Product Description
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When Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn-theater directors, writers,
actors, and longtime friends-sat down for a stimulating meal in
1981's My Dinner with Andre, they not only ended up with one of
cinema's unlikeliest iconic scenarios but launched a film
collaboration that would continue to pay creative dividends for
decades. The subsequent projects they made together for the
screen-1994's Vanya on 42nd Street, a passionate read-through of
Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and 2014's striking Henrik Ibsen
interpretation A Master Builder-are penetrating works that exist
on the edge of theater and film, and that both emerged out of
many years of rehearsals with loyal troupes of actors. Gregory
and Shawn's unique contributions to the cinematic landscape are
shape-shifting, challenging, and entertaining works about the
process of creation.
Review
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"When André Gregory and Wallace Shawn—theater directors,
writers, actors, and longtime friends—sat down for a stimulating
meal in 1981’s My Dinner with André, they not only ended up with
one of cinema’s unlikeliest iconic scenarios but launched a film
collaboration that would continue to pay creative dividends for
decades. The subsequent projects they made together for the
screen—1994’s Vanya on 42nd Street, a passionate read-through of
Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, and 2014’s striking Henrik Ibsen
interpretation A Master Builder—are penetrating works that exist
on the edge of theater and film, and that both emerged out of
many years of rehearsals with loyal troupes of actors. Gregory
and Shawn’s unique contributions to the cinematic landscape are
shape-shifting, challenging, and entertaining works about the
process of creation.
MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ In this captivating and philosophical film
directed by Louis Malle (Au revoir les enfants), Wallace Shawn
sits down with his friend André Gregory at a restaurant on New
York’s Upper West Side, and the pair proceed through an
alternately whimsical and despairing confessional about love,
death, money, and all the superstition in between. Playing
variations on their own New York–honed personas, Shawn and
Gregory, who also cowrote the screenplay, dive in with
introspective intellectual gusto, and Malle captures it all with
a delicate, artful detachment. A fascinating freeze-frame of
cosmopolitan culture, My Dinner with André remains a unique work
in cinema history.
VANYA ON 42ND STREET In the early 1990s, André Gregory ed a
series of spare, private performances of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle
Vanya in a crumbling Manhattan playhouse. This experiment in pure
theater—featuring a remarkable cast of actors, including Wallace
Shawn, Julianne Moore, Brooke Smith, and George Gaynes—would have
been lost to time had it not been captured on film, with subtle
cinematic brilliance, by Louis Malle. Vanya on 42nd Street is as
memorable and emotional a version of Chekhov’s masterpiece as one
would ever hope to see.
A MASTER BUILDER Twenty years after Vanya on 42nd Street,
Wallace Shawn and André Gregory reunited to produce another
idiosyncratic big-screen version of a classic play, this time
Henrik Ibsen’s Bygmester Solness (Master Builder Solness).
Brought pristinely to the screen by Jonathan Demme (The Silence
of the Lambs), this is a compellingly abstract reimagining; it
features Shawn (who also wrote the adaptation) as a visionary yet
tyrannical middle-aged architect haunted by figures from his
past. A Master Builder, like Vanya, is the result of many years
of rehearsals, a living, breathing, constantly shifting work that
unites theater, film, and dream.
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Set Contains:
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"BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION COLLECTOR’S SET FEATURES
* High-definition digital restoration of My Dinner with André,
with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; restored high-definition
digital transfer of Vanya on 42nd Street, supervised by director
of photography Declan Quinn, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack;
and high-definition digital master of A Master Builder,
supervised by Quinn, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio
soundtrack
* Interview from 2009 with André Gregory and Wallace Shawn about
My Dinner with André, conducted by their friend the filmmaker
Noah Baumbach
* “ My Dinner with Louis,” a 1982 episode of the BBC program
Arena in which Shawn interviews director Louis Malle
* Documentary from 2012 about Vanya on 42nd Street, featuring
interviews with Gregory; actors Lynn Cohen, George Gaynes,
Julianne Moore, Larry Pine, Shawn, and Brooke Smith; and producer
Fred Berner
* New interviews about A Master Builder with Gregory, Shawn,
director Jonathan Demme, and actors Julie Hagerty and Lisa Joyce
* New program featuring Gregory, Shawn, and their friend the
author Fran Lebowitz in conversation
* Trailers for Vanya on 42nd Street and A Master Builder
* PLUS: Essays on the films by critics Amy Taubin, Steve
Vineberg, and Michael Sragow; the prefaces written by Gregory and
Shawn for the 1981 publication of My Dinner with André’s
screenplay; and a 1994 report by Taubin from the set of Vanya on
42nd Street
"
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