This could be a just scene that’s musical or a teaser trailer, it’s hard to tell, but the L.A. Times seemingly has the first video of John Krasinski’s adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,” which is playing Sundance this week. The music in the background, btw is the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B,” or at the very least a decent-sounding facsimile.
Some reviews are in. Film School Rejects gave it an A grade, but warned it might a hard pill to swallow for Joe moviegoer, “the faithfulness of this adaptation also works against the film. In a way, it isn’t a very accessible film. The average moviegoer may find it to be too dialog heavy, as it plays out much more like a stage play or series of monologues than what you might expect out of a film. As well, it follows a very non-linear story structure, jumping back and forth between times and dates without any sort of guide.”
One major change (which already has Wallce-ites annoyed) in the film that’s not part of the book, is the creation of a a female character by Julianne Nicholson (“Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) with a personal motive for trying to understand why men are cold-hearted reptilian bastards.
When Wallace called Krasinski in 2005 to give the film its blessing he asked about the changes. “He said, ‘What’s it scripted around?’ ” Krasinski recalled to the L.A. Times. “I said, ‘A woman doing her dissertation around feminism looking into the role of the modern man in the post-feminist era.’ There was a silence. And he said, ‘I never figured out how to do that, how to make them all relate together. That sounds awesome.’ It was probably one of the greatest days of my life!”
Wallace sadly took his own life in September of last year. Krasinski says selling the picture is not the be all end all. He just wants to get it out to as many people as possible and if that’s only the Sundance audience, so be it. “I looked for someone to help me write it and someone to direct it, and people just didn’t understand how it would be a movie,” Krasinski said. “It fell to me to do it. And in my wildest dreams, Sundance would be where it ends up. This is, without a doubt, a fairy tale.”
At only 72-minutes in length, the Hollywood Reporter also alludes to its potential difficulty. They call it “one hell of a date movie. A surgical examination of the male psyche based on David Foster Wallace’s book and written and directed by John Krasinski, there is plenty of food for thought and argument. A savvy distributor could stir up enough controversy for a select theatrical run before the film settles into a healthy ancillary afterlife.”