ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #44: POSSESSION (1981)

This delightful Cold War Anxiety relationship drama is like a tabletop Call of Cthulhu campaign played entirely within the parameters of a permanently failed Sanity Roll.

MOVIE REVIEW: HALLOWEEN II (1981)

Director of Photography Dean Cundey

Music by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth

Edited by Mark Goldblatt and Skip Schoolnik 

Produced and Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Directed by Rick Rosenthal

Starring 

Donald Pleasence

Jamie Lee Curtis

Gloria Gifford

Leo Rossi

Dick Warlock 

Review by William D. Tucker

Here’s a weird one.

Here’s a dilemma. 

In all its particulars, Halloween II is a well-made film.

The cinematography. The editing. The score. The sound design. How it’s directed. How it’s paced. Even the acting. 

All the elements of a good movie are here. Particularly, a well-made low-budget horror movie. You can do those, you know. Horror doesn’t have to suck. Low-budj horror doesn’t have to be shit. You can work within your means. You can have a strong sense of purpose. You can make the most of what you’ve got. Halloween II does all this. 

Looks great.

Sounds great. 

I’m watching a widescreen DVD edition from some years ago, and on a modern screen . . . looks just fine. 

In some respects, it improves upon minute points of craft from the 1978 original. Great use of darkness. Doesn’t rush things. Takes its time. All this despite the fact that it is a little more grisly than the first one. Halloween II does not give in to the urge to become a dumber flick than the first one. The essential creepiness of the Shape and its methods of murder are maintained. 

You could even make the case that this one has a more spectacular climax than the original. 

The actors make the most of what they’re given. Jamie Lee Curtis is convincingly freaked-out. Donald Pleasence is suitably dogged in his pursuit of his quarry. Gloria Gifford is both compassionate and assertive as a head nurse. Leo Rossi is agreeably crude and irreverent as a cynical EMT. Dick Warlock incarnates the Shape with murderous spirit. The whole cast is professional. They all exceed stereotypical expectations of a slasher movie cast. 

I suppose you could knock the script for being derivative, and it is. It also dutifully ties up various plot threads from the first movie, and extends the concept of taking place on Halloween night into a couple more twists and turns. But not much here that’s new in terms of screenplay. 

But it is not sloppy. It’s a professional job on all counts. Perfectly watchable.

But I don’t like it. I fundamentally disapprove of its existence. Even though, on the merits, it is not badly made at all. 

Except the very idea of it. That’s what I find objectionable. 

Halloween ‘78 is a perfect circle. It encompasses and renders redundant all possible sequelization with its exquisite expression of the persistence of unknowable evil in a mundane suburban cosmos. It’s the phoenix that self-immolates only to re-ignite. For a low-budget horror movie, the shit is Zen as fuck. 

Halloween ‘78 created mountains of cash. Therefore, Halloween II exists because money. Everyone knows that’s how movies work. It’s a business. No shocker there. 

What’s bizarre is that Halloween II is not a badly assembled piece of work in and of itself. And yet I reject its existence. 

In some ways, it’s an improvement on the technique of the original-you could even call it an upgrade. Still, I reject its existence. 

It has a terrific climax. The final juxtaposition of a fearful human face and the lingering image of the Shape’s spectacular fate . . . well done. 

And yet . . . I reject Halloween II’s existence.

It’s a weird one.

It’s a dilemma.

MOVIE REVIEW: ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981)

 Directed by John Carpenter

Produced by Debra Hill and Larry Franco

Director of Photography Dean Cundey

Production Designer Joe Alves

Editor Todd Ramsay

Music by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth

Written by John Carpenter and NIck Castle

Pervasive Atmosphere of Cool Cynicism by Post-Watergate Disillusionment and Cannabis

Starring

St. Louis as Manhattan

Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken

Dick Warlock as Stunt Plissken

Ernest Borgnine as Cabbie

Season Hubley as Girl in Chock Full O’Nuts

Adrienne Barbeau as Maggie

Harry Dean Stanton as Brain

Joe Unger as the Mysterious Taylor

Donald Pleasence as President

Lee Van Cleef as Hauk

Charles Cyphers as Secretary of State

Tom Atkins as Rehme

John Strobel as Cronenberg

Isaac Hayes as the Duke

Frank Doubleday as Romero

Ox Baker as Slag

Nancy Stephens as Stewardess

Buck Flower as Other President

…

“We left our country for our country’s good.”

-attributed to George Barrington, Australian pioneer, 1802

“If you love someone, set them free; if they come home, set them on fire.”

-George Carlin, Brain Droppings (1997)

…

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Did you know that in the 1990s, Manhattan was turned into a huge penal colony? 

That’s one of the things you learn when you watch Escape From New York. 

You see, America became a police state either because people started committing too many crimes and acting all crazy, or-what’s more likely-the government decided to criminalize most anything you could think of: drugs, disloyalty, birth control, abortion, foul language, public assemblies,  sex before marriage, non-Christian religion, atheism, sex during marriage, unions, sex after marriage, non-incumbent political parties-

I mean, cigarettes are still legal. That’s for sure. You get to see some throwback smoking-on-camera in this one. I bet Tom Snyder loved this flick. I’m even willing to bet that somewhere inside retro-future Manhattan, Snyder’s still hosting his show. Got to be. 

Of course, I’m just speculating about everything other than the cigarettes, because all we’re told is that the crime rate rose 400% in 1988, which sounds to me more like they just radically increased the number of things you could get sent up for, as opposed to a legit breakdown of the social order necessitating some kind of a police intervention. But maybe I’m wrong. I wasn’t there, you know. Yes, I was alive in 1988, technically, but I was living in a different reality than Escape From New York. I think. 

Air Force One is hijacked by a radical communist militant who has disguised herself as a stewardess, and this lady crashes the plane into one of the many darkened skyscrapers on Manhattan. The stewardess reads off a manifesto stating that she is crashing the plane into the Manhattan penal colony because she thinks the American government is a racist police state and that the figurehead of that police state-the President, natch-should be consigned to the very hell on earth he has constructed. Fair enough. 

Once again, we are reminded of just how easy cuddly ol’ Tricky Dick Nixon got off when we take the long view of history.  (To be fair what’s a few sideshow bombings of Cambodia, really, when you get down to it? It’s fine, it’s fine. I’m sure Jesus forgave Nixon all his sins before tossing him into the deepest pit of hell. It’s so fuckin’ fine. I could shit.)

Now, there is one big problem with 86ing the President under these circumstances. Apparently, he was en route to a three-way peace summit with China and Russia to perhaps end an ongoing World War III type of situation happening waaaay in the background of this modestly budgeted-but resourceful and imaginative-film. If the President can’t make his commitment to appear at this summit, then, well, the war might escalate. Maybe China or Russia or both will perceive America as a place where the culture and the government are in total free fall, and try to use that to their advantage. Remember, in politics, perception is everything. If your enemy perceives you as weak, as out-of-control, maybe they’ll pitch a nuke your way. See if you really are packin’ some kind of Raygun Ronnie Reagan orbital defense system. Maybe you’re nothing but a stuffed suit of clothes. Not the best look for Baldy Ol’ Eagleland. 

Manhattan, in the movie reality, is a desperate place. The electricity’s been cut off. A wall has been built around the island. All the rivers and canals have been mined. There’s a completely militarized National Police Force that patrols the penal colony with attack helicopters equipped with rockets and machine guns. And this is where all the criminals end up-everybody’s here. No one’s been left out. Murderers. Rapists. Thieves. Counterfeiters. Embezzlers. Dissidents. The wrongly accused. The sick. The mentally ill. People who couldn’t pay their rent. Women who shot their rapists. Anybody who isn’t strictly heterosexual or cis-gendered. Income tax evaders. Income tax protesters. Narco-entrepreneurs. People who’ve been unemployed for too long. East coast intellectual elites. Mild critics of the government. Strident critics of the government. People who used to be in the government prior to the current administration. The loyal opposition. Civil rights activists. War protesters. And they’re all left to fend for themselves, to make the best of a tough situation. As Jaimie Lee Curtis tells us in voice over, “There are no guards. Only the prisoners and the worlds they create.” 

The prisoners of Manhattan have figured out ways to kludge steam engines and mini-oil refineries out of the cars and infrastructure left behind from before the lockdown. Rival gangs and tribes have piled up junkers to form little Berlin Walls between the different ad hoc power blocs. They’ve got shivs and baseball bats with nails driven through the heads and garbage can lid shields and  Molotov cocktails-oh, yes! The DIY spirit is truly ascendent despite the total lack of government. Maybe it’s because of the lack of government. Hard to figure. 

This new Manhattan is a fearsome place, tho’-you won’t catch me going there voluntarily. You’ve got hordes of people living in the sewers and the subways who’ve gone not just feral-but full-on cannibal. They emerge in the dead of night to raid medical supplies, building materials, and meat. People meat. Just don’t eat the brains. You don’t want to fuck with rogue prions, now. Unless you’ve gone full zombie. In that case, eat your fill. 

There’s no government, but there is royalty: the Duke of New York played with a sullen, creepy intensity by Isaac Hayes. I’m not sure, but I think the Duke is just one warlord among many in Manhattan. We don’t get any official back story on the Duke, but he has adorned himself with a sort of community theater looking Napoleonic outfit. In my head canon, I imagine him as a guy who came to Manhattan scared out of his mind, and so he holed up in some abandoned apartment where all he had was a biography of Napoleon. This became his self-help regimen: he imagined himself as a great conqueror, and so he found the will to carve out his own piece of hell. 

The President survives the plane crash, and is kidnapped by the Duke. A group of national cops goes on a commando mission to get the President back, but they are warned off by the Duke’s Number One Guy: a freaky-deaky dude named Romero, who seems to have fashioned himself into a kind of punk rock Nosferatu. Remember, it’s just the prisoners and the worlds they have created, so maybe that’s a way of saying that each inmate has resorted to living in their heads . . . until their dark dreams have broken loose-no doubt a liberation for some, and a nightmare for others. 

Romero definitely seems to be in his element. Here’s some more gratuitous head canon: tho’ the movie predates the advent of widespread live action role playing, maybe in the parallel timeline a kind of analogue of those vampire and werewolf LARP games evolved. Romero could’ve been a LARPer, pre-lockdown, and now he’s living his best life inside the new Manhattan. 

Romero tells the super-pigs to fuck off, and shows them a finger sliced off the President’s hand bearing a ring with the Presidential seal. Super-pigs do the backdown. The President’s now in the clutches of the Duke and his people. 

The Police Commissioner of Manhattan-a Bob Hauk-decides that taking the island by main force will just end up with a dead President, and so he turns to super-badass motherfucker Snake Plissken-conveniently in pre-processing for transfer to the penal colony on charges of armed bank robbery-to execute a solo penetration mission and rescue the nine-fingered chief executive. Snake isn’t just a violent criminal. Snake’s ex-special forces, a master of killing people, breaking shit, and survival under hellish circumstances.  He ran some kind of heavy shit down in Leningrad. 

Hauk reads off Snake’s permanent record, and we find out that ‘S.D. Plisskin’ is the dude’s government name. Snake’s the name he’s given himself. Snake also wears an eyepatch. I like to think Snake carved out his own eye, just so he could keep everything two-dimensional, but I’m the only one who thinks that. Hauk dangles a full pardon for all crimes committed on US soil if Snake sneaks into Manhattan and extracts the President. Hauk has Snake by the balls. Snake takes the job.  

So much of this movie is about a man on a mission. Snake has his objectives laid out, he even has a much pared-down version of those Q-sequences in the 007 movies, where all his gadgets and weapons are set out before him while Tom Atkins exposits the basic rules of the DIY tribes of the new Manhattan. Snake gets a big watch with a countdown to doomsday clock. He has a walkie-talkie so he can stay in contact with mission control. He gets a submachine gun. I caught some ninja stars on the equipment table on the rewind. Snake’s bringing some serious party favors. 

Hauk doesn’t trust Snake, nor should he. So, in his hard-boiled wisdom, he has a doctor inject our hero with a pair of tiny explosive devices that slowly dissolve in the bloodstream until their lethal cores are exposed and cause fatal internal hemorrhaging. What’s interesting about this scene is that it is not clear that Hauk was going to tell Snake the truth. First, he flat out lies to Snake telling him he’s about to get some kind of powerful antibiotic that will protect him from the unsanitary environment of the new Manhattan. But then the doctor goes off program and insists that Hauk tell Snake the truth. This is a moment-maybe one of the few-where somebody actively resists some manifestation of the corrupt American government-Police Commissioner Hauk is the avatar of corruption in this instance-and tries to operate according to a credible ethical code. Yes, the doctor has already violated his hippocratic oath to do no harm-but he owns up to his crime to the degree that he can. I’m always struck by the doctor’s tiny act of resistance. It’s something. 

Once Snake finds his way to Manhattan, we get a lot of impressively wide shots where our hero wanders in the middleground of elaborately bombed-out areas of the big bad city while distant figures move furtively in the deep background. One shot even glides past a listless wino intrusively breaking into the foreground of the shot as he stares at the impressive action figure of a man that is Snake as he stalks towards the background to get a look at the burning wreckage of Air Force One. 

Another shot stretches out ahead of us with jealous green streetlights-somebody’s hooked up to some rogue juice-as Snake stalks deeper into the metropolitan labyrinth. 

And the deeper in we get, the more the new Manhattan seems to become a kind of repository for eclectic bits of cinematic fantasy: 

A drag show where the band consists of some bedraggled cowboys who look like they escaped from the legendarily dysfunctional set of Heaven’s Gate; which is the fire, and which the frying pan, eh?

Adrienne Barbeau looking like a seductive enchantress as she descends the stairs into a subterranean antechamber to a bizarre hybrid of library and oil refinery bearing a proper burning torch as though she were in the depths of Frankenstein’s castle. 

We even get a Karnov-looking pro-wrastler in the middle of a smoky indoor gladiatorial arena. 

Westerns. Gothic horror. Lethal bloodsport. DIY oil rigs in the middle of libraries. There’s something for everybody in the new Manhattan. 

(I found myself thinking, “Maybe the American police state has become so repressive, because it has no way of incorporating the rebellious and fanciful side of the collective human psyche. It has to partition it off into a very harsh place where it’ll fester and grow and take its own path. Maybe China and Russia and the White House will come to regret the loss of the authentically human spark and endeavor to play at some proxy wars and start hustling in weapons and big ideological promises and trash bags full of cash-call it Manhattan-stan-in order to claw back what they were once so eager to excise from the body politic. In the end, everybody still wants to be in New York . . .”)

Now, I should remind you-remind myself-that so much is left unsaid in this movie. All the background details are just that-background. The main action is Snake and his mission, but you can well see how you could derive a whole tabletop RPG sourcebook by scanning its ninety-something minutes over and over. You may already be aware that Snake Plisskin was the inspiration for the video game character Solid Snake in those Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid games. Hideo Kojima-the former creative lead behind everything Metal Gear-has claimed that Escape From New York  was a big influence-although I think Kojima appropriated more material from the much-maligned Escape From L.A., if you look into it.

Snake is the perfect video game protagonist: the dude can move, he can fight, he can pitch a blade into a dude’s skull, he knows how to shoot, he can climb, he can jump, and he has just enough stripped down humanity to fill up a few cutscenes if you need some of those. Kojima’s knockoff version is way chattier, and, frankly, way more of a normie. The more I think about it,  Solid Snake strikes me as some fucking dad cosplaying as an actual tough guy. Solid Snake seems to like people, and he seems to want people to like him. Snake Plisskin’s fuck dispenser broke down long ago.

And yet . . . Snake does start to get it by the end of his mission. It may not be enough to save the world. It’s barely enough to save himself. But he does start to see the world just a tiny bit beyond his own narrow survival trip.

When given the chance to speak to the President, Snake asks him what he thinks about the fact that lots of people have died as part of the rescue mission. It’s hard to know for sure, but Snake seems to be asking about all the dead, friend and foe alike, since all the people who’ve been shipped to the new Manhattan have basically been forced into a desperate war of all-against-all by a totalitarian regime. Snake isn’t really mad at the people he’s been obliged to kill in order to achieve his mission. He’s mad at the overall perma-fucked reality he finds himself fighting to survive. 

And Snake gets an answer.

It’s a shitty answer, but he gets it.

Be happy you get even that. 

 

As with a lot of fantasy settings, the new Manhattan seems like a fun place to go crazy for a few days, but you wouldn’t want to actually live or die there. 

Or maybe you would. 

Unlike present-day Manhattan, you could probably afford the rent. 

That’s for goddamn sure. 

MOVIE REVIEW: OUTLAND (1981)

 Written and Directed by Peter Hyams

Special Effects John Stears

Special Optical Effects Supervisor Roy Field

Production Designer Philip Harrison

Art Director Malcolm Middleton

Costume Designer John Mollo

Make-Up Peter Robb-King

Director of Photography Stephen Goldblatt

Head of Video Department Richard Hewitt

Editor Suart Baird

Produced by Richard A. Roth

Music by Jerry Goldsmith

Leisure Club Music Produced and Composed by Richard Rudolph and Michael Boddicker and performed by Ganymede

Starring 

Sean Connery

Frances Sternhagen

Peter Boyle

James B. Sikking

…

“It figures. It’s all happened too sudden. People gotta talk themselves into law and order before they do anything about it. Maybe because down deep they don’t care. They just don’t care.”

-Lon Chaney, ex-Wolf Man, former Jr., in High Noon (1952)

“Never send a human to do a machine’s job.”

-Agent Smith in The Matrix (1999)

…

Review by William D. Tucker.

The Company is back. Kinda. I’m talking about the Company referred to in the  1979 film Alien, and, well, they’re up to their old tricks of exploiting workers’ desire for wealth and adventure out on the frontiers of space. This time the setting is a harsh, dystopian mining colony on Io, a moon of Jupiter. The colony proper comes across on screen as a  warren of cage-like capsule bedrooms and spartan apartments alleviated by a laser light titty bar, some wall tennis courts, a bleak cafeteria, video golf for the hardcore assholes, and legalized prostitution. 

Workers have been behaving erratically in statistically significant numbers: suicides, assaults, murders, all seemingly coming about due to the extreme psychological stress of working in an ugly, depressing, dehumanizing environment. A guy takes off his spacesuit helmet while on a moon surface worksite. Another guy enters an airlock with no suit, just regular clothes, and a cigarette behind his ear. Guess he was going out for a smoke. Sex workers are reporting injuries due to assaults, rapes, and beatings in higher than normal numbers. The Io colony is not a happy place. 

Head explosions are a thing in this movie. Caused by explosive decompression. Which is not scientifically accurate. I dunno, maybe there’s something weird about the way the pressurized atmospheric environments interact with the monumental gravitational force exerted by Jupiter? Eh? (Shrug) I never been to Jupiter, okay, so I can’t speak about it from direct experience. Of course, the movie follows a theme of ‘people under pressure’ which is to some degree literal, but also metaphorical. So, I don’t know, maybe the various head explosions are meant to be taken, um, not so literally? Look, if you’re a stickler for scientific accuracy, you’re probably gonna laugh at those bits, so that’s not super-terrible. It’s kinda fun in a sicko sort of way.  

On top of everything else at the Io colony-the suicides, the murders, the brutalizations, the sexual violence-on top of all of it . . . there are fucking cops on the moon of Jupiter. That’s right. LIke they needed that as a cherry to lord it over the turd cake. Not just regular cops, either-space marshals. And who is the Number One Space Marshal on Io? Sean Connery, of course. 

But this isn’t 007 Connery. This is Connery when he was in his real prime as an actor. When he was older, and when the roles had nuances worth digging into. A lot of people like to say, “Oh, Connery was the best Bond. He was the best as 007!” And, you know, sure. You can say that. But if you actually look back at those Connery Bonds, I think you’ll see he was at his best during moments of absurdist comedy. The look on his face when a woman tells him her name is Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. It’s the same look he has on his face when he shows up  dressed to the nines at a sleazy casino full of cowboys in leisure suits in Reno in Diamonds Are Forever. Connery mastered deadpan comedy beats as 007. But I don’t think he really came into his own as a dramatic actor until much later in his career. 

In Outland Connery’s marshal character is very much inspired by Gary Cooper’s beleaguered lawman in High Noon, as he realizes that the entire system of the lunar mining colony runs on greed, corruption, and the murder of anybody who fights the extractive-capitalist status quo. Gary Cooper gets deserted by the entire town of Hadleyville. Sean Connery stands alone on the moon of Jupiter. Harsh realm, my dude, harsh realm. 

Like Alien, Outland is a highly inductive piece of film, assembling a wealth of fascinating science fiction world-building details that eventually submit to the grand deduction of the total fuckedness of existence under no limits gangster capitalism. The Company has constructed the perfect system that can function no matter the misery and waste it generates in volumetric quantites. 

But there are moments where the inhuman perfection glitches:

-an assassin using a futuristic infrared scope botches his shot when sweat gets in his eye;

-the greedy corporate supervisor played by Peter Boyle as a version of his maniacal character from Joe-think of him as ‘Joe made good’-playing video golf. Just like a proper all-American oligarchic asshole would;

-Sean Connery and his corrupt subordiante James B. Sikking slamming tennis balls against a slab of what looks like the Berlin Wall to pass the time, and avoid confronting their growing rift directly;

-Connery wields a sawed-off shotgun because buckshot scatters, and that’s safer than a rifled shell which would drill holes through the walls of the pressurized space colony and thus cause everyone’s head to exlode . . . but I think we can all agree: buckshot or shell, let’s not go firing off guns inside space colonies or space ships, okay? Glad we all agree . . .

-the fact that Connery actually engages in some detailed detective work, aided and abetted by Frances Sternhagen’s ornery moon doctor-how much actual sleuthing happened in 1982’s Blade Runner, eh? Yup. Outland, tho’ mostly forgotten by pop culture, is a better police procedural future investigation than the 1982 world-building trendsetter.

Speaking of forgotten movies: my legitimate Warner Brothers DVD copy which I bought for $5+applicable sales tax some, I dunno, ten or eleven years ago? It has the video quality of a bootleg VHS rip. Technically, it’s in letterbox-not the ‘enhanced for widescreen TVs’ lies printed on the insert paper on the inside of the plastic sleeve-which means you can watch it in its proper aspect ratio but it’s smaller on the screen than it should be. This kinda sucks . . . but it is amusing that I can have the thrill of watching what feels like a bootleg VHS-perhaps purchased through a late-1990s Luminous Film Works catalog of gray market reduplications-from a ‘legitimate’ home media release.

It’s the fuckin’ Company, man.

You just can’t win.

MOVIE REVIEW: MY DINNER WITH ANDRE(1981)

Starring/Written by Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory

Also starring Jean Lenauer as the Waiter

Music by Allen Shawn 

Edited by Suzanne Baron

Cinematography by Jeri Sopanen

Directed by Louis Malle

Review by William D. Tucker. 


My Dinner With Andre consists almost entirely of a meandering conversation between two friends, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, who haven't seen each other in awhile and meet up at a nice restaurant. At least that's how it's supposed to come off. It is thematically focused and precise in how it explores two men who find themselves facing personal and professional challenges in their lives, but it is crafted in just such a way as to give the illusion of a long, free-form conversation between two friends catching up on recent events. It's similar to a play that has been directly adapted for screen with only minimal modifications to conform to cinematic values.

Except . . . it isn't quite like that. Basic techniques involving cutaway shots of the waiter's ambiguously irritated face (maybe he's just tired, maybe he just always has that expression on his face), and the realistic soundscape of a restaurant with its tinkling glasses, and subdued hush of conversation punctuated by an occasional laugh or raised voice give it a strange near-documentary feel. The two friends speak as though they are actually in a restaurant. The acting style is not theatrically elevated, and the audience is invited to listen in on things through Wallace Shawn's first person narration in the opening scenes as he makes his way down cold New York streets to meet his friend.

Wallace Shawn is a playwright and actor who finds himself short on work in both areas. He is supported by his wife who works as a secretary. Andre Gregory is a theatrical director who has spent a number of his recent years having unusual artistic experiences and spiritual journeys with people like Jerzy Grotowski and a Buddhist monk. Shawn has bills and debts. Gregory has a trust fund, perhaps, and never seems to worry about money. They are playing versions of themselves. That is to say, if you've never heard of either of these guys, Wallace Shawn is playing Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory is playing Andre Gregory, but I suspect there is some degree of fictionalization going on, but I couldn't, on a first viewing, tell you in what areas of the story, and to what degree.

Not that it's essential to know what's biography and what's fiction, but it is interesting to note that part of what Shawn and Gregory are wrestling with in their conversation has to do with how a person within a technological society can have a genuine experience of reality, and part of what I, as an audience member, was wondering was, "How much of this script is based on real life events, and how much made up?" Shawn and Gregory also talk about how people often times perform themselves in everyday life, how they take on roles, and here these two are playing themselves on screen. But they don't come across as characters in the usual sense. They actually seem quite candid and ordinary even when they are grappling with weighty philosophical and existential issues or describing bizarre adventures. The very fact that they are playing versions of themselves within a movie actually, in this case, seems to kind of tone down and distill who they might be in their everyday private lives, or in the course of their careers in the theatre. No grand declamations or sudden reversals, no cutting accusations, and no transformations into mythic beasts or thundering robots, although Gregory details at length some wild visions which seem right out of a Hayao Miyazaki film.

There is a kind of basic philosophic conflict between these two friends, although it is grappled with in a civilized fashion. Shawn is a skeptic, a believer in scientific knowledge and the joys and comforts of daily, domestic existence. Gregory is a mystic, seeing patterns and hidden connections where Shawn sees only coincidence and superstition. Gregory is concerned that the advance of high tech capitalism is creating a kind of hallucinatory hell on earth of hyper-consumption, alienation, dehumanization, and wage slavery that constitutes a new, insidious form of totalitarianism in which artistic elites such as himself are the new Albert Speers, holding the lower classes in deadly contempt. Shawn is sympathetic to Gregory's concerns, but cannot buy into mysticism, and sees no way of returning to a pre-rational point of view. The way these two men hash out their differences is a model of how people can agree to disagree and not shut each other out or retreat into ideological posturing or dogma. In this sense, My Dinner With Andre is, perhaps unintentionally, a moral film. Watching it, I felt like I wanted to try to be more humane towards the people I know in my life, even towards those I would consider enemies or fools. Shawn and Gregory model this kind of humanity and civility, once again probably unintentionally, for the audience.

These two guys need to get back together and hash out what has gone on in the world since 1981. I'd love to listen in . . .