The End of the Tour

Saw this film last weekend at its world premiere at Sundance. First of all, Donald Margulies' script was fantastic. I am slightly partial to good writing in film, so perhaps that's just what stood out to me, but the dialogue is incredibly well-written and natural and at least generally captures David Foster Wallace's fascinating way of talking. In essence (and in the best of ways), nothing really happens in this movie. There isn't a lot of high stakes drama, but that's exactly what makes it so compelling. It's like we as the audience get a glimpse into two men struggling with the same ideas about life, art, expression, addiction, culture, and depression.

Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg live up to the task of interpreting the script, helped along the way by director James Ponsoldt. The direction is simple, and the camera work is relatively basic throughout, giving the actors plenty of room to work with natural rhythm. Segel definitely impressed me, as this was the first dramatic role I've seen him in. While he didn't exactly capture some of Wallace's real-life mannerisms, I'm not sure if that was exactly the point of the film. He interpreted the script in a powerful way, and I think that that ended up working out quite well for the overall tone of the film. Eisenberg played his usual somewhat neurotic, slightly asshole- ish character very well, and I thought it fit the reporter role perfectly.

Overall, I would strongly recommend the film. 9/10

Rarely am I enlightened by a film in the way I was by this one. Not that I was lectured or taught something, but that I had a visceral response to what I had experienced on screen that I wouldn't be able to explain but to ask you to recall a song or a book or a show that invited you to pour your soul into it and in return reminded you of what it was like to have one. I was reminded that films can do this.

I don't expect everyone to like it to the degree that I did because I can only base my strong inclination towards this movie on the connection I personally made with it which was emotional rather than intellectual, although the film is rich and lingering in its intellect as well, and of course; I recognize what makes this film profound, which I'll try to explain.

This is a talky film from director James Ponsoldt, who I'd now have to rank as one of my favorite contemporary directors after this and another I've seen and loved, The Spectacular Now. This director isn't one you'd normally find on a list ranking among the greatest working today because he's not about style and doesn't appeal to the ego as much as other contemporaries such as Wes Anderson and David Fincher do (in addition to many others, not to single them out). No, Ponsoldt is subtle and reserves his ego. He is unimposing on the lives of his characters and candid about what his films are trying to do and say, not hiding beneath film rhetoric or allegory or the impression of a representational work. And what's great about this is how his films point out that you don't need intricate sets or perfectly symmetrical shots to create beauty. This film has some of the most beautiful shots I've seen (the shot of them walking in the snow, the shot of the normally- withdrawn Wallace dancing), all the more so because of their subtlety, giving the feeling that the beauty was discovered and not created by the director.

But the beauty is often created by the actors. Ponsoldt trusts his actors and puts his efforts towards making the characters come alive before our eyes. I was under the fantastic impression that I was witnessing a completely real human soul with Segel's performance. He felt so real, so three dimensional. I understand him, even though I am not him. This is more magical to me than sweeping camera movements or extravagant art direction.

I didn't realize when watching the film that the dialogue is all based on, if not directly taken from, the tapes journalist (and protagonist) David Lipsky (Eisenberg) recorded of his interviewee, universally acclaimed novelist David Foster Wallace (Segel). The dialogue is rich with insight into the character's thought processes and their observations on life (but mostly those of Wallace). I was riveted at every moment the two were talking, feeling as though being revealed before me were the truths of life. The thrill of being a fly on the wall. And it's not just the words containing the wisdom of the thoughtful and complicated Wallace, but the delivery via the actors and the way in which the many hours of tape are edited to allow Wallace's ideas and observations to resonate. Even beyond Wallace's ideas, the film cuts to the core and observes Wallace as a human being, not different for his brilliance but the same for his humanness.

The film is about so many things it would be overwhelming to attempt list all of them. Its ideas, however many, are all-encompassing of what it means to exist, which is, beyond the desire for fame and ego-boosts, to want to be understood. The film observes how the inner-worlds of all people are so uniquely complicated and pays tribute to that wonder. I'll be relating my experiences to this film in time to come.

In 1996 David Foster Wallace's 1079-page novel Infinite Jest hit the literary scene like a rocket. The publisher's marketing efforts meant the book was everywhere, but the man himself—shy, full of self-doubt, not wanting to be trapped into any literary poseur moments and seeing them as inevitable—was difficult to read. This movie uses a tyro journalist's eye to probe Wallace during an intense five days of interviewing toward the end of the Infinite Jest book tour. As a tryout writer for Rolling Stone, reporter David Lipsky had begged for the assignment to write a profile of Wallace, which ultimately the magazine never published. But the tapes survived, and after Wallace's suicide in 2008 they became the basis for Lipsky's 2010 book, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, which fed David Margulies screenplay. The plot of the movie is minimal; instead, it's a deep exploration of character. It may just be two guys talking, but I found it tectonic. Director James Ponsoldt has brought nuanced, intelligent performances from his two main actors—Jason Segel as Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as reporter David Lipsky. Lipsky is a novelist himself, with a so-so book to his credit. Wallace has reached the heights, and what would it take for Lipsky to scramble up there too? Jealousy and admiration are at war within him and, confronted with Wallace's occasional oddness, one manifestation of which is the attempt to be Super-Regular Guy—owning dogs, eating junk food, obsessively watching television—he isn't sure what to feel. You see it on his face. Is Lipsky friend or foe? He's not above snooping around Wallace's house or chatting up his friends to nail his story. Lipsky rightly makes Wallace nervous, the tape recorder makes him nervous; he amuses, he evades, he delivers a punch of a line, he feints. When the going gets too rough, Lipsky falls back on saying, "You agreed to the interview," and Wallace climbs back in the saddle, as if saying to himself, just finish this awful ride, then back to the peace and solitude necessary actually to write. In the meantime, he is, as A. O. Scott said in his New York Times review, "playing the role of a writer in someone else's fantasy." The movie's opening scene delivers the fact of the suicide, which by design looms over all that follows, in the long flashback to a dozen years earlier and the failed interview. You can't help but interpret every statement of Wallace's through that lens. The depression is clear. He's been treated for it and for alcoholism, from which he seems to have recovered. The two Davids walk on the snow-covered farm fields of Wallace's Illinois home and talk about how beautiful it is, but it is bleak, and even in as jam-packed an environment as the Mall of America Wallace's conversation focuses on the emptiness at the heart of life. Yet his gentle humor infuses almost every exchange, and Lipsky can be wickedly funny too. Wallace can't help but feel great ambivalence toward Lipsky; he recognizes Lipsky's envy and his hero-worship, and both are troubling. He felt a truth inside himself, but he finds it almost impossible to capture and isn't sure he has, saying, "The more people think you're really great, the bigger your fear of being a fraud is." Infinite Jest was a widely praised literary success, but not to Wallace himself.

Welcome inside the mind of David Foster Wallace. He's a peculiar man. He thinks he's a regular man, when he knows that he's a genius. He hates being a genius, and he hates being a regular guy. His life is as meandering as his dialogs recorded by David Lipsky. The End of the Tour feels more like a documentary, than dramatized narrative feature. So in effect, this movie is as real as it gets about David Foster Wallace. It's all about the acting here, and it shines. Jason Segel was born to play DFW. He proves to us that he is more than a series of cheap shots at his naked body. Here, he doesn't strip himself of his clothes, he strips himself of his emotions. I hope award season treats him very kindly. It's so natural, and easygoing, and pays a respect to Richard Linklater in tone. It's a scatterbrained wonder, a good film to watch on a lazy day.

"Fiction's about what it is to be a human being." David Foster Wallace

In 1996 David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) interviewed acclaimed author David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) over the course of several days in Minneapolis for a book tour about his 1000 page epic novel, Infinite Jest. Essentially a two hander in the spirit of the recent True Story, about the interview with alleged murderer Christian Longo (James Franco), The End of the Tour is one of the most accessible biopics about smart people in recent memory.

What sets The End off from True Story and other stories about gifted, troubled authors is its easy manner that doesn't play up intellectual snobbery but rather tries to understand the isolation and diffidence of geniuses. While Lipsky is not the genius writer that Wallace is, he is still a published novelist and a writer for Rolling Stone—the boy has the chops that allow him to get inside Wallace, as much as that is possible with writers slightly less private than, say, JD Salinger.

Wallace reveals himself, albeit obliquely, as a talented working class author bedeviled by addictions that seem to feed his insecurities: Obsessed by TV, he decides not to have one because he'd watch it; having overdosed on booze, he decides not to drink; whether or not he became addicted to heroin is uncertain.

What is certain is that as individualistic as Wallace is, and his densely verbose prose would confirm that, he is still one of us just trying to figure out his existential place in a chaotic world. His immersion in pop culture makes the brainy prose readable and enjoyable because he is tuned in and while heavily analytical, in touch with our daily experience.

Such is the spirit of The End of the Tour: it frequently relies on the mundane (e.g., pop tarts for breakfast, McDonald's for dinner, old TV shows for entertainment) to allow the more challenging—why he wears a bandanna—to reveal his soul (he worries that Lipsky's question about the affectation of the bandanna now makes himself conscious about wearing it, as if he were trying for an impression when he actually wasn't). His prose can be downright entertaining: "Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."

Segel is a revelation as an actor. From mediocre romcoms to perfectly embodying a conflicted writer, Segel remains in low-key character throughout. Here's what Wallace says about the loneliness that was his constant companion before he committed suicide:

"Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated." (The Pale King, 2011)

Introduce yourself to this verbal magician by seeing one of the best films of the year: The End of the Tour.