville...one of the "Mundanes".
Okay that was my initial reaction.
Then enter the time factor. I am a couple of decades older now and I suddenly realized, the last time I dug out my DVD and watched it, that I am beginning to see more of Wally's side of the argument than I used to. I mean, I don't suddenly think Andre Gregory is a complete loon...I'm still down with his rap...but I also see (and what is more UNDERSTAND) where Wally is coming from. And then, as I thought about it, I suddenly realized it isn't an either/or situation. One of them isn't right and the other wrong. They are BOTH right. There is a time for spiritual questing and a time for warming oneself before the fire and both things are good in their time. This is an amazing movie...no...it is an amazing FILM. You need to get this.My Dinner with Andre
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Editorial Reviews:
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The sheer audacity of My Dinner with Andre drew throngs of curious filmgoers who made the film the most talked-about art-house hit of 1981. After all, who'd ever heard of a movie consisting of nearly two hours of nonstop dinner conversation? Ah ... but this isn't just any conversation--it's the kind of mesmerizing, soul-searching, life-affirming exploration that we feel privileged to listen to, and with unobtrusive style, director Louis Malle invites us to eavesdrop to our hearts' and minds' content. The film was written by two New Yorkers at the dinner table, noted playwright-actor Wallace Shawn and well-known stage director Andre Gregory, who essentially play themselves. They taped their conversations for several weeks and Shawn gradually shaped them into a scripted conversation, but you'd never know it by watching the movie. The talk flows and flows until you're captivated by Gregory's stories of world travel and spiritual quests in Poland, India, Tibet, the Sahara desert... the tales of a soul-searcher who'd dropped out of the theater world to rediscover his zest for living. Shawn plays the skeptic, the voice of reason, his feet on the ground but his own mind willing to soar. The cumulative effect of this conversation is almost hypnotic, and certainly plays into our eternal appetite for storytelling. Both primal and sophisticated, witty and profound, My Dinner With Andre is a film that can be savored over time, offering new revelations with each viewing as the listener-viewer develops his or her own appreciation of life's great mysteries. --Jeff Shannon
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