Infinite Jester: Jason Segel Plays David Foster Wallace
Jason Segel brings a goofy, authentic sweetness to almost every part he plays: a lovesick drummer on the TV show Freaks and Geeks, a forlorn composer in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Despite his off-screen smarts, Jason Segel had never been cast as a major intellectual figure until he was chosen to play the novelist David Foster Wallace — author of Infinite Jest and one of the most admired writers of his generation — in the film The End of the Tour. Could this stoner hero possibly do justice to the tragic Wallace, who committed suicide in 2008? The doubters were legion before the movie was released, but Segel proved them wrong. He tells Kurt Andersen that he felt an unusual sympathy for the doomed genius.
Kurt Andersen: Did David Foster Wallace have any kinship, in your mind, to the characters you’ve played before?
Jason Segel: Yeah! There’s a tendency to deify your idols and make them something other than you. And when I read my favorite parts of David Foster Wallace, I feel like: “Oh! This is a guy who loves movies, just like me. Listen to him write about David Lynch. Or, here’s a guy who sees the absurdity of a cruise ship vacation.” And it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.
One of the themes of the movie is this irresistible tide of American stuff: fast food, bad TV, shopping malls. Are you immune to that?
I don’t think anybody’s immune to it. But one of the things that Wallace talks about in the movie is the illusion of something feeling good and confusing that for it being good for you. Or something being easy, and thinking that means that it must be right. And you know what is really easy? To come home at the end of the day and crack open a beer and watch a marathon of reality TV. And then you wonder why you feel dissatisfied. I think it’s akin to eating a chili cheeseburger and fries and wondering why your stomach hurts a couple hours later.
