In Shadow of the Vampire, Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe) recites from Tennyson's poem "Tithonus", a monodrama of the Greek mythological figure who is immortal but continues to age physically. He yearns for death because it will release him from his ever withering state, and the poem is a reminder that immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be, mirroring Schreck's own unfortunate existence. There have been many works exploring the dark side of eternal life (Highlander), but only one of them can be categorized with My Dinner with Andre.
The Man from Earth was written by the late Jerome Bixby, a talented and lauded science fiction screenwriter who authored episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. The script was found among his papers after his death in 1998, and this film makes one wonder why it wasn't produced earlier, or at least performed as a play. It's a deeply written, heartbreaking work, a confession of a hidden life that throws everything the listeners believe in out the window.
John Oldman* (David Lee Smith of CSI: Miami and five seconds of Zodiac) is a professor at a California college, and invites his fellow profs over for drinks as he is leaving town the next day. The peanut gallery (including Tony Todd and William Katt) covers a wide swath of disciplines from anthropology to art, and Oldman has been careful to assemble great minds for what he has to say. The rest of them came by to drink and hash out the past, not aware of what past Oldman is referring to. After some pleasantries and puzzlements, such as the discovery of a seemingly caveman-era tool and an authentic-looking Van Gogh, the real subject reveals itself, though at first as a hypothetical. What if a prehistoric man simply didn't die, avoiding war and discovery through history and surviving until the present? At first the conversation is jovial, with theories of perfectly replicating cells and shifting identities put forth, but people are puzzled as to why he didn't pose the question as a normal hypothetical, saying "I" instead of "he".
As the "game" drags on further, his friends have caught on and the tone turns from lighthearted to frustrated. His story, while unbelievable, is at the very least well constructed - he was a Cro-Magnon (a fact he had to figure out much later), and when his tribe shunned him for possessing evil magic and stealing their life to lengthen his, he wandered across the land, falling into whatever company would take him and leaving when they found out the truth. Each logical query, such as how he knew where he came from and whether or not he remembers his first language, have plausible explanations offered, though coolly received. Some are more angry than others, and eventually a psychologist is called in. And everything that happens after that isn't mine to spoil.
All the acting is pitch-perfect (well, except for a woman who has a crush on Oldman, but whatever), and the dialogue is extraordinarily intelligent and well-researched. Bixby has accomplished a difficult task: make the absurd not only believable but engrossing. Oldman's life is not only exceptional but ultimately tragic, and the intellectual, and in some cases moral, trials posed to the listeners are equally heart-wrenching. Set almost entirely in Oldman's living room, the script is a shining example of how science fiction doesn't need to have flashy special effects or expansive locales in order to provoke thought and discussion - it's a triumph of pure storytelling. A couple of wrinkles do trip up the film, though - shot on a pair of Panasonic DVX100 camcorders and processed through Filmlook, the viewing experience is particularly grainy, especially when the conversation drags into night and pixels the size of postage stamps dominate the frame. Also, the ending's a bit shaky, and the fact that it hinges on that female character I mentioned earlier doesn't help. All of these are, of course, minor details. The movie is not even 90 minutes long, an economic detail passed down from TV writing, so if you think for a second this movie will waste your time those thoughts should be put to rest. Don't believe me? The DVD company put it up on YouTube for free:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAarR4tVEHU (no embedding, sorry)
~PNK
*Get it? Get it?! LAUGH, CLOWN! LAUGH!!!
The Man from Earth was written by the late Jerome Bixby, a talented and lauded science fiction screenwriter who authored episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. The script was found among his papers after his death in 1998, and this film makes one wonder why it wasn't produced earlier, or at least performed as a play. It's a deeply written, heartbreaking work, a confession of a hidden life that throws everything the listeners believe in out the window.
John Oldman* (David Lee Smith of CSI: Miami and five seconds of Zodiac) is a professor at a California college, and invites his fellow profs over for drinks as he is leaving town the next day. The peanut gallery (including Tony Todd and William Katt) covers a wide swath of disciplines from anthropology to art, and Oldman has been careful to assemble great minds for what he has to say. The rest of them came by to drink and hash out the past, not aware of what past Oldman is referring to. After some pleasantries and puzzlements, such as the discovery of a seemingly caveman-era tool and an authentic-looking Van Gogh, the real subject reveals itself, though at first as a hypothetical. What if a prehistoric man simply didn't die, avoiding war and discovery through history and surviving until the present? At first the conversation is jovial, with theories of perfectly replicating cells and shifting identities put forth, but people are puzzled as to why he didn't pose the question as a normal hypothetical, saying "I" instead of "he".
As the "game" drags on further, his friends have caught on and the tone turns from lighthearted to frustrated. His story, while unbelievable, is at the very least well constructed - he was a Cro-Magnon (a fact he had to figure out much later), and when his tribe shunned him for possessing evil magic and stealing their life to lengthen his, he wandered across the land, falling into whatever company would take him and leaving when they found out the truth. Each logical query, such as how he knew where he came from and whether or not he remembers his first language, have plausible explanations offered, though coolly received. Some are more angry than others, and eventually a psychologist is called in. And everything that happens after that isn't mine to spoil.
All the acting is pitch-perfect (well, except for a woman who has a crush on Oldman, but whatever), and the dialogue is extraordinarily intelligent and well-researched. Bixby has accomplished a difficult task: make the absurd not only believable but engrossing. Oldman's life is not only exceptional but ultimately tragic, and the intellectual, and in some cases moral, trials posed to the listeners are equally heart-wrenching. Set almost entirely in Oldman's living room, the script is a shining example of how science fiction doesn't need to have flashy special effects or expansive locales in order to provoke thought and discussion - it's a triumph of pure storytelling. A couple of wrinkles do trip up the film, though - shot on a pair of Panasonic DVX100 camcorders and processed through Filmlook, the viewing experience is particularly grainy, especially when the conversation drags into night and pixels the size of postage stamps dominate the frame. Also, the ending's a bit shaky, and the fact that it hinges on that female character I mentioned earlier doesn't help. All of these are, of course, minor details. The movie is not even 90 minutes long, an economic detail passed down from TV writing, so if you think for a second this movie will waste your time those thoughts should be put to rest. Don't believe me? The DVD company put it up on YouTube for free:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAarR4tVEHU (no embedding, sorry)
~PNK
*Get it? Get it?! LAUGH, CLOWN! LAUGH!!!
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