Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2020 May 20

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May 20

My Dinner with Andre box office

The My Dinner with Andre infobox, citing this, says the movie had a $475,000 and only $15,063 in gross box office. Can that second number be right? The movie was well received, was reviewed in the NY Times, and was supposedly (j/k) the subject of a video game.[1] I saw it many years ago but don't remember whether that was in a theater or on TV. It is available on DVD. I think even with Hollywood accounting that $15K number sounds wrong. If someone here has IMDB Pro or whatever, can they check what it says there? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:3567:50D5:8BFF:4588 (talk) 05:39, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

The gross box office take does sound like a number it would be hard for even Hollywood accounting to mess with, but I have no expertise on this. --76.71.5.208 (talk) 06:03, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

This site, which I always thought was meant to be reliable on these numbers, has an even lower amount – $5,073. --Viennese Waltz 08:15, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

It was an obscure art film, which only became famous as the type example of "the obscure art film". It's basically an "anti-film" in its lack of plot or really any convention of standard narrative structure, and has become something of the sort of "the one avant garde art film everyone knows". It is basically the 4'33" of the film world, and just as most people who have had 4'33" described to them have never seen a performance of it, most people who have heard of My Dinner with Andre have probably not seen it in its entirety, and probably even less of them saw it in the theaters. In other words, its fame exceeds its popularity as an actual film, and the whole "Someone created a video game out of it" is really just an example of the ridiculousness of the film itself, and of the silliness of creating a video game out of a plotless film, than of representing its actual popularity as a marketable movie. --Jayron32 17:35, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I've seen it, though not in a theater. --76.71.5.208 (talk) 19:32, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Myself as well. I saw it on VHS probably 10 years later. But the point is, it wasn't Raiders of the Lost Ark or On Golden Pond or something like that, that were designed, marketed, and released as "big budget blockbuster" films the same year. It was conceived as, marketed as, and released as an avant-garde art-house film, and those films just don't usually have much at-the-time popularity. The people who saw My Dinner With Andre in the theatre on its first run were likely miniscule. It's only in retrospect that it has become famous. --Jayron32 19:48, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

The number of people who saw it might have been minuscule but many of us were quite normal in size :-) This thread reminds me that one of the all time great editor names around here is My Dinner With Andre The Giant. MarnetteD|Talk 20:27, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

That is priceless! It could easily be the response to one of those "before and after" clues on Jeopardy! As to the movie, it gained some renown because Siskel & Ebert both gave it high praise. And it was certainly interesting to watch, once anyway. It did cross my mind that Hitchcock would have said that's not a movie, unless there's a ticking time bomb under the dinner table, and then you've got a movie! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:04, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Or a dead body in the trunk used as a buffet table. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:44, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

"Meat Loaf!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:38, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

• My Dinner with Andre was originally released in 1981. At that time, box office financial reporting was much more limited than what became available in later years. While there are some problems with Box Office Mojo's data, you can see for a year such as 2003 that for any given weekend, grosses were available for over 100 films including some playing in as few as 1 theater. But in 1981, there isn't even one weekend where grosses are available for the top 10 films. In 1982, data is available for between 10 and 20 films each week. Playing in limited release, My Dinner with Andre would have been unlikely to ever make the weekend top 20, much less the top 10. As a result, it looks like basically all of the box office information that can be found for the film reflects a later re-release which didn't bring in much money, but occurred in a time when box office data was more readily accessible. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 21:08, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. I'm going to take the box office number out of the infobox based on the above comments. 2601:648:8202:96B0:3567:50D5:8BFF:4588 (talk) 22:03, 22 May 2020 (UTC)