Never heard of him. Seems risky to make a major (?) Hollywood movie about someone so utterly unknown. Then again, if it's a good movie, regardless, or if it were a movie about a fictional character named "David Foster Wallace" (which it just might be!), I guess it'd be worth making, and worth seeing.
shareYou know, when someone uses "never heard of him" (or her/them) as a criticism of a movie, book, article, whatever, it reflects pretty poorly on the one who is speaking. The better response to realizing one's own ignorance would be, "Maybe I should look into that author." (Or musician, or whatever, as the case may be.)
share"Never heard of him" is not a criticism of the movie. It is a criticism--no, questioning-- of the wisdom of doing a bio pic of someone scarcely known.
Maybe you should read the posts more carefully before replying. You wouldn't want to be reflected upon poorly.
What has made you decide that Wallace is "scarcely known"? Can you substantiate this claim? A lot of people obviously know who he is, or he wouldn't be the subject of a biographical film. Previous posters are correct in their statements that this reflects on you, not on the filmmakers' choice.
shareThere was no carelessness in my initial reading of your post. I understood it just fine.
I hate to be the guy who brings your you-centric view of the world crashing down, but CincyDude never having heard of a particular author does not make that author "scarcely known."
I never heard of him, either.
But then, I don't fall for Rolling Stone hype anymore.
Ask 50 random people who he is and I would be shocked if more than one was familiar with him. Ditto for another writer, John Kennedy Toole, who posthumously won the Pulitzer (I was surprised nobody ever made a movie or play about him).
So, no, Wallace is not particularly well known, but he is famous in certain circles and he is an interesting character, so that's enough for a movie in my book. Not many people know Truman Capote or Christopher McCandless or Oskar Schindler, either, but that doesn't make them poor subjects.
There are a lot of relatively unknown people who 'get movies'. Of course, unknown is subjective. I dind't know of John Nash until I saw A Beautiful Mind. I vaguely knew of Alan Turing before I watched The Imitation Game. I understand your post, don't get me wrong, but sometimes a story is more interesting than the real life person who features in it.
Also, The End of the Tour is hardly a biopic - it is sort of a road movie inspired by a real life event between two people. Heck, I can even imagine people seeing it (maybe only because Eisenberg and Segel are in it) and actually thinking this is ficion, that Dave Wallace is a made up character, a mixture of The Dude and Grady Tripp from Wonder Boys.
And now I lost track of what I wanted to say...
It is a criticism--no, questioning-- of the wisdom of doing a bio pic of someone scarcely known.
he used to teach with my mother at illinois state university he was a literary genius
shareSee, I don't know what literary genius even means when the guy kills himself?
Admittedly, I know nothing about him myself, and did not even know he was a
real character. Jason Segal looked nothing like him, that's for sure.
Ernest Hemingway also killed himself. Literary genius and suicide are not mutually exclusive.
shareHemingway was over-rated. I am not saying he was bad, just that he was a product
of his time, which his macho view of the world, hunting, women, etc. From what I've
read about it Hemingway was also physically unhealthy and in constant pain. He could
not do what he wanted to do in life.
I really wonder about what was going on with DFW. It's hard to know what might have
gone on with him from the movie. The depression could have been caused by a total
junk food diet. I'm just saying, who was this guy as a person and what were his real
problems?
Polite suggestion- Go back to Adam Sandler movies and leave literary criticism to educated adults...Mmmm-kay?
sharePlease--Tell us who your "literary genius" is that makes Wallace and Hemingway look overrated.
shareAre you serious? Good writers don't commit suicide? This is just weird. What about Hemmingway? Romain Gary? Lord Chatterton? Virginia Woolf? Jacques Rigaut? Primo Levi? Gherasim Luca? Jersy Kosinski? Gerard Nerval?
- A point in every direction is the same as no point at all.
Obviously a joke post intended to incite a riot. And it worked. The original poster ought to get a new hobby though.
shareFrom the movie it sounds as if his book was based on Americans? So maybe people in other countries just was not that interested in American life and there for passed on his book and forgot he existed. I had not heard of him until watching the movie i am from the UK.
Then again i am not much of a book person except for Terry Pratchett which maybe people have never heard of him because they are not in to fantasy.
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"It's game over man, it's game over!!!"
You don't have to be American to be familiar with David Foster Wallace anymore than you need to be British (or into fantasy) to be familiar with Terry Pratchett.
You just have to be aware of the world around you.
Who is David Foster Wallace?
Never heard of him.
And we await your grace, 'o noble sage....
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Jason Segel deserves a nomination for best actor. I have never read, and don't intend to read, an author generational in his appeal, generational that is at least in regard to idolators. I came here because I got the movie for free on Black Friday, and I wanted to see what all the aging fanboys and fangirls at sites like Slate went so wild over, before the writer killed himself. Whoever he was, Jason Segel succeeded in making him seem troubled only by fame and possibly a suicide specifically because of it.
What is google? Never heard of it.
shareWho is CincyDude and why is he posting here? I never heard of him.
all work and no play make jack a dull boy.
If you didn't know before, I don't think you'll know after watching this film.
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