BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN
I admire anyone who attempts to adapt a David Foster Wallace novel into a film. I admire anyone who even finishes a David Foster Wallace novel. I tried and failed to so just after his very unfortunate passing and it’s not because I don’t do dense and wordy. There is something about the disjointedness, the aggression and the darkness (all things that I usually like) that I have trouble latching onto. Maybe I’m just too old.
Here John Krasinski, of The Office, has set himself the monumentous task and I’m afraid has put together and enormously difficult film to sit through. A graduate student Sara (Julianne Nicholson) smarting from a breakup with Ryan (John Krasinski) decides to interview a series of men about their romantic lives and sexual behavior. Thus follows numerous direct address to the camera moments, and although some descriptions are dramatized, and we see some of how Sara and John played out, it becomes, alas, a bit too tediously repetitive. Perhaps it’s because although it’s ostensibly authored by a woman (in the film), it can’t help but be pitched to and therefore be all about those hideous boys.
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men opens September 18, 2009.
Written and directed by John Krasinski; based on the book by David Foster Walace; produced by Eva Kolodners, Yael Melamede, James Suskin and John Krasinski; Director of Photography, John Bailey; edited by Rich Fox. Relesed by IFC Films. Running time: 80 minutes.
With: Julianne Nicholson (Sara); Ben Shenkman (Subject #14); Lou Taylor Pucci (Evan); Will Arnett (Subject #11); John Krasinski (Ryan); Dominic Cooper (Daniel) and Timothy Hutton (Professor Adams)
