BEFORE: Finally, I'm back to Netflix for a couple of films that haven't yet scrolled off the service. Buying the ones that have disappeared on iTunes is starting to cost me some serious money. Ron Livingston carries over from "Drinking Buddies".
THE PLOT: The story of the five-day interview between Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky and acclaimed novelist David Foster Wallace, which took place right after the 1996 publication of Wallace's groundbreaking epic novel "Infinite Jest".
AFTER: Well, it turns out I was at a real disadvantage here, because I've never read "Infinite Jest" - I've heard things about it, but as it is I don't have much time for books, unless they're of the comic variety, or they continue the story of "Star Wars" before, after and between the movies. You try watching a new movie every day for 10 months out of the year, and see how much free time that leaves you for books, assuming you also have to hold down a job.
This film is based on David Lipsky's book, which was titled "Although Of Course You End Up Being Yourself", which is therefore a book by a writer about the interview that led to the magazine article, which he also wrote, and that interview was one writer asking another writer about, mostly, writing. The whole thing's like a Russian nesting doll of self-serving introspection, like "Inception" if it were a book that got turned into a film, and that film was all about what a great book it was based on. Or maybe it's more like "Adaptation" in that sense, that it's so hyper self-aware about itself that it threatens to implode under its own po-mo ironic nature.
And throughout it all, the subject matter of the book itself is barely discussed, or if the interviewer and interviewee did discuss it, it was between the moments shown in this film. I don't know anything more about "Infinite Jest" than I did before, which is to say that it's over 1,000 pages long, got great reviews, and the character inside deals with addiction. Wiki calls it an "encyclopedic novel" with an "experimental narrative structure". Well, now I REALLY don't want to read it, I get enough experimental narrative structure through all these movies that are either 80% flashback or toggle between three timelines in the hope that one will somehow give insight into the other. (It does happen sometimes, but it's rare.)
So I really have to just treat this as any film about someone who suddenly becomes famous, and then gets interviewed about said fame. And why consent to an interview? To become more famous, of course. Publicity is a beast that feeds on itself, and then grows exponentially, this is true for actors, directors, musicians and writers. The vast majority of people in all of those professions work for many years in relative obscurity, while watching a select few gain overnight recognition through some weird combination of talent, luck and maybe the help of someone in a position of power. I have mostly experience dealing with film directors and animators, and I can give you a long list of people who I knew in film school or worked with in some capacity who are successful film directors now (and the funny thing is, I've watched several films this year where I happen to know the director, like "Destroyer" and "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse". I don't begrudge them their successes, because their paths are different than mine, and I'm guessing they all probably worked very hard to get where they are, which only barely seems worth it to me, in some ways.
You can't help but think about it, when you're in the room with a director (or actor, or musician) that you admire. If you don't immediately gush with praise, then you're probably playing it cool, thinking about how that would be completely the wrong thing to do, and even if it were appropriate, they've probably heard it all before. That's part of the interplay here between Lipsky and Wallace, they probably shouldn't have sent a struggling author to interview him, because that sense of respect mixed with intimidation and awe is always going to be lurking there, right under the surface. They should have sent a reporter who wasn't also an aspiring author in order to get a story with a more neutral viewpoint.
Instead the movie damns Wallace with faint praise throughout, but that's neither here nor there. The point was to chronicle the five days these two men spent together, as Wallace traveled to the last stop on his book tour, which happened to be Minneapolis. Thank God we didn't see the whole book tour here, that would have been a bit too much like "Green Book" - here we don't have two different people learning to work together on tour, but we do have almost the same person twice - two neurotic authors - who instead find ways to get on each other's nerves as they travel to Minnesota and back. As quickly as they found common ground and forged a friendship, it nearly fell apart just as quickly once it seemed like Lipsky was hitting on Wallace's ex-girlfriend.
Is it comforting to believe that the authors, filmmakers and musicians who DO hit it big are probably all just as neurotic, if not moreso, than the ones that don't become famous? There's that extra level of pressure added with the need to perform just as well as before, to get another hit book or hit album to market and go on another book tour, another press junket to promote it? The fame machine is like a fast-moving carousel, and once you step on it, you've got to keep going around on it, even if it makes you sick, because it's not going to stop, so getting off of it is bound to be quite painful.
In the end, this film was just way too talky-talky for me, with barely anything happening. Also it commits the cardinal sin of starting with the most important news being delivered in 2008, and then flashing back to the interview scenes 12 years earlier, so that most of the film is a flashback within a flashback.
Also starring Jason Segel (last seen in "Sex Tape"), Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Joan Cusack (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Mamie Gummer (last seen in "Ricki and the Flash"), Mickey Sumner (last seen in "Frances Ha"), Anna Chlumsky, Becky Ann Baker (last seen in "Nights in Rodanthe"), with archive footage of John Michael Higgins (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 3"), Christian Slater (last seen in "Bobby") and John Travolta (last seen in "Savages").
RATING: 3 out of 10 bags of marshmallows
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