‘The End of the Tour’ review by kt • Letterboxd
the movie tries hard to give you something like a two-hour panic attack about what it means to want to be someone like DFW. most of it is really about Lipsky’s gaze into it, his envy, his hero worship, his fear and a spiritual risk that if Wallace is this lonely and spooked by attention after writing Infinite Jest, then what hope is there for the rest of us mortals. in many ways these two are the perfect casting for the role. Jason Segel is doing something incredibly delicate that shouldn't work, something that on paper sounds just like cosplay with the bandana, the drawl, the ums and you-knows. but he finds a shy, fidgety kindness in Wallace and the way he keeps trying to deflect the conversation away from mythologizing himself and back toward junk food and TV and so on. this movie is no great man hagiography. Jesse Eisenberg is perfectly cast as the guy who hears every Wallace sentence as a ladder rung up or down, and has the persona of someone tactful, and someone who calls bullshit