Post #4003755

2026-07-22 04:28 UTC

I'm not joking. This is a movie that gave me cold sweats and sleepless nights and a head full of wonder admixed with horror. What the everloving fuck happened to André Gregory? Louis Malle and Wallace Shawn and the cast and crew did something remarkable: they found a way of containing Gregory's evil energy. I really wonder how he perceived things...perhaps he simply felt as if he were the star attraction, because an entire movie was being made just so his old pal Wally could have a conversation with him about...the end of the world, roughly, or at least the end of all life and joy. (cont'd)

Replies (1)

@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-22 04:57

The framing device comprises a few minutes at the beginning and the end, bookending scenes featuring Wallace Shawn talking in voiceover about dreading his meeting with André Gregory at the start, and expressing his consternation to his girlfriend Debbie (q.v. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Eisenberg) about the meeting afterwards, in short passages of indirect discourse. Nothing more is needed. All that matters is that Wally Shawn went way out of his way to eat at a very expensive restaurant (they don't serve club soda, only Source de Pavillon, water from a special spring in France) on André Gregory's tab, endured a bizarre mishmash of personal recollections interspersed with pointless asides and sudden lapses into dark dark places, like the time some chums of Gregory's put him and some others through an apparently quite long and elaborate ritual of being sent to one's appointed death, including being stripped and placed into a coffin. (cont'd)

Open ##4004180