The Pleasure Is In The Dueling

The book “Infinite Jest” is more talked about and admired than read, and, alas, so is its author, David Foster Wallace. Wallace was a wonderfully perceptive writer with a head full of information and ideas and concerns, all bursting out and landing on the pages of his most famous book. 

Now we can meet Wallace, or Jason Segel’s magnificent portrayal of him, in director James Ponsoldt’s adaptation of David Lipsky’s memoir about his 1996, five-day visit and road trip with Wallace at the end of the author’s promotional tour for “Jest.” Excellent, probing, affectionate, heartfelt, funny, the film is ultimately touching.

Lipsky, a striving novelist-turned-reporter and new hire at Rolling Stone, persuades his editor to let him fly to the Midwest to interview Wallace, who agrees apprehensively.

Once Lipsky, played by Jesse Eisenberg in his twitchy, eager, slightly smarmy mode, arrives at Wallace’s front door, the film is presented as a sort of “My Dinner with André,” but without pretension. This is Wallace, the shambling, yet oddly graceful, bear of a man meeting a terrier who will soon be nipping at his ankles. 

In the smart screenplay by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies, Wallace is no genius dumbing himself down for lesser minds. He is a perceptive prodigy, given to depression and self doubt — he committed suicide in 2008 — fearful of the fraudulence of fame, a man addicted to TV and binge-watching old movies. He is also a man capable of shrewd observations about the future of an American culture rapidly yielding to drug and media addiction. 

The pleasures of the movie lie in the men’s conversations and verbal dueling. Wallace’s wariness gives way to reluctant hints of affection for Lipsky, who seems surprised that Wallace is so unassuming. Lipsky, whose own novel died a quick death in bookstores, wants the fame that Wallace finds so distasteful. Lipsky’s envy is palpable, as is his hope of writing an acclaimed profile of Wallace. The exploitation that Wallace disdains informs every question Lipsky asks, and Wallace pushes them aside gently, saying, “There’s nothing worse than a writer who goes around saying I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer.” (Lipsky never got answers that pleased his editor, and his Wallace interviews were only published in book form after Wallace’s death.)

While the film may be too worshipful of a man who distrusted public persona and media myth-making, it is about our tendency to over-worship and make living myths out of public figures. It is also about the superficiality of journalism, how reporters look for the sensational detail and exploit their subjects, invade their psyches and spaces. (You may well cringe when Lipsky sneakily catalogues Wallace’s belongings into his tape recorder.)

The men talk in many locations — cars, a diner, a bookstore in Minneapolis, even the Mall of America — and they spend time with some women. Mamie Gummer and Mickey Sumner (daughters of Meryl Streep and Sting, respectively) entertain them in Minneapolis, Joan Cusack is an irritatingly cheerful Twin City driver, and Anna Chlumsky plays Lipsky’s girlfriend, who is in New York plowing through “Infinite Jest” and enjoying it too much for his comfort. (“You like his book better than mine,” he whines.)

But the movie is really about spoken words: Lipsky wants something from Wallace — grist and dirt for his article, validation for himself as a writer — while Wallace is obsessed with being himself and cutting through words to get to the point, which actually requires more words. But you will not be bored. Wallace is too interesting and Segel too good for that.

“The End of the Tour” is playing widely. It is rated R for language and sexual references.