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My Dinner with André
"A screenplay for the film by Louis Malle."--Cover.
113 pages, Hardcover
First published January 7, 1981
3 people are currently reading
807 people want to read
About the author
Wallace Shawn
36 books139 followersWallace Shawn, sometimes credited as Wally Shawn, is an American actor and playwright. Regularly seen on film and television, where he is usually cast as a comic character actor, he has pursued a parallel career as a playwright whose work is often dark, politically charged and controversial. He is widely known for his high-pitched nasal voice and slight lisp.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
November 14, 2010
Excellent movie... but this book, which I've read several times, is one of my favorite reading experiences ever. It's the kind of book I have to reread every few years just to keep me creatively honest. At times absurdly funny, at other times so dead serious that it might change your life, as hyperbolic as that may sound.
August 18, 2015
Later.
It would be easy to see this in a bad light, dominated as it is by the experiences of André. André is rich, privileged enough to be able to afford a mid-life crisis where he doesn’t have to work and can travel the world rejecting everything he has so far achieved as an artist. Wallace, whom he is trying to convince that this is the right path, is a poor struggling playwright.
As André tells him it is bad to feel warm in one’s apartment in winter – how can one tell one is alive? -, Wallace says happiness for him is when his coffee in the morning, cold from the night before, doesn’t have a cockroach in it. And he means this, he isn’t being a smart-ass. When you are poor you find your pleasures where you can.
A nice juxtaposition. I was reminded of a friend of mine some months ago telling me that life is not about material complacency. She has a penthouse in the city and a house in the south of France, but that doesn’t mean she is wrong, of course. I immediately tossed my warmest coat.
We find a complex balance between the views of the two men and although people tend to side with Wallace, I think it is not as simple as that.
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It would be easy to see this in a bad light, dominated as it is by the experiences of André. André is rich, privileged enough to be able to afford a mid-life crisis where he doesn’t have to work and can travel the world rejecting everything he has so far achieved as an artist. Wallace, whom he is trying to convince that this is the right path, is a poor struggling playwright.
As André tells him it is bad to feel warm in one’s apartment in winter – how can one tell one is alive? -, Wallace says happiness for him is when his coffee in the morning, cold from the night before, doesn’t have a cockroach in it. And he means this, he isn’t being a smart-ass. When you are poor you find your pleasures where you can.
A nice juxtaposition. I was reminded of a friend of mine some months ago telling me that life is not about material complacency. She has a penthouse in the city and a house in the south of France, but that doesn’t mean she is wrong, of course. I immediately tossed my warmest coat.
We find a complex balance between the views of the two men and although people tend to side with Wallace, I think it is not as simple as that.
Rest here:
https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...
February 1, 2010
A far ranging, howlingly funny, oddly moving, philosophically quite serious conversation between two men, speaking as themselves, the actor Wallace Shawn and the director Andre Gregory...This dialogue, between the seeker after transcendence, the wildly traveled and creatively risk-embracing avant-garde personallty of Gregory, "and the 'ordinary man,' Shawn, enjoying his friend's adventures but arguing for the philosophy of immanence: "Tell me, why do we require a trip to Mount Everest in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? I mean...I mean, is Mount Everest more "real" than New York? I mean, isn't New York "real"? I mean, you see, I think if you could become fully aware of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant, I think it would just blow your brains out! I mean...I mean, isn't there just as much "reality" to be perceived in the cigar store as there is on Mount Everest?" I like reading this even more than seeing the movie because I can slow down and really take in what each man is saying. To be read and treasured.
September 8, 2018
I have heard for years from people whose opinions I trust that I must see My Dinner With Andre. So when I saw this screenplay at Goodwill for $1.33 (pink tags were 30% off that day), I had to buy it. I'm really glad I did; I loved it. Still haven't seen the film, but I know I will one day.
Excerpt:
ANDRE: Well, look--I remember a night-- It was about two weeks after my mother died, and I was in pretty bad shape, and I went out to dinner with three relatively close friends, two of whom had known my mother quite well, and all three of whom have known me for years. And we went through that entire evening without me being able to, for a moment, get anywhere near what--you know, not that I wanted to sit and have a dreary evening in which I was talking about all this pain that I was going through and everything--really not at all. But--but the fact that nobody could say, Gee, what a shame about your mother, or How are you feeling? But it was as if nothing had happened. And everyone was just making these jokes and laughing. And I got actually quite crazy, as a matter of fact, and one of these people mentioned a certain man whom I don't like very much, and I started screeching about he had just been found in the Bronx River, and his penis had dropped off from gonorrhea, and all kinds of insane things--and of course I realized when I got home that I'd just been desperate to break through this ice.
WALLY: Yeah--
ANDRE: I mean, do you realize, Wally, if you brought that situation into a Tibetan home, that would just be so far out--
WALLY: Right.
ANDRE: I mean, that would be simply so weird, if four Tibetans came together, and tragedy had just struck one of the ones, and they all spent the whole evening going Aha ha ha ehee hee hee oho ho! Wo-ho ho ho! Those Tibetans would have looked at that and would have thought it was just the most unimaginable behavior, but for us that's common behavior.
Excerpt:
ANDRE: Well, look--I remember a night-- It was about two weeks after my mother died, and I was in pretty bad shape, and I went out to dinner with three relatively close friends, two of whom had known my mother quite well, and all three of whom have known me for years. And we went through that entire evening without me being able to, for a moment, get anywhere near what--you know, not that I wanted to sit and have a dreary evening in which I was talking about all this pain that I was going through and everything--really not at all. But--but the fact that nobody could say, Gee, what a shame about your mother, or How are you feeling? But it was as if nothing had happened. And everyone was just making these jokes and laughing. And I got actually quite crazy, as a matter of fact, and one of these people mentioned a certain man whom I don't like very much, and I started screeching about he had just been found in the Bronx River, and his penis had dropped off from gonorrhea, and all kinds of insane things--and of course I realized when I got home that I'd just been desperate to break through this ice.
WALLY: Yeah--
ANDRE: I mean, do you realize, Wally, if you brought that situation into a Tibetan home, that would just be so far out--
WALLY: Right.
ANDRE: I mean, that would be simply so weird, if four Tibetans came together, and tragedy had just struck one of the ones, and they all spent the whole evening going Aha ha ha ehee hee hee oho ho! Wo-ho ho ho! Those Tibetans would have looked at that and would have thought it was just the most unimaginable behavior, but for us that's common behavior.
April 8, 2014
For me, this book is beyond criticism.
As Randall Jarrell said of Leaves of Grass, whatever its faults, they "do not matter."
The movie and the screenplay have been one of the touchstone pieces of art in my life since I first saw the film in the theatre in 1981.
As Randall Jarrell said of Leaves of Grass, whatever its faults, they "do not matter."
The movie and the screenplay have been one of the touchstone pieces of art in my life since I first saw the film in the theatre in 1981.
August 2, 2008
Changed my life.
August 28, 2022
I pulled this off the shelf when cleaning out books, intending a quick re-read before discarding it. I thought I might find it dull or dated all these years after my first enthusiastic viewing of the film.
But I can't discard it! It's more wonderful than I remembered. The conversation begins with Andre Gregory's hilarious, seemingly pretentious stories about his artsy theatrical travels, and Wallace Shawn listens, seeming dumbfounded. It made me laugh out loud. But Gregory calls himself out on his own pretensions and privileges, and the two men go on to deeply and honestly question what it means to be human, what we expect from art and life--comfort, challenge?--how we can or cannot reconnect with our environment, how we cope with our own mortality, and so much more. It's all still completely relevant.
This is funny, wise, brilliant, and I think I need to re-read it often. And now I need to re-watch the movie. But I think the script contains dialogue that didn't make it into the movie, and every sentence in the book seems perfect and necessary to me.
But I can't discard it! It's more wonderful than I remembered. The conversation begins with Andre Gregory's hilarious, seemingly pretentious stories about his artsy theatrical travels, and Wallace Shawn listens, seeming dumbfounded. It made me laugh out loud. But Gregory calls himself out on his own pretensions and privileges, and the two men go on to deeply and honestly question what it means to be human, what we expect from art and life--comfort, challenge?--how we can or cannot reconnect with our environment, how we cope with our own mortality, and so much more. It's all still completely relevant.
This is funny, wise, brilliant, and I think I need to re-read it often. And now I need to re-watch the movie. But I think the script contains dialogue that didn't make it into the movie, and every sentence in the book seems perfect and necessary to me.
January 12, 2017
... I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp..."where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves... "and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they've built. "They've built their own prison.
"And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia... "where they are both guards and prisoners. "And as a result, they no longer have... having been lobotomized... "the capacity to leave
the prison they've made... ...or to even see it as a prison. " And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree... ...and he said, " This is a pine tree. " He put it in my hand and he said,
"Escape before it's too late. "
"And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia... "where they are both guards and prisoners. "And as a result, they no longer have... having been lobotomized... "the capacity to leave
the prison they've made... ...or to even see it as a prison. " And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree... ...and he said, " This is a pine tree. " He put it in my hand and he said,
"Escape before it's too late. "
May 30, 2012
Reading this screenplay is even better than watching the movie. As a conversation between two friends, this screenplay is full of honesty.
September 5, 2008
GreaT movie if you don't mind watching people talk over dinner the entire time. I really enjoyed the movie and wanted to remember the dialogue better, so I read the play. The sheer number of times they said "I mean" exceeded, I am sure, legal limits and became insidiously monotonous after the first 10 pages. Otherwise, I found some interesting insights into life and our society towards the end. This was a great refresher on the movie which I believe is word for word with the play.
August 7, 2017
Andre is a caricature of the bourgeois liberal who glorifies a return to nature as a salve for his alienation and existential angst. But does he really think that the answer to all of our western problems lie in dancing with the druids in some forest?
March 29, 2013
ANDRE: So they understood what it was about. I mean, that of course poses the question of what was it about. But it was something to do with living.
May 20, 2018
The Poetry of the Dancing Bee
Andre: ... You see, I keep thinking that we need a new language, a language of the heart ... some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry, that is the poetry of the dancing bee, that tells us where the honey is. And I think that in order to create that language we're going to have to learn how you can go through a looking-glass into another kind of perception, in which you have that sense of being united to all things, and suddenly you understand everything.
Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory's 1981 film (My Dinner With Andre) is, in my view, one of the finest products of American cinema in the late 20th century. The script reads wonderfully as a play--indeed, as American literature.
Since first seeing the film around the time of its release, I have periodically screened it for myself, my friends and family and loved ones. I never tire of it. Nor have I ever stopped learning from it. Anyone who sees the film and says, "Boring," or "I don't get it" is a true Philistine.
Andre's musings on the need for "a new language" send one back to Tolstoy's Olenin in the stag's lair, to Thoreau's "ecstatic witness" at Walden Pond, and farther back in time to the adepts of Muslim pietism and, indeed, to many of the world's mystical or religious traditions.
What Mr. Gregory sensed about American life in the late 1970's-early 1980's--the emptiness of our consumer-driven culture and of lives lived without a sense of connection to the broader human community and, just as importantly, lives lived without any genuine focus upon the "small things" made available to experience when one finally learns to tune out the noise of government and media-driven fear and greed and to live deliberately and in touch with one's deepest intentions--is as true today as it was when the film was made.
As Thoreau understood, the "new language" we need will not be fashioned out of whole cloth; it is in fact resident in our very old languages: the "classical" languages in which visionaries composed what Thoreau called "the heroic books"--books that, "even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times." He therefore admonished us that "it is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations" [Thoreau, Walden, Everyman's Library edition, 89].
The "heroic books" present us with heroic figures, individuals Wallace Stevens named "figures of capable imagination." They are visionary poets capable of seeing beyond the status quo and dream a different world.
Once again, we seem to have traveled full circle: to Peter L. Berger's "ecstatics"; to William Blake's "apocalyptic humanism."
Andre: ... You see, I keep thinking that we need a new language, a language of the heart ... some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry, that is the poetry of the dancing bee, that tells us where the honey is. And I think that in order to create that language we're going to have to learn how you can go through a looking-glass into another kind of perception, in which you have that sense of being united to all things, and suddenly you understand everything.
Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory's 1981 film (My Dinner With Andre) is, in my view, one of the finest products of American cinema in the late 20th century. The script reads wonderfully as a play--indeed, as American literature.
Since first seeing the film around the time of its release, I have periodically screened it for myself, my friends and family and loved ones. I never tire of it. Nor have I ever stopped learning from it. Anyone who sees the film and says, "Boring," or "I don't get it" is a true Philistine.
Andre's musings on the need for "a new language" send one back to Tolstoy's Olenin in the stag's lair, to Thoreau's "ecstatic witness" at Walden Pond, and farther back in time to the adepts of Muslim pietism and, indeed, to many of the world's mystical or religious traditions.
What Mr. Gregory sensed about American life in the late 1970's-early 1980's--the emptiness of our consumer-driven culture and of lives lived without a sense of connection to the broader human community and, just as importantly, lives lived without any genuine focus upon the "small things" made available to experience when one finally learns to tune out the noise of government and media-driven fear and greed and to live deliberately and in touch with one's deepest intentions--is as true today as it was when the film was made.
As Thoreau understood, the "new language" we need will not be fashioned out of whole cloth; it is in fact resident in our very old languages: the "classical" languages in which visionaries composed what Thoreau called "the heroic books"--books that, "even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times." He therefore admonished us that "it is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations" [Thoreau, Walden, Everyman's Library edition, 89].
The "heroic books" present us with heroic figures, individuals Wallace Stevens named "figures of capable imagination." They are visionary poets capable of seeing beyond the status quo and dream a different world.
Once again, we seem to have traveled full circle: to Peter L. Berger's "ecstatics"; to William Blake's "apocalyptic humanism."
January 9, 2022
This book was a lot. While I wouldn't say I really enjoyed it or would read it again, I did take away a couple of nice reminders about appreciating life and getting in touch with what matters. Also, it was nice to read a script that talked about theatre in a meaningful way. Overall though, it was very long-winded, self-indulgent, and a lot of it felt like the ramblings of a bad trip.
November 7, 2022
A perfectly written novella. Everything perfect. All the hemming and hawing and uhms and pauses perfectly paced and true to an actual real-life conversation. Albeit a conversation I would never have or hope to have, because I’d fall asleep for the first 40 minutes or so. But still. Pitch perfect. Better than the film.
July 21, 2018
L'eccezionale lavoro di due attori/registi teatrali che costruiscono un dialogo fra due amici che riesce a toccare, in una sorta di dialogo platonico contemporaneo, le corde più profonde del nostro essere vivi ed essere umani. Sceneggiatura eccezionale per l'altrettanto eccezionale film del 1981 per la regia di Louis Malle.
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A masterpiece of a screenplay, a contemporary platonic dialogue which explorers the deeper meaning of being alive and being human. From this screenplay, the eponymous Louis Malle's masterpiece (1981).
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A masterpiece of a screenplay, a contemporary platonic dialogue which explorers the deeper meaning of being alive and being human. From this screenplay, the eponymous Louis Malle's masterpiece (1981).
September 28, 2025
Both vital and grating
January 17, 2024
“I mean, it may very well be that in another ten years people will pay ten thousand dollars in cash to be castrated, just in order to be affected by something.”
March 25, 2009
I picked this up at a used bookstore out of sheer desperation having never seen the actual film (though Criterion recently announced its re-release for June). I've never really understood why anyone would want to read a screenplay, thinking back to the once ubiquitous vendors in the city growing up hawking brightly colored xerox pages (these must still exist somewhere in Union Square). If the demand is that to spawn an illegal industry surely there must be something to it? Reading this did little to illuminate that desire since it reads more like a play than a film- not a coincidence since this semi-fictional conversation comes from two individuals with a history in theater. The dialogue is absolutely wonderful. But why anyone would want a 300 page script of Beetlejuice remains a mystery.
December 28, 2008
I saw this movie several times when I was younger and decided to read the screenplay, which is sort of funny since the movie is just the two guys sitting across from each other talking. What's interesting is that it was written in 1981, and they were talking about how theater and culture was dead back then, and people keep talking about theater and painting and culture dying. I think this is a great conversation between two serious theater people, but it's pretty bleak and more than a little self-indulgent. Wallace Shawn's point of view is way more pragmatic than Andre's, and that's the only thing that saves it.
October 2, 2012
I don't normally enjoy reading plays all that much, but this quick read was actually quite enjoyable. It offered many thought provoking questions about life and how we choose to live. Do we choose to live as robots and simply accept the thoughts and actions that the media tries to feed us? How can one find true fulfillment in life when you are told what to think, say, and feel? If there was ever a book to make you question human survival and what it means to survive versus what it means to truly LIVE, than this is the book.
May 25, 2016
After watching the film and reading the screenplay, I'm pretty sure My Dinner With Andre will always have a place in my heart. It's easily one of the best.
August 5, 2020
My god, this movie was so dense I had to download the script and pause the damn thing every ten minutes to re-read what had been performed to make sure I was absorbing the whole piece.
July 26, 2023
Der Film [My Dinner with Andre] aus dem Jahr 1981 ist einzigartig, weil er ein Gespräch zwischen zwei Personen zeigt nach der Art eines Hörspiels, und die Unterhaltung selbst ist interessant. Die meisten Filme bestehen aus Handlungen, und ihre reduzierte Sprache hat entsprechende Auswirkung auf die Sprachkompetenz der Zuschauer, die kaum noch imstande sind, sprachlich, d.h. logisch zu denken, stattdessen leben sie wie in einem Traum, in dem nur Bilder vorkommen, die sie jedoch nicht imstande sind zu deuten. Daraus resultiert ihre Unfähigkeit, eigenes Verhalten zu steuern, so wie in vielen Träumen der Fall ist: Sie sehen nur zu, ohne jedoch die Möglichkeit zu haben, aktiv in die Handlung einzugreifen. Als Zuschauer und nicht als Filmemacher des Geschehens, sehen sie das, was in ihren Köpfen entsteht, aber der Stoff für ihre Träume wird ihnen sozusagen vorgespielt und eingeredet von der Unterhaltungsindustrie, zu der nicht nur die Kinobranche gehört, sondern auch die ARD und alle übrigen Fernsehsender, die sich für Objektiv und Wahrheitsgetreu ausgeben, aber in Wirklichkeit sind sie nichts anderes als Schauspiel. Und die Zuschauer sind in ihrem Schauspiel gefangen, so wie Menschen im Roman von Stephen King [The Shawshank Redemption] gefangen sind: Sie sitzen dort fest, und nur einem von ihnen gelingt es, aus diesem Gefängnis auszubrechen.
December 15, 2020
The book, screenplay really, for the movie "My Dinner with Andre" entertains the question: What does it mean to be a real human being, actually living and not merely sleepwalking through life?
Two old friends join together over an unhurried and deliberate meal and deliberate upon what is truly fulfilling in life. For the several hours they are dining, we are given an engaging look at two almost polar-opposite types with their contrasting approaches to life. Andre brings Wally up-to-date on his experiences since their last meeting. Andre has been traveling across the world, working to wake up from a life of habitual conditioning. Then Wally responds with his own, more pragmatic approach to life.
The two old friends never actually resolve the differences in their thinking about approaching life but they are both able to rise from the dinner table at the end of the meal with a richer understanding of the other's view.
My Dinner with Andre attempts to make you a better person and the world a better place in which to be a real human being. I have returned to the movie again and again over the years; this has been my first reading of My Dinner with Andre, and I hope to be returning to the book again and again as well.
Two old friends join together over an unhurried and deliberate meal and deliberate upon what is truly fulfilling in life. For the several hours they are dining, we are given an engaging look at two almost polar-opposite types with their contrasting approaches to life. Andre brings Wally up-to-date on his experiences since their last meeting. Andre has been traveling across the world, working to wake up from a life of habitual conditioning. Then Wally responds with his own, more pragmatic approach to life.
The two old friends never actually resolve the differences in their thinking about approaching life but they are both able to rise from the dinner table at the end of the meal with a richer understanding of the other's view.
My Dinner with Andre attempts to make you a better person and the world a better place in which to be a real human being. I have returned to the movie again and again over the years; this has been my first reading of My Dinner with Andre, and I hope to be returning to the book again and again as well.
June 9, 2023
Enchanted by the film I saw decades ago, I picked this screenplay off my bookshelf and enjoyed every page of it. There's no action, "just" a heavy duty philosophical conversation between two intellectuals, one risk taking and experimental, and the other more conventional. Andre, who is a theater director, uses his life experience to discuss whether we, as human beings, are really living authentically, or just playing roles in our lives--and suggests the radical measures we must take to begin to feel alive, to be true to ourselves.
One of my all-time favorite dramatic works.
One of my all-time favorite dramatic works.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 13, 2024
Saw the film, read the screenplay. Made a huge impression on me, and I still believe it is very good. But I have my doubts about some of the things in it that seemed profound once. Shawn was less interested in being clever and closer to hard truths in his play "The Fever", which I saw him perform. I think the two works together make for a more balanced, and enlightening, experience than either one, and I would highly recommend both.
October 19, 2021
The script is as brilliant as the movie it served. Wallace Shawn is an inconceivably great writer. Andre Gregory’s preface before WS’s is dear. It’ll also broaden your understanding of the movie to just read the script and occasionally stop and wonder at the space between the lines. You can feel time between Wally & Andre in the script as in the movie.
December 27, 2023
A challenging, entertaining dialogue between a New Age seeker and a contented materialist. They agree that people must see the world for what it really is. But the two men disagree totally on the best way to see the world (science or religion) and whether there is true spiritual meaning in the world.
May 19, 2020
I've lost track of how many times I've read the screenplay or watched the movie, but it had been too long since the last time. Five star rating for the still-relevant description of one of the struggles of humankind in the modern world. Plus, I enjoy hearing their voices as I read the text.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews