My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 American comedy-drama film directed by Louis Malle, and written by and starring André Gregory and Wallace Shawn as fictionalized versions of themselves sharing a conversation at Café des Artistes in Manhattan. The film's dialogue covers topics such as experimental theater, the nature of theater, and the nature of life, and contrasts Andre's spiritual experiences with Wally's modest humanism.
Plot
Struggling playwright Wally dreads having dinner with his old friend Andre, whom he has been avoiding since Andre gave up his career as a theater director in 1975 and embarked on an extended spiritual midlife crisis including: synchronicity, eastern spirituality, near-death experience and utopian communes.
In a fancy New York restaurant, Andre tells Wally about some of the adventures he has had since they last saw each other, which include working with his mentor, the director Jerzy Grotowski, and a group of Polish actors in a forest in Poland, traveling to the Sahara to try to create a play based on The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry, and visiting Findhorn in Scotland. The last in this string of events was when Andre and a small group of friends arranged Halloween-themed experiences for each other, and one piece consisted of the participants being briefly buried alive.
While Andre says he needed to do all of these things to get out of the rut he was in and learn how to be human, Wally argues that living as Andre has done for the past several years is simply not possible for most people, and he describes how he finds pleasure in more ordinary things, like a cup of coffee or his new electric blanket. Andre asserts that focusing too much on comfort can be dangerous, and says that what passes for normal life in New York in the late 1970s is more akin to living in a dream than living in reality. While Wally agrees with many of Andre's criticisms of modern society, he takes issue with the more mystical aspects of Andre's stories, as he has a rational and scientific worldview.
After all of the other customers have already left the restaurant, the friends, each having expressed themselves openly and feeling heard by the other, part on good terms. Since Andre paid for dinner, Wally treats himself to a taxi ride, and he notices feeling a deep connection to all of the familiar places he passes on the way home. He narrates that, when he sees his girlfriend, he tells her all about his dinner with Andre.
Cast
André Gregory as Andre
Wallace Shawn as Wallace "Wally" Shawn
Jean Lenauer as Waiter
Roy Butler as Bartender
Cindy Lou Adkins as Coat-Check Girl (uncredited)
Production
After spending several years away from the theater, André Gregory was looking to get back into it, so he asked his friend Wallace Shawn if he wanted to do something together. Shawn knew Gregory wanted to tell his story, even working with a biographer at one point, and suggested they develop a story consisting of a conversation between the two of them, with interest coming from their contrasting personalities and Gregory's anecdotes. Having recently acted in his first few films, Shawn saw the project as a film, rather than a play.
Although the film was based on events in the actors' lives, Gregory and Shawn denied (in an interview with film critic Roger Ebert) they were simply playing themselves, and said that, if they remade the film, they would swap characters to prove their point. In an interview with Noah Baumbach in 2009, Shawn said:
While Shawn and Gregory were trying to find someone to direct the film, Gregory received a phone call, which he initially thought was a prank, from French director Louis Malle, who said he had read a copy of the screenplay he received from a mutual friend and he wanted to direct the film, or even just be a producer, if Gregory and Shawn did not think he was the right director. The writers brought Malle on board, and he worked with them to cut an hour from the three-hour script. Shawn later said that while he had carefully constructed the screenplay and would have preferred to make the longer film, Malle had won most of the arguments, and he credited Malle with infusing the film with a warmth that helped it connect with audiences.
A rehearsal held at a restaurant caused Malle to question whether the setting of the film should be changed, as the eating seemed likely to create problems. Shawn and Gregory tried to think of what else their characters could be doing, but they wound up just having Gregory not eat very much, as he is the one who does most of the talking in the film.