By The End of the Tour was a major hit at Sundance, leading to rave reviews for stars Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel, who play real-life writers David Lipsky and David Foster Wallace, respectively. Based on Lipsky’s 2010 non-fiction work Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, the film follows Lipsky as he meets and hangs out with Wallace on the final days of his book tour for his landmark 1996 novel Infinite Jest.
While Eisenberg is strong as Lipsky and can communicate so much through raised eyebrows and little squints, Segel delivers an award-worthy performance as Wallace. Segel nails the voice and the fragile heart of Wallace, who was at once an eccentric intellectual obsessive and a man uncomfortable in his own skin. Wallace committed suicide in 2008. He was 46 years old.
Adapted by award-winning playwright Donald Margulies and directed by James Ponsoldt, The End of the Tour is a meeting of neurotic minds who are at once camarades and competitors, and their fraternal rapport is so honest and propelled by precise observations about writing and the creative process and the pressures of the intellect and imagination. The End of the Tour is one of the best movies of the year, and one of the great movies about being a writer.
I was talking to a friend about The End of the Tour yesterday, and he mentioned that some of the events in the film do not appear in Lipsky’s book. It will be interesting to see the conversations about capital-T Truth and capital-F Fiction when the movie is released.
The End of the Tour will hit theaters on July 31st.
If you live in the New York City area, you can catch The End of the Tour at BAMcinemafest 2015 in Brooklyn, which runs from June 17-28.
For more information about BAMcinemafest 2015, click here.
[via Deadline]