The End of the Tour
Directed by: James Ponsoldt
Written by: Donald Margulies - Based on the Book "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace" by David Lipsky
Starring: Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg, Anna Chlumsky, Joan Cusack, Mamie Gummer, Ron Livingston, Mickey Sumner
Drama - 106 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Aug 2015
Written by: Donald Margulies - Based on the Book "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace" by David Lipsky
Starring: Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg, Anna Chlumsky, Joan Cusack, Mamie Gummer, Ron Livingston, Mickey Sumner
Drama - 106 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Aug 2015
I can spin this review in any of a hundred different ways. It doesn’t even matter if I liked the film or not, I can shine it through a prism of respect and rave about its intelligence or I may just as easily filter it through snark and sarcasm and label it pretentious. The writer’s power is absolute after he has his facts; the tone and angle I decide to show the readers are entirely up to me. Such was David Foster Wallace’s fear in 1996 when Rolling Stone came knocking on his door. Rolling Stone has a history of producing unvarnished and tough-nosed journalism when they choose to. Assigning a journalist to follow Wallace around for a few days was a clue this was going to be no puff piece. This atmosphere of unease and suspect glances embodies and surrounds James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour. 90% of The End of the Tour is two guys talking about writing and life, one with a tape recorder fused into his palm. For the literary among us, this may be heaven. For Wallace fanatics, this may be dread that filmmakers will miss the point and mess it all up. For the rest, The End of the Tour is an opportunity to learn about an author you are probably unfamiliar with, enjoy some serious actor heavy-lifting, and walk away in a bit of trance after two hours of introspection and self-study.
Infinite Jest was not David Foster Wallace’s first novel, but upon its release in 1996, it catapulted him into the literary stratosphere. Reviewers and critics were not shy adding Wallace (Jason Segel, 2013’s This Is the End) to lists including the names Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. To New York writer and Rolling Stone contributor David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg, 2014’s Night Moves), these comparisons were just fawning over the next big thing. Lipsky convinced Rolling Stone to set him up for an in-depth, one-one-one with America’s new Mark Twain. According to The End of the Tour, Lipsky arrived in rural Bloomington, Illinois with an agenda; he was going to poke holes in the magical David Foster Wallace façade.
Infinite Jest was not David Foster Wallace’s first novel, but upon its release in 1996, it catapulted him into the literary stratosphere. Reviewers and critics were not shy adding Wallace (Jason Segel, 2013’s This Is the End) to lists including the names Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. To New York writer and Rolling Stone contributor David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg, 2014’s Night Moves), these comparisons were just fawning over the next big thing. Lipsky convinced Rolling Stone to set him up for an in-depth, one-one-one with America’s new Mark Twain. According to The End of the Tour, Lipsky arrived in rural Bloomington, Illinois with an agenda; he was going to poke holes in the magical David Foster Wallace façade.
It is no secret to those of us who already know in real life or to the audience who learn about it in the film’s first scene; David Foster Wallace committed suicide in 2008. Legions of Wallace fans were horrified to learn a biopic was in the works about the man, now legend. Stepping back from the standard life story formula, writer Donald Margulies chose to adapt Lipsky’s Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, a memoir published two years after Wallace’s death. The End of the Tour is therefore a slice of life biopic rather than a ‘from birth to death’ study. Director James Ponsoldt (Smashed, The Spectacular Now) agreed a full biopic would be too limiting. There are quite a few times I felt I learned almost nothing about a person after a couple hours watching a film chart their history. The End of the Tour only encompasses five small days in the man’s life.
Stepping up to the plate to play the writer is Jason Segel, a famous face known for comedy. In my humble opinion, Segel is too famous to effectively portray Wallace. I wasn’t watching David Foster Wallace; I was watching Jason Segel adopt a new accent playing David Foster Wallace. It’s the same feeling I had watching Will Smith play Mohammed Ali. Give me Chadwick Boseman as James Brown or Jamal Woolard as The Notorious B.I.G., faces I do not immediately recognize. There was a part of my brain that kept reminding me this guy playing David Foster Wallace was Marshall Ericson in How I Met Your Mother. Matching Segel line for line is Jesse Eisenberg as Lipsky, a man a few years younger and overtly envious of Wallace’s fame and respect, even though he repeatedly denies the accusation. Eisenberg effectively delivers his familiar chopped and staccato words and comes across as pushy and invading, the way a reporter on a story should come across.
Wallace’s parents are academics, English and Philosophy. Of course he rambles on and on about self-consciousness and contemporary American dogma. Plato, quoting Socrates, wrote “A life unexamined is not worth living.” Wallace must have lived for dozens of folks then because all this man could do was examine, poke, and turn over his beliefs and dispositions. Squirrelled away teaching at a state college, living alone with two dogs, and with no noticeable close attachments, Wallace comes off as an isolated recluse; certainly a tough nut to crack. Misanthropic might be a bit too harsh for Wallace, but one of the first things he tells Lipsky is to lose his phone number.
Danny Elfman’s score, minimalist yet pleasantly dressing the edges, along with a healthy dose of R.E.M., carry us along on not necessarily a journey, but one very long conversation about…well, about everything. Wallace and Lipsky dive into the past, rumors, allegations, and even throw harsh words, accusations, and feelings bordering on resentment. Lipsky is the reporter asking questions but he spends his fair amount of time underneath the microscope as Wallace nonchalantly throws most of the inquisitions right back at him. Lipsky aches to confirm the pretension, the glaring phony he is sure is sitting right across from him. Wallace says he is a regular guy, he does regular guy things; the most pretentious thing about him is he doesn’t own a TV. Lipsky responds with the film’s best line, “Nobody cracks open a thousand page book if they think it was written by a regular guy.”
Was David Foster Wallace a genius? Many well-read and over-educated folks seem to think so. There is no hard and fast way a genius is supposed to live or act. What throws Lipsky for a loop is how a bandana-wearing, soda-swilling nobody living in the middle of nowhere could write the most compelling prose of the late 20th century. His questions aren’t for Rolling Stone; they are for him. Lipsky's book was also published in 1996 and he lives in New York City with a gorgeous woman; how is it possible The New Yorker shouts from the rooftops about some nobody from Illinois? Watch The End of the Tour and you just may figure it out right alongside the reporter.
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