I am so glad that they talked about the waiter that appeared in the movie, I always that that he, the waiter, brought a little something special to the movie.
Definitely one of the best interviews I've ever seen. Andre is literally mesmerizing and the interviewer has such a great rapport with him, he's perfect at bringing out the fascinating "raconteur" side. Maybe this really is the sequel!
Excellent interview. I just saw this movie for the first time a few days ago and I had to watch it again the next day. And I already feel the urge to watch it again. I can name maybe half a dozen films in my life that were definite "game changers" for me and this is surely one of them. Thank you for uploading.
Just his voice alone makes you want to hear his stories. I think that's why that movie is so tolerable. Its just two people talking, but he's a great story teller.
thank you for writing this. Simple, but eloquent. It made me cry because the movie had a similar effect on me, and seeing this interview was like revisiting an old friend.
Andre, in case you ever read these comments I want you to know that I was really powerfully affected by this movie. It's meant quite a lot to me in my life and to this day it's still probably my favorite movie. I really appreciate you for the role you played in it, helping me to reflect on many similar things I've gone through myself and I suppose still continue to go through. Thanks for playing an important role in my life even though I've never met you.
"It's a testament to how cinematic words are and conversation is" our interviewer states at 7:14. Yea, there used to be a medium that let our imaginations carry the visual - it was called radio. But then TV came along and destroyed that. And so now here's this movie that is doing what radio did all the time, and it is revelatory because of that? And now with the prominent use of CGI, its the death knell of the imagination. Now our imagination has been totally terminated, and all we can do is sit there and be inundated with mind-blowing graphics. Totally passive robots just like Andre talked about in the movie.
This is going to be a really weird reference but this is one of the reasons why I liked the first Blair Witch movie so much. Just 3 people lost in the woods talking to each other going insane. you never see the monster. Loves that the rest was left to imagination. But then they did a remake and CGI'ed a creature as the witch, it completely destroyed the whole point of what made that first film successful as a horror film. Its all in your head with that first film. I'd love it if we had more horror/fantasy films that didn't always have to show us the threats but make you feel them and imagine what they would look like.
They never described it as revelatory, simply a testament to the power of words. I agree we've become basically mindless drones--what provoked my interest in this film was a quote I found online from it, where Andre reflects on the end of genuine, creative human being following the close of the 1960s. There's much antipathy to be directed at the saturated, visually aggressive culture and media we inhabit and its impact on us, but what's notable about "My Dinner with Andre" is how utterly outside of this norm it is, that it actually rests on the audience's imagination in a medium that typically spoonfeeds its passive observers. As a minor aside, I wonder what you'd think of the rising popularity of audiobooks and fiction podcasts. By no means do I think they counterbalance the force of image in the culture generally, but it seems a growing portion of the population finds them rewarding. As for me, for true stimulants to the imagination, I wish we just went back to reading.
@@lwhamilton You people are gonna go back to the fucking stone age with this delusion of "true authentic freedom of imagination" or whatever. Cave paintings are even less manipulative than books, why don't you try that?
This was a great interview! I watched the 3-part interview with Wally Shawn and it was a bit boring. Andre knows how to tell a story. I like this a lot. MDWA is among my top 5 movies ever.
One of the extras, the old man with the long beard, was Clifford Near, a friend whom my wife and I ran into in Hollywood Cemetery back when the movie was first playing in Richmond, Virginia (not West Virginia), and met him at the theatre that night, where he saw himself on a movie screen for the first time. By the way, I didn't know or had forgotten that Louis Malle's father owned that grand old hotel, which had finally been restored by the time I left Richmond.
Except it wasn't Louis Malle's father who owned the hotel, but rather the father of Malle's assistant costume designer from 'Atlantic City,' the film Malle had directed just before doing 'My Dinner with Andre.' That was the connection. You're correct, though, that Andre Gregory misspoke here--the hotel was in Richmond, Virginia, not West Virginia.
My Dinner with Andre is one of my two or three favorite movies; I saw it when it was first released and have watched it probably another thirty times since. An interesting moment in this video--one that reminds me of Andre's references in the film to the problematic nature of being a Manhattanite--is when Andre seems to confirm how New York-centric he is by confusing Virginia with West Virginia.
@@matijabl Hard to say for sure, although I have for years considered Hitchcock's "Vertigo" my favorite (I can re-watch and re-watch it and always willingly re-enter its dream). The other: probably Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia."
