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| Why, why? What is the meaning of life? |
My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 American dramatic comedy film directed by Louis Malle, written by and starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn.
The film depicts a conversation between Gregory and Shawn (not necessarily playing themselves but speakers of two positions) at Café des Artistes.
Based mostly on conversation, the film's dialogue covers such things as experimental theatre, the nature of theatre, and the nature of life, contrasting Shawn's modest, down-to-earth humanism with Gregory's extravagant Buddhist and other spiritual experiences (such as Findhorn).
Structure
Andre Gregory is the focus of the first hour of the film, when he describes some of his experiences since giving up his career as a theatre director in 1975.
These include working with his friend, director Jerzy Grotowski, and a group of Polish actors in a forest in Poland, his visit to Findhorn in Scotland, and his trip to the Sahara with a Buddhist monk to try to create a play based on The Little Prince by St.-Exupéry.
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| What in the H are you talking about, Andre? |
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| Is waking life real or a dream? |
The rest of the film is a conversation as Wally Shawn tries to argue that living life as Gregory has done for the past five years is simply not possible for most people, at least not in modern America.
He relates ordinary pleasures, like having a cup of coffee. Gregory responds that what passes for normal life in New York in the late 1970s, is more akin to living in a dream than it is to real life. More
(KJ) My Dinner With Andre: Interview with Wallace Shawn (Part 1/3)
In 1968 the producer Louis Malle visited India and made a seven-part documentary series L'Inde fantôme: Reflexions sur un voyage and a documentary film Calcutta, which was released in theaters. Concentrating on real India, its rituals and festivities, Malle fell afoul of the Indian government,
which disliked his portrayal of the country and its fascination with
the pre-modern, and consequently banned the BBC from filming in India
for several years.
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