watersports joke

i always wondered, when i watched the buffet for the first time, why THIS movie? i mean, it's sort of weird, isn't it, especially if you don't know much about director mj. the rest of the shows pay homage to things like mrs doubtfire or the hit abc series lost or judge bao of all things, and here is this long 2 actor play with no action, no traditional story to speak of, little to no variation in the shot composition or the editing, and no surface ties to ntb. oh, how wrong i was lmao. having watched it now, it makes a lotta sense.

first of all i wanna say that it's really gaggy how, even tho wallace shawn and jay mccarrol have 2 completely different faces, how alike they look in some of the shots where wally is listening to andré. tinfoilhatting would be to assume jay took clues from the movie, but even if he didn't, i think it's bc wally is, over the course of the movie, slowly more and more fascinated by and drawn to andré and what he's saying, and that shows on the actor's face. this is even reflected in the editing bc they start sort of, melting together, sharing more shots, instead of the feeling of distance they start the movie out with. that part really got me bc i didn't expect it, but it makes sense, both for the movie itself and for the way matt and jay reach an understanding (however shaky) at the end of the buffet episode. i think to me, ultimately, my dinner with andre is about connection and feeling anchored in your life via truly seeing other people and being truly seen by other people, and ho boy, when you put that into the context of ntb, suddenly you're lying on the floor crying. stick with me.

i was also surprised to actually hear gymnopédie no 1 there at the end, i fully thought that was an addition of the show. but no, at the end wally and andré have talked so passionately and intensely with one another that they completely missed everyone else is gone and the waitstaff is just waiting for them to finish their damn dinner already. more on this later, but when you think about how the episode puts that into a similar context (being thrown out bc they live too much in their own little world), it clicks.

i think the thing that's going to stick with me the most is that andré hates himself. like, not a little bit, he fucking detests himself, at least part of himself. i mean he likens himself to albert speer at one point and says he should be tried at nürnberg just how he was (!!!). not literally ofc (sidenote that wallace shawn and andré gregory are both jewish), but he hates how he's squandered his life in pursuit of his art and how little he still understands about human connection and himself despite everything. i can't make even an educated guess about director mj, but show mj absolutely hates himself. i think that's why sometimes when ppl talk about psychological manipulation in ntb it feels a little off to me, bc while i agree they're both manipulative douchebags, i'm not sure they're even aware they're doing it. we all know jay is head empty, but i think there's only 2 things matt knows: life without jay is inconceivable, and he never wants to stop having fun. no 2 is kinda tied to no 1 anyway, but they both result in a life that is largely dedicated to the endeavour of ensuring jay stays (and, to a certain extent, that jay is content enough to stay). the reason that is so tied to how andré feels about himself and his art is that one might say there is one more thing matt knows: deep down he's aware of how much of a failure he is. the biggest piece of evidence for this is the buddy to me, bc in that ep even HIS OWN PERSONA that he created specifically to be with jay when jay didn't want to be with him (and then to encourage and distract jay) ends up betraying matt. jay likes tony so much that matt gets jealous (again, oF HIS OWN FAKE IMPERSONATION) and then he quickly does a 180 in order to regain sole ownership of jay and jay's ambitions, instead of realizing that underneath tony, matt is still matt, so it's really matt that jay likes. but that's an inference, and matt can't live from inference. he needs tangible proof that this not only is enough, but will always be enough, and if the proof isn't given freely he will force the world to bend in such a way that it is. but again, i don't think he's even conscious of that in such a way that he wakes up and makes a numerical list of how he's going to push jay's buttons today. it's more something that happens because of how tied he feels his existence is to jay's, an inevitable bubbling up of the love inside (even if it's toxic, i do think it's love).

there's a line a good ways into the movie that really rattled me: "plans and goals are not part of reality, they're dreams, fantasy" (paraphrased slightly). now isn't that such a thesis for the shows (especially the webseries)? really, the plans that jay and matt make day in and day out are absurd flights of fancy with no perceivable anchor in reality other than dragging unfortunate bystanders into their childish schemes, and the creators themselves have spoken on multiple occasions about how that's heaven for matt, and hell for jay (although i'm not convinced it's as bad (i.e. unwanted and undesired) for him as they sometimes say it is, but i understand you have to emphasize that more in the movie in order for the whole plot to work). now, what wally and andré mean is something slightly different; they're talking about the futility of plans and goals in terms of being the exact opposite of being present in the moment and really seeing and understanding things and people around you. whereas the show feels like it's more commenting on the nature of an eternal sleepover, a tiny world where you'll never have to be an adult in any meaningful capacity, and the plans are just a way to perpetuate that sleepover and reset the clock every time it becomes morning. but the outcome is the same. it's a dream world, where you're lulled into autopilot mode unless you make a decision to be conscious.

another important line for me was the statement that art must include love to really mean something. it's listed among other things, but that really stuck out to me bc it's not something you usually hear, you more often hear that it has to be sincere or honest, or that it must come from the soul, etc. maybe they mean the same thing ultimately, but i still liked this bc it felt like, given how that point of the discussion was sandwiched between talks about death and sex, that it's very much human love they mean. love for one another, but more importantly being able to truly see another person for who they are. it doesn't surprise me anymore, having watched the whole movie now, that wally quotes autumn sonata in the beginning, a movie that itself starts out with the kind of thesis that the artist doesn't know who she truly is, and that she feels like she can only experience that through another person loving her as she is, even tho she feels like that's a fancy dream (see where this is going?).

having mentioned death, that's something that pops up in the movie again and again. andré's biggest fear seems to be death, and wally is equally terrified of quietly sitting with himself, bc without distractions he's confronted with the fact that he also hates himself, in the way that he thinks he deserves the things he does as "distractions"—living, writing plays, acting—but he doesn't deserve to just exist. both fears are about finding yourself unable to face away from the natural end of human life and thus conscious thought, something that seems inconceivable bc try thinking about how one day, you're not gonna be thinking anymore (see the parasocial parallels here...). there's of course something in here about taking part in ppl's deaths whenever you perceive art, bc you're taking a frame of them as they were in that moment and preserving it even as nature and time continue to roll that person closer to death. but irt to ntb, i think every artist can see themselves in a character who's so terrified of a relationship with someone who is vital to his art and being ending that he would rather electrocute himself or stop existing altogether than see that become a reality.

as i said in the beginning, andré and wally both talk a great deal about wanting to feel genuine, true connection, and that fits very much with ntb as well. i feel at times that especially director mj is trying to find connection through his work in order to work out who he really is, bc playing yourself to such an extent always results in severing yourself, too (like, as in the show severance; bifurcating yourself into several beings that are all YOU but that cannot be you at the same time). one must remember that wallace and andré play themselves in the movie, just like how matt and jay play themselves; since it's such a real time piece and you get so drawn in by their discussions of how they see the modern world (at least i did), you might forget that over the course of the movie, but they're really talking to each other, not so much an audience. i think that, at the very least, in the same way wally and andré are walking each other through a negotiation of how they perceive art (an unfinished negotiation, crucially, bc art is always unfinished), irl matt and jay have been having this ongoing conversation about themselves and their art and most importantly their relationship for some 20+ years now, and i think at the end of the day that's what the show and the movie and all that really are: a way for them to have that discussion in a safe space BDSM improv (same thing, really) scene with the involvement of an audience so they can't back out.

now, having said what i said about talking to each other more than to an audience, i wanna clarify something: there is an important 3rd actor in the movie to me, and that's the elderly waiter. there are a lot of shots that show him in the background reacting subtly to (most often) andré with what seems to be some kind of confused disdain, and i think as much as he's meant to represent the world outside of matt and jay's andré and wallace's world, he's also meant to represent the eye of the audience, in a way. the audience (and the cameras) are such fascinating parts of ntb to me, bc it's not just that we and jared and co are mere spectators, we seem to exist in this weird dubcon cuck love triangle with matt and jay where, if matt is looking at jay and jay is looking at matt, we represent the third angle, looking at them both so they can look at each other. it's not a coincidence, imo, that my dinner with andre features a mirror conveniently placed on the wall behind wally, where you can occasionally see andré's reflection in the shots. andré literally reflects on himself, and he's very introspective but also very eloquent in bringing that introspective to others. wally is the one who listens, rapt, intellectually and physically stimulated (there's a lot of closeups of wally's face, eyes glistening, licking his lips, eyes glued to andré so much he doesn't even look at his wine glass as he grabs it; make of that what you will, i for one am too much of a cock crazed homo to see anything else). i don't think it's saying that there's a power imbalance in their relationship the way ntb says that sometimes, but i do think it's a good analogy for the intellectual and artistic relationship between real mj and real jay.