Killing off your subject in the opening and then flashing back for the bulk of the movie? Cheap. No, it’s not a stylistic choice or art; it’s a cheap way to generate sympathy. We’re more invested in the backstory because we want to know how the character was so troubled – especially in the case of suicide, like the one presented – as if the writing/acting can’t get you there on its own.
OK, let me step back. See, I feel cheated when a movie begins with a death and goes backwards; but maybe I’m not being fair. So what’s going on here? Well, writer/journalist David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) gets to reflect on his twelve-years-previous Rolling Stone interview of celebrated novelist David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) on the last stop of his book tour. Hold on to something; this film takes us all the way to Minneapolis and back. And to think I was worried there wasn’t going to be much to this film.
The fact that both men are named “Dave” is lost on nobody; the self-consciously pretentious Manhattan-based Lipsky wants to live the life of a celebrated novelist; the introverted rural-Midwestern-based Wallace envies the trappings and benefits of sharing a life with someone. The movie explores which position is the most envious, but only from the perspective of the Daves. These two even have several lines devoted to calling one another “handsome.” Seriously. Obviously, I don’t have a super feel of what is truly and universally attractive, but Segel’s scraggly shower-once-a-week disabled lumberjack bandana look? You’ve devoted earnest dialogue to this being something that brings all the girls to your yard? Except, of course, that it doesn’t; Segel lives in a ranch home with two dogs and no woman.
The End of the Tour is about the motivation behind sharing your perspective. The gems have to be unearthed here, but two things I’ll take from this film are the absolute phoniness of success and the celebration of down-to-earth beauty. On the former, there’s the constant paradox of success: a book that sells automatically implies that it’s overrated; that somehow a bad writer has worked the system to get, say, 50 Shades of Gray on the best-seller list. On the other hand, if your novel is celebrated, then how can you not feel anything except a fraud given what you know of publishing? On the latter take, Wallace’s rarely scoured bachelor pad doesn’t have a lot going for it – a Barney the Dinosaur towel used as a curtain is a dead giveaway that this isn’t “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” However, the living room walls offer a curious artifact — a lone poster of Alanis Morissette. Why Alanis? Because she’s not a model and yet attractive – Wallace’s standard being a woman you could see eating a bologna sandwich. Perhaps this is what the movie is telling us is so compelling about Segel’s look – that for not a model, he’s actually quite attractive. I’m
still not sold on that score, but the comments about Morissette were dead on: to me, a woman who has never eaten a bologna sandwich (or the cultural equivalent thereof) in her adult lifetime will get 0% of my attention.
And, maybe an hour or so in, conflict finally comes in the form of playah hatin’ – both men accuse the other of making time with their women (Lipsky’s fiancée and Wallace’s ex-). This is what qualifies as hard-hitting stuff in The End of the Tour.
Honestly, it took two full acts for something noteworthy here. Up until this point, this is a mutual cock-sucking: “Oh, I wanna be you, but I don’t have the talent…” “Oh, I wanna be you, but I can’t get over myself …” I felt like James Ponsoldt/Donald Margulies were both trying to imagine what people who can actually write talk about, and then they gave up and said, “Maybe we better shoot something somebody might remember.”
Is this what you imagine, writing folks? Is this “living the dream?” Dogs and isolation in butt-cold Minnesota? I’ll tell you what my biggest problem here is — I’m a writer writing about a film about a writer writing about a writer writing a book about what it is be a writer. Tell me if you don’t find that just a bit self-serving. The premiere universal writing advice continues to be, “write what you know,” but that’s just about integrity and flow; there’s a separate component where you have to write something somebody might want to read.
I’ll let you know if I get there.
FrogBlog notes: Holy crap! An Anna Chlumsky sighting! Where have you been, My Girl?
♪Editor Madam, will you read my quest?
It took ten secs to write, going out Midwest
I’m going interview this guy you cheer
And this is what it’s like to be a Rolling Stone writer
Rolling Stone writer
It’s a pungent story of a pungent man
Lives alone with dogs entirely by plan
I totally want to be this guy
But until then, I have to be a Rolling Stone writer
Rolling Stone writer♫
Rated R, 106 Minutes
D: James Ponsoldt
W: Donald Margulies
Genre: Existential indulgence
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Critics
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Action hounds
♪ Parody inspired by “Paperback Writer”
