Andre Gregory is out of his fucking mind. Over a century plus of cinematic miracles, the greatest of all is that Mr. Gregory never spent a long stint in a mental hospital. Ostensibly the hero of the piece – the canary in the coal mine warning humanity that we are all but a newspaper article or sitcom away from total enslavement – he is instead its ultimate villain. The slobbering drunk at the end of the bar who blathers into the night, well past the point where anyone gives a flying fuck.
He’s the ultimate wet blanket: taking everything we might enjoy about life and reducing it to a humorless monologue about the decline of civilization. His partner-in-arms over this seemingly endless evening, Wallace Shawn, is patient for a time, but by the end it is he – the stand in for everyone not in need of electroshock therapy – who holds firm for sanity. Or the simple pleasure of a cup of coffee on a still morning. While Andre pontificates, Wallace actually lives.
Take this particular monologue, one of three dozen that inspires only a feeling of wanting to leave Andre holding the check:
“OK. Yes, we are bored. We’re all bored now. But has it ever occurred to you Wally that the process that creates this boredom that we see in the world now may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing, created by a world totalitarian government based on money, and that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks? and it’s not just a question of individual survival Wally, but that somebody who’s bored is asleep, and somebody who’s asleep will not say no?”
Incredibly, Mr. Shawn takes this all in and doesn’t separate Andre from his teeth, but more than that, he gives him an undue respect few madmen deserve. Fine, such ramblings sounded reasonable in 1981, certainly as the Age of Reagan dawned, but now? It’s as dated as if he’d worn a poncho and beads to a bed-in. Naturally, Andre blames television, which is exactly what you would expect from a frigid academic who thinks Beowulf holds the key to existence. I once had a professor in college who refused to watch anything – movie or television program – that wasn’t a documentary. Yes, he was exactly as horrible as he sounds, and for an entire semester, the man never laughed. Not once. As if I had to say that out loud.
In addition to the hysterical paranoia and obscene persecution complex (on more than one occasion, Andre says he feels like a Jew in 1930’s Germany), Andre shamelessly name drops like some self-important Hollywood producer. If he’s met one Nobel Laureate in physics, he’s met twenty, and half his tales involve wandering some European capital in search of his own sense of superiority. Take this little nugget: “But Wally, don’t you see that comfort can be dangerous? I mean, you like to be comfortable and I like to be comfortable too, but comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquility.” Try and imagine anyone not ensconced in the marble halls of an elite university ever daring to string those words together in public. One will notice that while Andre talks a good game, he’s not about to sell his Brownstone to live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Maybe we all know an Andre: the sort of man who can’t even drink a soda without reminding you about the world’s landfills and how we no longer read 13th century poetry. He’s unbearably exhausting, literally all the time. One can imagine that he even invents new shit to bitch about in his sleep. Despite loving the film – and I do – I’ve never hated a human being more, and I hoped for years after my first viewing that we’d get a sequel where Wallace gets to talk shit at the old fuck’s funeral; beaming, cocky, and poised, given that there’s no hope of a rebuttal.
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