‘The End of the Tour’ Review: Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg Turn Dialogue into Riveting Cinema
”Infinite Jest“ author David Foster Wallace meets Rolling Stone interviewer David Lipsky in film exploring the push and pull between subject and journalist
What’s particularly disappointing about some of the latter-day Woody Allen comedies is the filmmaker’s recent inability to capture effectively how smart people talk to each other. In his earlier classics, Allen had a gift for human-sounding dialogue even between the most pompous and pretentious of academics, but in movies like “Irrational Man,” his characters sound like they’re spewing computer-generated sentences that happen to include occasional references to Schopenhauer.
Listening to two smart guys talk to each other is among the principal pleasures of “The End of the Tour,” based on writer and journalist David Lipsky’s multiple-day interview with author David Foster Wallace, as the latter was finishing up the promotion for his novel “Infinite Jest.” That book was an unlikely best-seller, weighing in at over three pounds and containing a vast array of footnotes and minutiae regarding the rules of tennis.
(Confession: I purchased and started, but never finished, “Infinite Jest.” I feel confident saying that others probably did the same.)
The film opens in 2008 with Lipsky (played here by Jesse Eisenberg) getting a phone call informing him that Wallace (Jason Segel) has committed suicide. Lipsky is prompted to dig out a shoebox containing tapes of the interview the two had conducted a dozen years before. We then leap back to 1996, where novelist Lipsky has just published his autobiographical novel “The Art Fair.” (In real life, that book made Time magazine’s list of the best books of the year, but the movie — adapted from Lipsky’s memoir by playwright Donald Margulies — presents it as landing without a ripple, with only a handful of semi-interested fans showing up for a reading.)
Hired as a journalist by Rolling Stone, Lipsky pitches his editor (Ron Livingston) the idea of interviewing Wallace, whose new novel is getting rapturous reviews and equally impressive sales numbers. Tape recorder in hand, Lipsky sets off for snowy Bloomington to meet Wallace and join him on a trip to Minneapolis to promote “Infinite Jest.”
That’s pretty much the meat of the story, but within this basic framework, Margulies and director James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now”) delve into many fascinating areas: Can interviewer and subject ever really have a genuine conversation when both people have an agenda that transcends the discussion itself? What compels writers to write, and how does that color their own viewpoint of the world? Can a struggling writer profile a successful author without allowing jealousy to creep in?
These concerns might seem merely intellectual, but Segel and Eisenberg make them palpably human and moving. Yes, they discuss the life of the mind, but they also talk about “Die Hard” and Alanis Morissette. (Heck, they even go see “Broken Arrow” together, at the Mall of America, no less.) In a massive departure from his previous work, Segel embodies Wallace’s intellectual curiosity and dismay over his sudden fame without overplaying the author’s vulnerability. (This performance never stamps “Future Suicide” on itself.) Eisenberg, meanwhile, captures the awkward, anxious intimacy that can bloom between two people who might have become friends under other circumstances but have instead been placed in a position to be, at the very least, cordially adversarial.
Of all the various art forms, writing may be the most challenging to present on the screen; Roger Ebert used to talk about how biopics of authors were often reduced to a scene of clacking away frantically on a typewriter, followed by the moment where he enters a neighborhood bar and slams his manuscript down on a table. “End of the Tour” refrains from depicting the process of writing, but what it has to say about the act of creation, not to mention the act of talking about it to an interviewer, is rich and fascinating.
The movie also does a great job at being a period piece for a relatively recent period — apart from a few references to e-mail, this is still a pre-screen society, when computers and cell phones hadn’t yet consumed our lives. That analog sensibility is felt throughout, from Lipsky’s cassette tapes to the physical, tangible books that people are still carrying (or, in the case of “Infinite Jest,” lugging) in this era. Even the idea of a magazine journalist talking to a household-name author of literature feels like a throwback to a whole other world.
Like “My Dinner with Andre” or “Mindwalk,” “The End of the Tour” turns dialogue into riveting cinema. It’s captivating enough to make me want to try tackling “Infinite Jest” again, and that’s no small feat.
Sundance Party Report in Pictures: Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Kellan Lutz, Jason Segel (Updating Photos)
Keanu Reeves gets Seacrest'ed by Eli Roth as Lorenza Izzo and Collen Camp enjoy the breather while speaking with TheWrap's Jeff Sneider on Saturday.
Tiffany Rose/Getty Images for Chefdance
Pure as snow: Iggy Azalea performed at Billboard's Winter Fest on Saturday night.
Getty Images
Dianna Agron is in town for her drama "Zipper," with "Game of Thrones'" Lena Heady. On her first trip to Sundance, she hit Birchbox's pop-up shop to cut down on the delivery time of the subscription beauty/grooming company.
Tiffany Rose/Getty Images
Rashida Jones, who produced the amateur-to-professional porn documentary "Hot Girls Wanted" that debuted on Saturday afternoon at the Temple Theatre. She and the crew celebrated at the Merrell #Trailscape.
Miles Mortensen
A frequent site in Park City: cell phone charging stations. If half the money spent on parties went to solar energy research, this could be obsolete by next Sundance.
Mikey Glazer
Lori Singer and John Leguizamo celebrate the Stanley Milgram biopic "Experimenter" at the Grey Goose Blue Door on Sunday night. DJ Spider would close it down with a early 1990s hip hop dance party afterwards.
Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
"Flight of the Conchord's" Jemaine Clement and Sean Rad at the Tinder Arts & Cinema Centre's party for "Tig & People Places and Things" on Sunday night.
David Edwards/DailyCeleb
Catherine Durickas from The SpinOffs with Catdance host Nikki Reed. The heavily promoted "feline" film event remains a head scratcher.
Roxy Manning gets the scoop on "Animals" from Mark and Jay Duplass at the Kia Supper Suite by STK on Saturday night.
David Edwards/DailyCeleb
Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, and Nick Offerman form an impressive round table at the Acura studio on Saturday afternoon.
(Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Acura)
Sarah Silverman looks overwhelmed as she ducked in off Main Street to hit Kari Feinstein's Style Lounge, which has been giving full trips (including airfare) to Aruba.
After spending the day on the press circuit, Kid Cudi and director Josh Mond goofed off at a dinner celebrating their film "James White" hosted by Sabra Hummus at Ciseros.
Michael Bezjian
Star Trek co-stars Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto hit up the same Sabra Hummus House for a cross-film kick off party celebrating indy filmmakers.
Michael Bezjian
Director Ramin Bahrani and Michael Shannon strike a pose while celebrating "99 Homes" on the opening weekend.
Michael Bezjian
Toni Collette came through the busy space housing TheWrap's Interview Studio at the Indiegogo Lounge and picked up some fuel at the Tim Hortons Cafe and Bake Shop in the space that will house Iggy Azalea's concert on Saturday night.
Tiffany Rose/Getty Images for Chefdance
She also signed in to Rock & Reilly's, which has been an industry hangout all festival. Thursday night had the densest concentration of L.A. publicists and media in one room actually paying for their own drinks.
Donald Margulies, James Ponsoldt and Jason Segel had one of the hot parties on Friday for "The End of Tour". They broke in the Grey Goose Blue Door on its first night. (Michael Loccisano)
(Michael Loccisano)
Later in the night, Nicole Kidman would party there for "Strangerland".
(Michael Loccisano)
Cool photo opp at the TR Suites. Newly minted Golden Globe winner Gina Rodriguez and Henry Esteve stayed at ground level on the "Vuarnet Sunglasses Lift" supported by Otterbox.
(Alexandra Wyman/AP Invision)
Ryan Hawke and Ethan Hawke at the "Ten Thousand Saints" premiere on Friday night.
George Pimentel/Getty Image
Kiana Madani, Thomas Middleditch, Gary Cole, and Jay Duplass toast "The Bronze" at the Kia Supper Suite by STK.
David Edwards/Daily Celeb
Festival regular Andie McDowell arrives in one of the ubiquitous Kia Sorentos shuttling talent around town.
David Edwards/Daily Celeb
Former SAG president and screen legend Ed Asner is at Sundance on the weekend of the SAG awards. He found some rare personal space with Lois Rezler at the Kia Supper Suite.
David Edwards/Daily Celeb
Josh Hutcherson took a pause with Murilo Bueno at the Merrell Trailscape, where the crown jewel is the Oculus Rift.
Miles Mortensen
Ken Sunshine joined HFPA President Theo Kingma and Sunshine Sachs' Michael Samonte at the HFPA's first event at Sundance -- a party at the Sky Lodge with THR where DJ Jesse Marco got people dancing with "Remix to Ignition."
Al Powers/Powers Imagery
Festival regular Kellan Lutz hit Tao late on Friday, which has Elyx as its partner this year.
Scott Roth/AP Images
Ethan Hawke is amongst the first to tag the hood of an Acura TLX that will be auctioned off for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation after the festival.
California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom popped up on Heber at the Merrell Trailscape on Friday.
Miles Mortensen
Sean P. Means, John Cooper, Keri Putnam, and Sundance chief Robert Redford kicked off the festival at the annual Day One Press Conference on Thursday.
(Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Sundance)
Delta ran a festival shuttle in conjunction with UTA from LAX on Thursday, raffling off business class tickets to Shanghai, Paris, "anywhere in the 50 states," and "anywhere in Mexico" on board. People actually talked to their seat neighbors on the all-industry flight. The pilots hawked a script.
(Mikey Glazer)
UTA's Jeremy Barber with Delta's Ranjan Goswami, who closed down Lemonade in LAX for an industry pre-flight brunch. "Bad news, Jeremy Zimmer did not make the flight. Good news, we have his credit card and we will be buying drinks," Goswami said over the flight's P.A.
Post flight, official Sundance vehicles awaited faces like Adam Scott.
Gustavo Caballero/GC Images via Getty Images
Billboards and signage still taking shape.
(George Pimentel/Getty Images for Sundance)
Films looking for daylight get an early jump on poster space along Main Street.
(Bryan Steffy/Getty Images for Sundance)
Already full ... and it is not even dark on Thursday yet.
(George Pimentel/Getty Images for Sundance)
Meanwhile back in L.A., Francis Ford Coppola and former Academy President Sid Ganis presented Dagmar Dolby with a star on the walk of fame. Dagmar Dolby accepted for her late husband, Ray Dolby, whose name now emblazons the home of the Oscars.
(Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
1 of 36
Mikey Glazer’s view of the best people, parties and places in Park City, presented by the all-new Kia Sorento
Keanu Reeves gets Seacrest'ed by Eli Roth as Lorenza Izzo and Collen Camp enjoy the breather while speaking with TheWrap's Jeff Sneider on Saturday.