On the way home, treat yourself to a taxi.

December 26, 2012 9:14 PM

Audience Participation Cues for the My Dinner With André Midnight Madness Screening
posted by davidjmcgee (64 comments total)

Whenever there is a reaction shot of Wally looking perplexed or skeptical, shout, “Huh?” "Inconceivable!"

FTFY
posted by dephlogisticated at 9:30 PM on December 26, 2012 [6 favorites]

Whenever there is a reaction shot of Wally looking perplexed or skeptical, shout, “Huh?” "Inconceivable!"

A friend of mine actually did this, and was then delighted in the one part of the movie where Wally actually says "inconceivable." ("I just don't think I feel the need for anything more than all this. Whereas, you know, you seem to be saying that it's inconceivable that anybody could be having a meaningful life today, and you know, everyone is totally destroyed.")
posted by John Cohen at 9:33 PM on December 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

Also, what a weird FPP.
posted by John Cohen at 9:34 PM on December 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

I tried to watch the movie once.
posted by ashbury at 9:37 PM on December 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

It's like watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show with subtitles on.
posted by twoleftfeet at 9:58 PM on December 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

~At the late night/single feature/art flick show/in the back rooooow~~

(Back row sucks!)
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 10:04 PM on December 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

I had dinner with André once. He spent the whole evening talking about himself. Then he left me with the bill.
posted by twoleftfeet at 10:09 PM on December 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

Before the film begins, get in a coffin and have some friends bury you. Get retrieved during the end credits. Dance until dawn.
posted by mediated self at 10:10 PM on December 26, 2012 [4 favorites]

Whenever André or Wally says your favorite line, leave the theater. Walk 25 blocks, then lean against a crumbling old building. Sob uncontrollably.
posted by davidjmcgee at 10:20 PM on December 26, 2012 [20 favorites]

The title of this link alone is enough to make me love it
posted by villanelles at dawn at 10:46 PM on December 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

According to the interview in the Criterion special features, Andre was wearing an electric blanket on his legs during the filming.
posted by roll truck roll at 10:53 PM on December 26, 2012

I sometimes really, really miss weekly RHPS, and I sometimes really, really don't.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:24 PM on December 26, 2012 [6 favorites]

The title of this link alone is enough to make me love it

Yeah me too. Also figured it was McSweeny's by the title too.

(Good for them btw; if the brand works, go for broke.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:36 PM on December 26, 2012

This is a parody? Dammit!
posted by KokuRyu at 12:32 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Finally, some hope for these terminally chronic insomniacs.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:03 AM on December 27, 2012

Maybe somebody hasn't seen it. My Dinner with Andre 1/14
posted by twoleftfeet at 1:39 AM on December 27, 2012 [5 favorites]

Most of these kids today can't make it past 3/14. Just warning you.
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:06 AM on December 27, 2012

I really liked this movie, it's way better than it deserves to be.
posted by zardoz at 2:12 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Tell me more! (pushes joystick forward)
posted by BiggerJ at 2:22 AM on December 27, 2012 [5 favorites]

I performed the part of Andre in a local dinner club, on the outskirts of the Aleutian Islands, in a small theater that had been converted from a former military base bowling alley. Later that night we watched the northern lights while two eagles flew sideways, and I began to feel a great oneness with the tundra.
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:23 AM on December 27, 2012 [12 favorites]

Just to add a little more to the background, I remember being in Prague, with Shasta, the ninja super-model, when she realized that pottery could be a viable weapon, with its shards and spinning wheels. And I said to Shasta "these dolphins can't be our only escape." And she agreed, because we were riding the Tube, and people don't talk about dolphins on the Tube. So she texted the Dalai Lama, who apparently has a very good plan which includes after-life minutes, and we all met up in Sweden, for blåbärssoppa. While we were there, we played with a ouija board and channeled Jackson Pollock, who sent us a message - FUEJUFPOJ - which doesn't mean anything to anybody except spirits who just hang around dribbling nonsensical messages. But later that day we snorted sugar and salt, and had the kind of experience that only people who regularly snort condiments can tell you about. Except mustard.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:27 AM on December 27, 2012 [20 favorites]

All I know about this movie I know from Community.
Kinda want to see the movie.
posted by Mezentian at 4:27 AM on December 27, 2012

Thanks for the youtube link! Haven't seen it in a while.
posted by freakazoid at 4:30 AM on December 27, 2012

Even more background, behind the previous background. I was at a play, not a good play, not a serious play, a kind of a play play, and I saw the very woman who reminded me of a different woman. She came up to me in the rotunda and said I was looking fat, right there in the rotunda.

Can we get more bread here?

So I told her about my time in the tundra, and how I played the didgeridoo in my dungarees and dug doing my thingy-ma-doos during my thingamajig and didn't do dung to doo wop a doo wop.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:38 AM on December 27, 2012 [17 favorites]

To those who have not seen the movie: twoleftfeet is utterly nailing it. And I say this as someone who loves the movie.
posted by HeroZero at 5:23 AM on December 27, 2012

The movie sums up perfectly the relationship with my sister and me. When I first saw it, I was like "this is every conversation my sister and I had, and continue to have." And we're not the tiniest bit closer to ever agreeing with one another. (I'm Wally.)
posted by sockerpup at 5:27 AM on December 27, 2012

FAIL.

Everyone knows that MDwA screenings always happen at exactly 1:06 AM. Tru-fans known exactly why.
posted by clvrmnky at 6:05 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Why hasn't someone made My Dinner With Andre 3000?
posted by inturnaround at 6:07 AM on December 27, 2012 [21 favorites]

:gets out her My Dinner with Andre action figures:
posted by smirkette at 6:27 AM on December 27, 2012 [6 favorites]

yes hello could someone please post the audience participation cues for the matinee showing of My Breakfast With Blassie, i have been waiting patiently in line with my fake boogers and also for there to be a matinee showing of My Breakfast With Blassie
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 6:28 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

When I was younger, I loved Andre. Now I want to punch him. So goes the circle of life.
posted by Dr. Zira at 6:38 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best unused title for a Princess Bride "making of" documentary: My Dinner with Andre the Giant
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:44 AM on December 27, 2012 [5 favorites]

Has anyone mixed "My Dinner With Andre" and "Swimming To Cambodia"? Seems like it ought to make a pretty good musical comedy love story.
posted by surplus at 6:48 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

:gets out her My Dinner with Andre action figures:

"Boy, i'm sure glad you've found a good restaurant. It's so hard these days to get in. Who do you know?"
"Oh, i just called, made a call, spur of the moment."
"Oh, you. You can always get a reservation."
posted by griphus at 6:53 AM on December 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

Here's one for Showgirls that my wife and I attended.

"DON'T DO IT, HOPE!!!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:58 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I got one of the biggest laughs of my life when I yelled out "MARCO!" during the Showgirls fountain scene.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:06 AM on December 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

I was watching Showgirls at home with some friends, and during the pool scene:

My wife: "What is she doing?"
A friend: "She's trying to get upstream."
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:09 AM on December 27, 2012

Here's a gift for anyone with a lot of free time who wants to edit together a youtube video that gets 1,000,000 hits: My Dinner With Andre the Giant
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:16 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

In the "Melvin Goes To Dinner" screening take a shot of meth everytime it references My Dinner With Andre.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:17 AM on December 27, 2012

Somehow I think this could have been a great FPP like about 28 years ago.
posted by sfts2 at 7:42 AM on December 27, 2012

Before FPPs got all commercial and lost their soul.
posted by davidjmcgee at 7:44 AM on December 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

"My Dinner With Andre" is the film most often cited as the one that demonstrated "Siskel & Ebert's" power to make so-called art-house films accessible to mainstream audiences.

"Our movie was greeted with great enthusiasm at the New York Film Festival," Shawn recalled, "but then it opened and nobody came to it. The only reason it stayed open as long as it did was [co-star] Andre Gregory and I went every day to the office of the distributor, who also owned the theater, and begged him to keep it open."

Siskel and Ebert's rave review of the film was broadcast the week the film was scheduled to close. "Business increased dramatically," Shawn said. "The people came and it moved on to other cities and it became a tremendous hit for a low-budget art film. In my mind, if they hadn't spoken so passionately and eloquently about it and made it seem so interesting, I think it would have been consigned to the scrap heap of history and would have been considered a failed film."

I was trying to find a way to say, in my own words, what is said above. My mom and her sister, while both in their 70's went to this movie based on Siskel and Ebert's raves about it. They hated it.

The film, however became a thing, and a lot of people, me included, perhaps, went into it primed to love it. Although I do remember seeing it a second time and going to sleep.
posted by Danf at 7:48 AM on December 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

I watched it on YouTube last time it was the subject of an FPP. Based on the comments in that thread, I 'went into it primed to love it'. I wouldn't say I loved it, but I did like it a lot, and thought about it a great deal in the immediate aftermath, and since. Such an intriguing film, so unlike anything else I'd ever seen. I don't know if I'd risk watching it again; I think it grows more resounding in my memory, and I'm happy to keep it there.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 7:57 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I didn't really understand this thread at all until I realised this wasn't the film starring that sea lion.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 8:06 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

My Dinner With Andre Cold Duck usually just involves me mumbling to myself a lot.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:40 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I would like to watch more movies of two people just sitting and talking. People don't really do that enough. Unless you consider the Charlie Rose show a movie, I guess.
posted by empath at 8:43 AM on December 27, 2012

The premise of this is odd. Midnight screenings need a minimum of action which is antithetic to this movie. Maybe that is the McSweeny's joke over my head. I guess if you take a hundred people to a midnight screening of this movie ninety five of them will be sound asleep before it is half over. The only time I went to see the Rocky Horror Picture midnight show I fell asleep around fifteen minutes in and my friends didn't wake me until it was over. I had a nice nap and plenty of energy to keep partying on until 4 or so.
posted by bukvich at 9:20 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I liked this flick. I don't know what the average age of members of "the blue" is, thus making me wonder if all the snarky comments about this movie are the result - in the generation that was born after 1980 - of being subject to a movie-making industry that has evolved to pander mostly to those who want their minds to go numb during a film, and just "ooh and ahh" at the special A/V effects.

More on My Dinner With Andre:

1) it was thoughtful, and constructed in a way that made it impossible to copy; it's a gem of insightful film making, with a great story. If you don't like this movie, I don't want you over as a dinner guest.

2) it wasn't full of "action edits" every 1-2 seconds (you know, like the ones on MTV in the 80's that essentially ruined our collective music viewing and listening experience - making late-20th century pop more about what the singers and the set look like than how good the music was/is. We continue to pay for that lesson, every day - check out American Idol, the Voice, or XFactor if you don't believe me.

3) There are a number of memorable lines in it - like Wally's line about molecular reality in a cigar shop. Think that sounds hokey? If so, I feel sorry for you.

4) It was truly different. Some will comment with snark about that, but I think it was different in a way that defines the difference between certain kinds of movie viewers. Read number 1.

Happy New Year!
posted by Vibrissae at 9:30 AM on December 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

My Dinner With Andre the Giant

So, the thing is, I don't know anything at all about My Dinner With Andre except that it has something to do with Wally Shawn. So whenever I hear the title, I picture Shawn and Andre the Giant in their Princess Bride costumes sitting down between takes, eating dinner off of a tree stump.

It has ever been thus and I don't want to ruin that for myself.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:55 AM on December 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

I don't know what the average age of members of "the blue" is, thus making me wonder if all the snarky comments about this movie are the result - in the generation that was born after 1980

COUNTEREXAMPLES, YE ARE BECKONED
posted by Beardman at 9:56 AM on December 27, 2012

COUNTEREXAMPLES, YE ARE BECKONED

I submit myself. I am but 30, and thought the movie was excellent. Of course, I didn't see it until about 4 months ago, so maybe I did have to be older to appreciate it. Who knows.
posted by King Bee at 10:04 AM on December 27, 2012

The movie needs a sequel. I need to know whether Andre ever bought an electric blanket. Cape Cod can get chilly, or so I have been told.
posted by Dr. Zira at 10:30 AM on December 27, 2012

Wally: (To the hat check girl:) Hello.
Hat check girl: (checks Wally's coat) Hello.
Audience: SLUT!

*later*

Wally: You mean, because somehow when you are alone, you're alone with death, I mean, nothing's obstructing your view of it, or something like that.
Andre: Right.
Wally: You know, if I understood it correctly, I think Heidegger...
Audience: ASSHOLE!
Wally: ...said that if you were to experience your own being to the full you'd be experiencing the decay of that being toward death as a part of your experience.

Somehow I think this could have been a great FPP like about 28 years ago.
I've never understood, generally speaking, how people can be willfully ignorant of culture earlier than their era.
I was talking to a high school student about Charlie Chaplain and he claimed no knowledge of his work as though that was a badge of honor. I wasn't alive and sitting in Nickelodeons in 1918 but I am familiar with one of the most famous comedians of all time.
It's not like it's impossible to see a Chaplain short.

It's odd how many people refuse to extend themselves outside a comfortable sphere of experiences. Buddy of mine watched one of the Evil Dead films thought it was the stupidest film ever made. I mentioned to him that it was supposed to be funny too. I had to drag him to see it again. He laughed like crazy though.

You hear about some of these cult films or obscure ones and maybe you like them and maybe you hate them but it's usually worth running down. Especially given it's so easy to do so now.
Or sit through a film like The Soloist or Edge of Darkness or 3:10 to Yuma and they're neither good nor bad. Just killing time in the popcorn stadium with something you'll forget in a few years.
But I don't know. What is cultural literacy anymore? Given the more and more diverse streams of media? I think Fight Club made a dent. Where many people use it as a reference point. But then, a lot of people haven't seen that either.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:54 AM on December 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

Somehow I think this could have been a great FPP like about 28 years ago.
I've never understood, generally speaking, how people can be willfully ignorant of culture earlier than their era.

Dudebro, sfts2's point was that MDWA is so much a part of the cultural fabric that parodies of it aren't provocative. And also that Metafilter didn't exist 28 years ago.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:14 AM on December 27, 2012

Anytime Wally asks André to stop rhyming, ask anyone if they want a peanut.
posted by not_on_display at 11:48 AM on December 27, 2012

And also that Metafilter didn't exist 28 years ago.

I'm sure I remember a ratty bluish zine on a cluttered table at a reading by Ginsberg at Passim in the... oh gosh that was a post snowcrash daydream.
posted by sammyo at 12:13 PM on December 27, 2012

I've never understood, generally speaking, how people can be willfully ignorant of culture earlier than their era.

This goes the other way too. I had to face down that attitude from adults throughout my entire childhood and adolescence, as though it was completely impossible for anybody younger than a certain age to even know about older movies, TV shows, or music. Do these people not understand that's the whole reason why we record stuff? So it doesn't get forgotten?
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:18 PM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've never understood, generally speaking, how people can be willfully ignorant of culture earlier than their era.

There's a profound difference between people who study history (a minority) and people who don't (the vast majority). Most have some interest in it, but it's not a passion for them, and so they don't spend decades of their lives "living in other eras."

There's a post on the blue right now about an obscure magazine article from the 1920s. People seem to mostly want to discuss its subject (selflessness) without much reference to when it was written, whereas what most fascinated me about it were its everyday details about the Jazz age. There's an AskMe post about "the best film soundtracks," and reading it makes you think cinema history began in the 1980s.

People like me (history buffs) tend to be snobbish and patronizing towards folks who aren't interested or knowledgable about bygone times. I used to be, but I realized some time ago that it's really about different ways of thinking, not better ways and a worse ways. Yes, we can learn from history, but if I'm truthful, my obsession with it hasn't been very practical. It's been more like an interest in sci-fi or world travel: mind-expanding, but it hasn't gotten me a raise or helped me discover the cure for cancer.

Here's the difference between me and many of my friends: lots of time periods don't feel like "the olden days" to me. This is really similar to how, say, the Star Wars universe starts feeling like "just another place" to a Star Wars fanatic, who watches the movies all the time, has dozens of action figures, dresses up as characters, and goes to conventions.

Read one book about Elizabethan England and it seems "other." Once you've read your tenth book, looked at hundreds of paintings, seen some plays, and watched a bunch of historical films, it starts to seem like "the time period just around the corner."

It's alien to me how some people think of black-and-white or silent films as "old" and have a hard time relating to them. But then I grew up with those films and have spent over four decades continually watching them. Acting styles and dialog that seems dated to others seems like "how people act and speak in that other world I sometimes live in" to me. But that's because I really do live in that world.

When you meet a kid who doesn't like Chaplin films, it's worth remembering that some very special conditioning made you like them. Chaplin's conventions are wildly different from modern-movie conventions, and you don't emerge from the womb liking (or even understanding) arbitrary conventions. You slowly learn to appreciate them. When a kid who grew up on webisodes -- or even on MTV -- sits next to me at a screening of "City Lights," he and I are seeing very different films.

As for never having heard of Chaplin, well, where should he have heard of him? They didn't teach Film History at my high school. My friends never talked about Chaplin. The older generation -- the boomers -- rarely talked about him. There weren't many references to him on TV...

Chaplin is great, but you have to go out of your way to learn about him. Or you have to be lucky and happen to know someone who is a silent-film buff.
posted by grumblebee at 1:48 PM on December 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

Chaplin is great, but you have to go out of your way to learn about him. Or you have to be lucky and happen to know someone who is a silent-film buff.

Just someone who reads about film at all, really. You're going to see references to his work all over the place, in everything from Time Magazine to Entertainment Weekly, not to mention parodies of him in cartoons, and so on. I think you'd have to be someone without the slightest interest at all in culture to not know who he is if you're over the age of say, 20.
posted by empath at 2:54 PM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Here's a comparison of some celebrity names in the ngram viewer.

If you read books at all, you're probably going to see his name crop up quite a bit, I think.
posted by empath at 3:02 PM on December 27, 2012

he was talking about a high schooler
posted by LogicalDash at 3:43 PM on December 27, 2012

Dudebro, sfts2's point was that MDWA is so much a part of the cultural fabric that parodies of it aren't provocative
Wasn't directed at him exactly. Just riffing off into a general tangent. Not a lot of people have seen MDWA.

Chaplin is great, but you have to go out of your way to learn about him.
I don't know about that. Easy to find him eating a shoe on YouTube.
He's linked to "Greatest Speeches of All Time" as well. I can't imagine it's too hard to stumble across his work if it's on youtube.
But yeah, why not go out of your way? Is sort of my point.
Why not go out of your way to see MDWA? Or any sort of thing outside one's usual experience.

Of course, that's most of the present company here excepted. But like I say, just a general point.
And yeah, I get that "you kids dunno nuthin'" stuff too. Talked to an old guy at a coffee shop about Stan Goetz. I kept saying "I like jazz." and he kept saying "Now, you wouldn't know about this, but..." Yeah, but I like jazz, so... Now, this was 19 and 46, when Gene Krupa - he was a drummer, see before them electronic machines... Yeah, uh, sir? I like jazz, so I know 'Sing, Sing, Sing,' and... Now back in the day, you kids wouldn't know... etc.

That's the thing though. If something is "the best" of whatever. Why not seek it out.
I'm pretty much a metalhead. But, well, I like Jazz. And I'd never heard of Goetz if I didn't expose myself to new stuff. Or ask why is this guy called "the greatest" - whatever (in Goetz's case tenor saxophonist). Or why is this movie/music/whatever thing I don't understand getting raves from other people.
I suppose it takes the assumption that one's own horizons aren't widened. Or that the thing in question isn't stupid merely because one doesn't understand it.

...of course, most of us here (on metafilter) are here exactly to broaden our horizons and seek understanding of things unfamiliar to us. Opinions, ideas, media, etc.

I think that snobbishness you're talking about is sort of the inverse of what I'm talking about but yeah has the same sort of effect of separating people from something new.
I'd think "the best" stuff would be our new cultural touchstone instead of whatever is the most shared since we don't really do community-wide experience much anymore. We don't watch the same thing on t.v. or have the same networks or even the same broadcasting. We don't sing at movies (which, really, I think would be awesome to bring back) or have shorts or whatever.

I think MDWA was sort of grounded in that desire to provide "the best of" and I think a lot of people have missed that entirely. And have not been lucky enough to be given the urge to go look for it.
posted by Smedleyman at 3:47 PM on December 27, 2012

When I first saw My Dinner with Andre it was a long time ago, on a VHS tape, and I picked it out at Blockbuster because I accidentally saw a Siskel-Ebert television show. In my whole life I may have watched five Siskel-Ebert television shows. At that point I had never sat down and watched a movie that was anything like that. I had never watched a Woody Allen movie. I had never watched a movie that was in a foreign language with English subtitles. That movie blew my mind and totally changed my idea of what watching a movie could be. So it was a great gateway drug even if it is not a great movie.

A couple years ago I bought it on DVD and I watched it a couple times and I still like it although it is not one of those movies that I try to push on anybody ever. After the recent watching I used my new magic internet and looked up things like Jerzy Grotowski and Findhorn and although these are utter trivia to most I think they are very cool. Also if you have not seen The Last Temptation of Christ you might want to check it out only to look at Andre Gregory playing near naked John the Baptist after apparently spending as much time in the gym as Brad Pitt did before Fight Club.
posted by bukvich at 5:21 PM on December 27, 2012

I've never understood, generally speaking, how people can be willfully ignorant of culture earlier than their era.

My old boss, generally a pretty astute guy in the world of work, prides himself on never having finished a book or ridden public transit. He knows what books are - he just doesn't read them. Next time I see him I'll ask if he's heard of Chaplin. In his case, the parts of his brain that would normally be filled with stuff you and I find interesting are occupied by hockey trivia.

But I'm with you. I'm not sure why people feel they need to isolate themselves from aspects of human experience, but it's clear that they do.

And I watched MDwA last year - not without some trepidation - it was still pretty good and quite charming in spite of haveing watched The Princess Bride too many times in the last ten years (it's my son's favourite movie).
posted by sneebler at 9:17 AM on December 28, 2012