Hear Me Out: There has never been a better time to watch ‘My Dinner with Andre’

Posted On March 10, 2025March 10, 2025

When did you last go to dinner with a friend you hadn’t seen for a while? Not bumped into them at a party, but actually sat down for a proper one-on-one conversation? At a time when social media allows you to keep track of everyone you’ve met since toddlerhood, it’s harder than ever to forge deep friendships that transcend the internet. Our attention spans are shorter, too, thanks to our collective addiction to swiping through the algorithm. But if there’s one thing that those three-and-a-half-hour podcasts that always seem to top the streaming charts should teach us, it’s that people are starved of lengthy, in-depth conversation.

Released in 1981, My Dinner with Andre is a film with an incredibly boring premise. Wally (Wallace Shawn) and Andre (Andre Gregory) are two friends in New York who meet for dinner after losing touch for five years. That’s it. That’s the synopsis. You will almost certainly read that and dismiss the film as pretentious drivel that only pseudo-intellectuals pretend to like, but trust me when I tell you that once you’ve found the rhythm, it is riveting.

Shawn and Gregory were playing loose variations of themselves. Wally is a struggling playwright and jobbing actor who would rather stay at home reading Charlton Heston‘s autobiography than meet a vague acquaintance from his past, while Andre is an avant-garde theatre director who has spent the last few years on a quest of sorts after falling out of love with his profession. Their conversation lasts over an hour and a half and focuses on Andre’s recollections of his recent exploits.

He talks about going to Poland to form an improvisational theatre troupe in the woods, spending time in the Sahara with a Tibetan monk to create an adaptation of The Little Prince, getting buried alive during a gathering on Long Island, and visiting a commune in northern Scotland that was preparing to welcome UFOs. All of this is pure entertainment to listen to, and Wally remains mostly silent throughout. But then, the conversation shifts towards more philosophical matters, and the differences between the men become more clearly defined.

Andre is a spiritualist and a dreamer with a pessimistic view of the modern world. Wally is equally pessimistic about the state of things, but he is more grounded in his surroundings. At one point, they argue over the merits of an electric blanket. “I would never give up my electric blanket, Andre,” Wally says. “Our life is tough enough as it is. I’m not looking for ways to get rid of a few things that provide relief and comfort. I mean, on the contrary, I’m looking for more comfort because the world is very abrasive.”

“But Wally, don’t you see that comfort can be dangerous?” Andre responds, “I mean, you like to be comfortable, and I like to be comfortable too, but comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquillity.” Later, he goes off on a passionate diatribe about the insidiousness of boredom.

“We’re all bored now,” Andre adds. “But has it ever occurred to you, Wally, that the process that creates this boredom that we see in the world now may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money and that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks? And it’s not just a question of individual survival, Wally, but that somebody who’s bored is asleep, and somebody who’s asleep will not say no?”

Listening to Andre is like listening to a friend who dabbles in conspiracy theories, but while he is wildly incorrect about particularities, he is generally correct about the broader picture, and when pushed to explain his stance, he sounds more realstic than Wally himself. The men clash over certain things, but their disagreements are civil, and when they push back on each other, it opens them up to deeper philosophical and personal examination.

If My Dinner with Andre were made today, it would almost certainly be reduced to a podcast episode, but there is something profound about not being able to multitask while you’re watching it. Louis Malle, who begged to direct the film when he saw Shawn and Gregory’s script, limits the cinematography to the basics. There are close-ups, shots where you can see both men in the frame, and the occasional extreme closeup. It would be easy to dismiss the visual structure of the film and attribute all the magic to the script, but the spareness of the setup helps narrow the focus, and the choices about how long to hold a shot and when to cut to a different angle when so much of the film involves one man talking should not be underestimated.

I don’t know what it would have been like to watch My Dinner with Andre when it came out – when electric blankets were the perfect analogy for encroaching technology and small talk was the ultimate encapsulation of social alienation. What I do know is that 2025 feels like a better time to watch it than ever. The conversation takes on the gargantuan topics of marriage, time, parenthood, cities, art, religion, and death with unabashed intensity. Wally and Andre push back on each other, find common ground, and reach a level of kindred revelation that feels almost spiritual.

It’s a reminder that the world has been moving fast for far too long, that we have all looked around and despaired at the blind pursuit of money and the emptiness of routine interactions. But it’s also a reminder that something as simple as a conversation that you actually really didn’t feel like having with a person you hardly know anymore can shift your perspective just enough to change your life, even if it only means seeing the world with fresh eyes on the drive home.

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