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.

Reception was largely positive upon initial release, and over time My Dinner with Andre has come to be regarded as a classic.

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 amidst a midlife crisis and embarked on an extended hiatus during which he traveled the world. Wally reflects that as he has aged he has had to focus more on making money than art.

At Café des Artistes in Manhattan, Andre tells Wally about some of the adventures he has had since they last saw each other, which included working with his mentor Jerzy Grotowski and a group of Polish actors in a forest in Poland; traveling to the Sahara while trying to create a play based on The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; and visiting the ecological commune 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 at an estate in Montauk, including 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. 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 City is more akin to living in a dream than 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.

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<!--- not the politician ---> 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. which has since been restored and reopened. The set was designed to resemble the Café des Artistes in New York City. Nebelthau was a documentary filmmaker whose credits include three films about Gregory's mentor Jerzy Grotowski, whom Andre and Wally discuss in the film.

At one point in the film, Andre refers to "ROC", a Scottish mathematician who claimed he met fauns and the god Pan; "ROC" was Robert Ogilvie Crombie, one of the founders of the Findhorn Foundation.

Release

The film had its world premiere at the 1981 Telluride Film Festival.

Reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 93% based on 27 reviews, with an average score of 7.8 out of 10. On Metacritic it has a score of 83 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel gave high praise to the film on Sneak Previews; the producers later informed Ebert that this support helped keep the film in theaters for a year. Ebert chose it as the best film of 1981, and he and Siskel later ranked it as the fifth-best and fourth-best film, respectively, of the 1980s. In 1999, Ebert added the film to his Great Movies essay series, starting the retrospective review by stating: "Someone asked me the other day if I could name a movie that was entirely devoid of clichés. I thought for a moment, and then answered, My Dinner with Andre."

At the 2nd Boston Society of Film Critics Awards, the film won the award for Best American Film of 1981, and Shawn and Gregory won Best Screenplay.

  • The July 21, 1982, comic of The Far Side by Gary Larson is a gag based on the title of this film.
  • The film My Breakfast with Blassie (1983) is a parody of My Dinner with Andre in which comedian Andy Kaufman has a discussion over breakfast at a diner with professional wrestling manager Freddie Blassie.
  • An Animaniacs segment called "My Dinner with Wakko", from "The Ten Short Films of Wakko Warner", where Wakko drinks his Soda while Dr Scratchansniff tells him about his trip to the Mayan Ruins.
  • The title of the 1983 American CGI-animated short film The Adventures of André & Wally B. is a tribute to this film.
  • In a sketch from the first episode of The Jim Henson Hour, the film is parodied as a dinner between Louie Anderson and a Muppet named Codzilla. As Anderson questions his own career and life choices, Codzilla devours and destroys the building around them.
  • In the fifth-season episode of The Simpsons entitled "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood", Martin Prince plays an arcade game based on the film. This film is also directly mentioned in "The Zoo Story" (1998), an episode in the fifth season of the series, when Martin says: "Yeah, well, that's the way Duke and I felt about My Dinner with Andre. Talk about suspense! Will they order dessert? Will they leave a good tip?"
  • During the end credits of the film Waiting for Guffman (1996), Corky St. Clair is shown displaying his action figures of the characters from this film.
  • The second-season episode of the television series Community "Critical Film Studies" (2011) pays homage to this film with Abed Nadir and Jeff Winger in the focal roles.
  • In the Family Guy episode "Brian the Closer" (2014), the family watch "My Dinner with Andre the Giant" on TV.
  • In a first-season sketch of Key & Peele, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele play moviegoers who reference My Dinner with Andre.
  • The opening scene of the Nirvanna the Band the Show episode "The Buffet" (2017) shows the main character mimicking Wally's actions from the beginning of this film: walking in the city, waiting for a subway, and putting on a tie before entering a restaurant.
  • Director Maverick Moore parodied both My Dinner with Andre and "the totally bonkers friendship between legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog and controversial actor Klaus Kinski" in his short film My Dinner with Werner (2019).
  • The title of the Rick and Morty episode "Mort Dinner Rick Andre" (2021) references the film.
  • In his April 21, 2025, guest essay in The New York Times entitled "My Dinner with Adolf", Larry David parodies the structure of My Dinner with Andre, imagining a surreal dinner with Adolf Hitler, to satirize Bill Maher's then-recent dinner with Donald Trump.

See also

  • List of films featuring fictional films

References

  • My Dinner with André: Long, Strange Trips an essay by Amy Taubin at the Criterion Collection