Early reports on James Ponsoldt’s sensitive, earnest The End Of The Tour tended to describe the film as something of a David Foster Wallace biopic–a notion abhorrent in literary circles that still hold up Wallace as an untouchable, multifaceted genius. Those with early misgivings will be pleased to learn that Jason Segel, who portrays Wallace, has clearly done his homework, authentically channeling the mannerisms and distinct vocal cadence of the late writer. But that’s ultimately beside the point, as The End of the Tour is less interested in David Foster Wallace as a mythical titan of culture, and more in the difficult dynamic between interviewer and subject. The other David is David Lipsky (played by Jesse Eisenberg, his anxious prickliness unprecedentedly called-for), a journalist-cum-novelist who’s talked his editor at Rolling Stone into sending him to profile the oft-introverted writer as Wallace completes a publicity tour in support his magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Therefore, Segel’s Wallace is but a single half of the richly complex interplay between David & David, and the film finds the most crushing pearls of truth in the ampersand rather than either name.
By the time he meets up with Wallace in the frost-choked wastelands of the midwest, Lipsky’s already cracked open the instantly canonized tome of a novel and marveled at the evident mastery of prose. Theirs is a fraught pairing from the onset: Lipsky desperately, transparently craves Wallace’s approval, but also wrestles with professional jealousy when reflecting on his own novel’s lukewarm reception. Wallace’s fears that he’ll be misrepresented in the profile are shown to be not entirely unjustified as Lipsky furtively rifles through the medicine cabinet in Wallace’s home. Both writers are acutely aware that the act of profiling someone—finessing the messy details of the subject’s life and work into a workable shape—requires a break from absolute objectivity. Lipsky and Wallace tread carefully around one another, analyzing their own words and then analyzing those analyses. In an early scene, Wallace toys with the idea of a subject profiling the reporter that’s been sent to profile him, and meekly asks if that’s too postmodern. Given the dual portraiture at hand in the film, director Ponsoldt implicitly responds with a resounding “no.”
The light sparring gradually melts into an intimate bond between the two minds, as they earn one another’s trust and allow their guards to drop. Such is the nature of profile-writing. What Lipsky’s editor (Ron Livingston) doesn’t realize when he demands the reporter stop pussyfooting around and question Wallace about the heroin rumors is that the openness between interviewer and subject is a fragile thing that must be cared for and nurtured. Lipsky gets the soundbites that’d ultimately make up his 2010 book Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by asking the penetrating questions, but also by shooting the bull about Die Hard, pigging out on junk food, and expounding on the finer points of Alanis Morissette. The film finds moments of uncommon beauty in the bravery to make oneself vulnerable.
Ponsoldt’s camera unobtrusively observes as Lipsky coaxes Wallace into opening up, and then does so as Lipsky becomes candid as well. They’re united by their fear of being seen as a fraud—Wallace suspects that the reluctant mythos being thrust upon him will lead readers to view him as a phony, while Lipsky is mostly concerned that Wallace will loathe him and all he stands for. Their tenuous bond resembles something like friendship at some points, but as Wallace coldly notes in a darker moment, “This is nice. This is not real.” That verbal parry only compounds the tense intimacy between the pair, locked in a space between professional and personal, idol and fan, guy and fellow guy.
