The journalistic relationship between interviewer and
interviewee is complex, delicate, and often precarious. On one hand, writer and
subject are simply strangers making conversation — as benignly normal a
situation as one can imagine. But they’ve each been forcibly entered into this
exchange, by necessity bringing their own (often opposing) agendas to the
table. The writer has an editor to please, one who’s looking for their employee
to pry some compelling information from the subject; meanwhile the subject is
tasked with selling themselves for publicity, which will in turn make their
further success possible. The interviewee wants to maintain a semblance of
privacy, while accepting the knowledge that their responses will be judged
(sometimes harshly) by the general public once the interview hits newsstands.
Step wrong, and there’s a good chance readers will eat you alive. Let me tell
you: as a writer, the interviewing process is a constant, desperate struggle.
Boo hoo, writing is hard.
“The End of
the Tour” examines this precise relationship, in this particular case between
writer David Lipsky and author David Foster Wallace.
Based on Lipsky’s book, “Although Of Course You End
Up Becoming Yourself,” about his experience of interviewing Wallace, director
James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now,” “Smashed”) and
screenwriter Donald Margulies handle the material with a brutal honesty and
insight.
Given a
probationary job at Rolling Stone, Lipsky (Jesse
Eisenberg) is assigned to spend five days with Wallace (Jason Segel) as he completes the last leg of his book tour
following the release — and massive success — of his postmodern epic, “Infinite
Jest.” Lipsky will travel to Wallace’s home in
Illinois, where the author lives and teaches creative writing at Illinois State
University, then accompany him to Minneapolis for his last stop on the tour.
The film
unfolds as a road trip variation on “My Dinner with Andre,” in which
a discussion about life and art unfurls not over a single dinner, but over the
course of several days spent in airplanes, over meals of McDonald’s and gas
station junk food, and at one point while wandering through the Mall of America.
Unlike that earlier film, the participants aren’t close friends catching up,
but strangers forced into a relationship that has the deceptive outside
appearance of intimacy.
That Lipsky is himself an author, whose recently released book
“The Art Fair” was met mostly with indifference, colors their talks with an
undercurrent of jealousy. Each of us desire some sort of recognition that we’re
doing good work, and in many ways Lipsky wants
exactly what Wallace already has. Wallace himself is uncomfortable talking
about his newfound fame, feeling as though he’s betraying his integrity and
selling out by even participating in an interview. Though candid in many
respects, he often turns cagey during his conversations with Lipsky, eying the blinking red light of his profiler’s tape
recorder with a great deal of suspicion.
Margulies
captures the charged push and pull in these exchanges, as Lipsky
receives pressure from his editor (Ron Livingston) to bring up Wallace’s
depression and address rumors of addiction — because that’s where the real
story is. Their talks swing between intimate and invasive, and as the days go
on, the conversation turns passive-aggressive as their subtle jabs at one
another turn increasingly less so.
In a rare
dramatic role, Jason Segel doesn’t so much
impersonate David Foster Wallace as inhabit him, adopting the persona of
someone who’s achieved a level of success most people have no hope of ever
attaining, but finds he still wants something more. There’s been some
discussion about the accuracy of the film’s portrayal of Wallace, with friends
and family of the author saying that the portrayal bears little resemblance to
the man they knew. I can understand those objections, but you could change the
names of its characters and the film would be just as true in its ideas about
loneliness, depression, and the male ego.
Segel brings the author to life as a human being, even if
that person isn’t specifically the David Foster Wallace those who knew him
remember. Eisenberg is a polarizing performer, and he uses his prickly screen
persona to his advantage here, portraying Lipsky as
an ingratiating and often unlikeable presence, never more so than during a
scene where he berates his girlfriend (Anna Chlumsky),
after her phone call with Wallace goes on longer than Lipsky
feels appropriate. Beneath it all, we sense the envy the writer feels as he’s
forced to confront the realization that the level of success Wallace has
achieved will in all likelihood remain just beyond his grasp.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2015.
