August 13, 2009

"THE THEATER IS ALIVE!!1!!!!!!1!!!"

The wonderful Bissage comments on the old post titled "'My Dinner with Andre,' my favorite movie, is now available as a Criterion Collection DVD":
Mrs. Bissage and I watched the Criterion release last night. We were both spellbound.

Unfortunately, houseguests arrived just as Andre started his grand surrebuttal. Crap!

Oh well. We agreed this morning we’ll watch it again later this week.

One remark, on the merits, I will hazard to make. As I’m sure you are sick of hearing, Professor, I was involved (half-assedly) in the theater back in the late-seventies/early-eighties. Well, what of it? The thing is, I watched the movie and I was astounded by how much the dialogue reminded me of actual conversations from back in the day.

“Authenticity” is not the be-all and end-all, of course, but that movie is absolutely brimming with theater-culture authenticity, at least according to my experience.

Yep. We really used to wear blindfolds and sit in a circle and listen to each other breathe and stuff like that.

THE THEATER IS ALIVE!!1!!!!!!1!!!

Ha!
And, once again, here's the link to buy the DVD.

7 comments:

Triangle Man said...

"Every day for a week we would try to feel the motion, feel the motion down the hill."





WV: nagioter. An aquatic mammal trained to remind incessantly.

The Crack Emcee said...

"Yep. We really used to wear blindfolds and sit in a circle and listen to each other breathe and stuff like that."

That shit's scary when I think you were adults. It made me think of this.

ricpic said...

My experience, limited to be sure, with theater people is that they're absolutely breathless with excitement about being breathless with excitement.

traditionalguy said...

Theater people do us all a service by becoming characters in our minds in stories full of interesting revelations. My relatives in theater work were always needing to impress me with their skills at being someone more than their dull selves. But they were indeed always fun.

thefewandtheplenty said...

Ann, a trivia question for you-where was "My Dinner with Andre filmed?"..(hint: I had my wedding reception there...OK you don't know me so that's not a real hint. But they did used to have live alligators in the fountain. ..does that help?)

Ann Althouse said...

"Ann, a trivia question for you..."

The new DVD has hour-long interviews with both Andre and Wally, and that subject is discussed. It's an old hotel in, I believe, West Virginia.

thefewandtheplenty said...

The second hint is that it was used in "Gone With The wind" (the grand staircase anyways)..aw the heck with it- it's the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond VA