Donald Trump, the Graham-Cassidy,...

..."health care" bill, North Korea, Paul Manafort, Facebook, Tom Price, Roy Moore, hurricanes, earthquakes, Donald Trump -- good grief! The news is almost too horrible to read. Let's talk about something else for a minute.

Lillian Ross, a staff writer for The New Yorker who wrote Here but Not Here: A Love Story (which I actually read) about her 50-year love affair with her married boss, New Yorker editor William Shawn (who left her nothing in his will), died at age 99.

Who cares? you might ask. Fair question. But Mr. Shawn was the father of Wallace Shawn, who co-wrote and co-starred in the quirky 1981 cult film, My Dinner with Andre. I couldn't upload the trailer for some reason, so you can watch the entire movie instead. One of my favorite lines is from the very beginning, by Wally Shawn:

I've lived in this city all my life. I grew up on the Upper East Side. When I was ten years old I was rich, I was an aristocrat, riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort, and all I thought about was art and music. Now, I'm thirty-six and all I think about is money.

Yesterday, after reading Ms. Ross's obit in the Times, I did a deep-dive on YouTube (click here and here) and discovered, among other things:

1) The original script for My Dinner with Andre was three hours long;

2) Director Louis Malle had Andre Gregory speak faster than normal. (Now I know why I've always had trouble processing what he had to say.);

3) The movie was shot, not in a New York restaurant, but in an abandoned "grand, old southern hotel" in either Richmond, Virginia, or New Richmond, West Virginia, of all places. Since it would have "cost a fortune" to turn on the heat, Mr. Gregory was forced to wear long underwear, worked with an electric blanket on his lap and drank cognac between takes. Seriously, they couldn't find a suitable restaurant in all of Manhattan?!? And, finally;

4) The role of the headwaiter was played, not by a professional actor, but by the Vienna-born Jean H. Lenauer, above. Again, they couldn't find anyone else for this?!? Apparently not. Mr. Gregory recalls talking to his friend Richard Avedon, the photographer, who remembered a man who used to work in the film archive department of MOMA. He didn't know if he was still alive, but said he had an "amazing face." The 75-year-old Lenauer was a refugee from the Nazis who had never been on a movie set in his life. Mr. Malle, Mr. Gregory said, wanted to fire him after the first day because he didn't know how to wait tables. That's crazy, isn't it?

But not half as crazy, or depressing, as the current news. My advice is to watch (or rewatch) My Dinner with Andre, follow the Cubs or just go to a high school football game this weekend (like me). This, too, shall pass. (I hope.)