The End of the Tour
It was inevitable that a filmmaker would eventually capitalize on the fame and popularity of David Foster Wallace, a fame both broadened and cheapened by his suicide in 2008. Wallace had been well-known before that, but it seems that whenever a celebrity – even a literary celebrity of postmodern, extremely difficult fiction – dies under tragic circumstances, a significant group of people become fans afterwards. Or rather, what is called “fake fans”, or what used to be called posers. Wallace’s legacy will, I’m sure, be untarnished by this brief and shallow fanbase, but it is unfortunate for the time being.
Wallace was a great writer, worthy of the highest regard, and has earned his place among the best novelists in the Western Cannon. He doesn't deserve the unfortunate stigma his pretentious non-fans have thrust upon him by using his postmortem surge in popularity as leverage to seem more sophisticated than other readers. But, while this is unfortunate, the backlash is equally so; some writers have even taken to mocking Wallace's suicide and calling him one of the worst people who ever wrote: not one of the worst writers, but worst human beings. Neither side is healthy, and neither side deserves to experience his work and interfere with his legacy.
The End of the Tour came out in 2015, long past Wallace’s suicide and well long enough for the fake fans to finally stop trying to read Infinite Jest and simply pretend they had. It felt safe that the movie would be honest, and approach Wallace with the respect he deserved, rather then serving him up as some unrelatable genius complete with every “tortured genius” trope currently known. It seemed that, with the possibility of Infinite Jest or any of Wallace’s other novels becoming a movie coming to a close, Wallace's fans could rest assured that the End of the Tour was likely to be the only movie they would ever get. Besides of course a film adaptation of one of his sort stories, which I haven’t seen and I don’t think anyone else has either.
The End of the Tour is less a biography of Wallace than a solidly honest portrayal of what life is like for a famous writer, and a not-so-famous one. The plot revolves around a road-trip interview between Wallace and David Lipsky, an ambitious writer for Rolling Stone who wants to review Wallace at the height of his career, just after the publication of Infinite Jest and deep into the first phase of its acclaim. Lipsky wasn’t a fan of Wallace before, so there’s no sheepish admiration on his part to make the movie feel insincere, as if it only exists to worship Wallace indiscriminately.
Wallace himself is played by Jason Segel, who gives a really good performance, probably his best, although I’m not a fan of the other movies and shows he appears in so it’s hard for me to judge. He perfectly captures Wallace’s awkwardness and honesty, his passion as well as his idiosyncratic interactions with people he knows aren’t famous, and probably never will be. Lipsky is played by Jesse Eisenberg, who can be hit or miss depending on the script. Eisenberg would seem an odd choice, having already played the aloof, socially awkward but highly intelligent Mark Zuckerberg in the Social Network. But he plays Lipsky well enough to not force comparisons and distractions.
I suppose it would be impossible to make a biographical movie about the great David Foster Wallace without some degree of artsy pretentiousness, but the End of the Tour manages to avoid it for the most part. The movie is slow, mainly conversations between Wallace and Lipsky – it is about an interview – paced here and there with book signings and a sequence involving two of Wallace’s friends.
Wallace and Lipsky begin to dislike each other after Wallace gets defensive over his friend, which brings out the resentment and envy of Lipsky. This might be true to the real life events, but seems contrived and inserted for a more accessible conflict. The more engaging conflict is between Wallace’s homely, boring, hum drum life and the expectations of Lipsky as an aspiring writer. Wallace was a writer of undoubted ability and rare genius, whose work would certainly be studied well past his death, yet the man himself doesn’t indulge his fame and doesn’t seem to even want it. He works part-time at a local college, something his fame and success make unnecessary, so there’s a strong implication that he teaches because he loves it, and unfortunately there's only a few scenes of him in class, but which are among the best.
The heart of the movie is this honest portrayal of what literary fame really is. There’s no drugs or drunken binges; Wallace was a recovering addict. No groupies or mobs of people, only small gatherings at local bookshops where dove-eyed fans are enraptured to see him. The End of the Tour is perhaps unique in showing this type of fame, one which doesn’t open doors to excess or egoism, and powerfully suggests that despite it’s apparent lackluster and lack of excitement, is exactly the fame a sensible person should want.
My main problem with the movie is that it doesn’t touch on Wallace’s love of grammar, which was a large part of his personality and something he cared deeply about. There is a pretty good part where Wallace explains his approach to suicide in the novel, and a particularly good scene where he dwells on the suicidal and ultimately inevitable escalation of pleasure through technology. The movie doesn’t, however, make him out to be a prophet we failed to listen to, or make him wiser than he was. Its best quality is showing Wallace as accurately as possible, and I think succeeds with that goal, although anyone who isn’t already a fan or more than casually interested will find the movie boring and maybe a little preachy.
If you’re a fan of Wallace’s, I recommend the movie with a caveat that you shouldn’t expect anything more than seeing Wallace mostly through his everyday life. It certainly makes him human, showing him boyishly enthusiastic over a mindless action movie (Broken Arrow) and showing his crush on Alanis Morrissette, whom he likes because she makes her average, approachable attractiveness alluring. If you’re curious about Wallace but haven’t read anything by him, you should probably read a little bit before watching this movie, unless you’re a really big fan of Segel or Eisenberg. If you’re a writer, or an artist in any medium, you’ll probably enjoy it for it’s sincerity and respect, even if you find Wallace uninteresting and Lipsky a bit of a turd, which he is at times.
I give it four and a half stars.