No spoiler here: In the very first scene of The End of the Tour, set in 2008, writer David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) receives a phone call, informing him that, “according to an unconfirmed report, David Wallace is dead.”
I’m ashamed to reveal that the suicide of David Foster Wallace meant nothing to me at the time, if I even knew who he was. Even at the time of this writing, while I’m more aware of his cultural and literary importance, I’ve still not read Infinite Jest, his 1,100-page magnum opus from 1996, owing to the same unconvincing reasons I haven’t read Ulysses — too intimidating, I’m too busy, no time, blah blah blah.
Suffice it to say that after seeing The End of the Tour, it’s catapulted to next on my list. But my lack of fanboy purity for Wallace’s work probably puts me closer to the moviegoing masses, which might be attracted to seeing The End of the Tour on the strength of its reviews and its cast rather than fealty to its subject matter.
After that death announcement, the movie quickly flashes back to 1996 and stays there for the next 100 minutes or so, as Lipsky, a successful magazine writer who has just published his first novel, pitches a profile on Wallace (Jason Segel) to his editor at Rolling Stone. Writers aren’t really the magazine’s thing; at the time, RS hadn’t published a story on a young writer in 10 years. It made an exception for Wallace, sending Lipsky to Wallace’s secluded Middle American home, where he joins the legendary novelist on the last stop of his Infinite Jest book tour.
Lipsky interviews Wallace at diners and on couches, and in cars, airplanes and hotels over a whirlwind few days. For a noticeably long time, the movie contains no speaking parts except for its two leads, who grow close enough to threaten Lipsky’s objectivity. Were it not for the scene changes, the movie would have the intellectual nutrition of a conversational film like My Dinner With Andre.
Along the way, Lipsky discovers a man who is naturally funny and eloquent but also reticent of fame and its attendant allures, preferring to evade the spotlights the literary world continues to shine his way. Segel’s embodiment is marvelous in its implacability. Dressed like a bohemian lumberjack — unshaven, grunge-haired, with a self-effacing doo-rag and checkered coats — Segel disappears effortlessly into an enigma wrapped inside a mystery. He conveys the impression of Wallace as a guy who is uncomfortable in his own skin, whose conception of celebrity is as self-defeating as anonymity. Devoid of “acting,” it’s easily the best and most mature performance he’s ever given.
Eisenberg’s performance is equally terrific, if inherently more workmanlike. It’s filled with the nervous, starry-eyed affectations of a young man possibly out of his depth, which is a mental and emotional space Eisenberg has inhabited beautifully throughout his movie career. You get the impression that for Lipsky, the road trip is a juggling act between business and pleasure — between a young, fame-starved writer seeking to extract some of his idol’s charisma and a journalist desperate to bring color and passion out of his retiring subject for the purposes of a good Rolling Stone read. I’ve been in similar positions myself. Indeed, Eisenberg’s frequent glances at his audio recorder every time Wallace drops a disarming pearl of truth or wisdom will not go unnoticed by any reporter who happens to be in the audience.
As the tête-à-tête wends through Minnesota — which includes a bookstore reading, a public-radio interview and a Mall of the Americas visit — Lipsky tries to discover a narrative shape for his endless hours of interviews, and this too is a battle. He’s prone to sound summations of Wallace’s psychology, which Wallace promptly shoots down: His life is too messy and unglamorous for such writerly reductionism. Even their genial conversations have an uncomfortable air of world leaders meeting for a summit, cordially agreeing on policy while understanding that each of them has an opposing agenda.
The movie is based on Lipsky’s 2010 memoir of this period, titled Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself; the Rolling Stone article, incidentally, was never published. The film’s screenplay is written by the great playwright Donald Margulies (Collected Stories), but it’s not a work requiring literary invention: The naturalism of the dialogue largely owes to the wealth of transcripts printed in Lipsky’s book. It’s easy to sound convincing when your characters recite things they really did say. Director James Ponsoldt maintains this aura of formal realism throughout, placing Wallace as one titanic figure in a ’90s pop-culture landscape that includes references to Alanis Morissette, Jonathan Franzen and Primary Colors, and to the largely forgotten movies Broken Arrow and The Late Shift.
Ponsoldt appears to have dropped the ball, however, in his depiction of Lipsky as a middling literary aspirant at the time of his Wallace assignment. An early scene depicts him reading from his debut novel Art Fair to a bookstore audience in which the number of empty chairs dwarf the half-dozen slouching, glazed-over attendees. Later in the movie, he confesses to Wallace his envy at the positive reviews of Infinite Jest. By all accounts, Art Fair was also a smashing success that earned many glowing superlatives from critics.
Aside from that, I bought everything about The End of the Tour, which is sure to be the lit geeks’ favorite film of the year. Then again, as an arts reporter and a somewhat young man — for a few more years, I can still accurately claim to be under 35 — I’m exactly the movie’s demographic (as well as Wallace’s). Will The End of the Tour appeal to a broad swath of moviegoers, or will it just preach to the converted? I believe it’s good enough to deserve the best of both worlds: playing to Wallace’s base and introducing new converts.
It’s an awful shame that Wallace did not live to see this respectful interpretation of his complicated persona, but it’s hard to imagine the movie being made (or Lipsky’s memoir being written) had he not ended his life. Nothing increases a great author’s cachet quite like an early grave.
THE END OF THE TOUR. Director: James Ponsoldt; Cast: Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg, Anna Chlumsky, Joan Cusack, Ron Livingston; Distributor: A24; Rating: R; Opens: Today at area theaters