My Dinner With Andre (dir. Louis Malle)

Not strictly a documentary but it's not fiction either. The film takes place in a restaurant where two men have a conversation over dinner. The men are the playwright and actor Wallace Shawn and the theatre director Andre Gregory. In the film, Andre mentions a theatrical improvisation technique where instead of improvising in the role of a character, you improvise in the role of yourself. The film seems to have been conceived with this approach in mind as the two men talk about their real life experiences and philosophies but within the structure of excellent writing and film making. I think because they come from a theatrical background, the film has the feel of realtime, even though there is obviously editing, there are no flashbacks or internal perspectives. It's as if you are a silent and ignored dinner guest. When guestroom were asked to do an event at FormContent, we decided to show this film and make a dinner. We set up the projector and table so that the table was almost an extension of the screen so it did in fact feel like you were having dinner with them. Some of the dishes were the same as in the film, the fish pate and potato soup, but we couldn't stretch out budget to make quail for 14 people so did stuffed tomatoes instead. Then, over desert of chocolate cake and poached pears we discussed the film.