John Krasinski is best known for his role as Jim on NBC’s The Office, but he originally got into acting because he’d attended a table reading of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, and he decided he wanted to stick with it when he realized how smart acting could be. He began pursuing the film rights to Brief Interviews, and at a suggestion from co-star Rainn Wilson he decided to direct it himself.
Cut to Sundance 2009, where his adaptation of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men was in competition. Spout attended a small press conference with Krasinski at Sundance where he spoke about adapting Foster Wallace’s collection of short stories, his first time directing, and why he’s not ready to leave The Office.
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I’m wary of passing along a rumor involving the recently deceased, but I thought this would be of too much interest to too many people to pass up. Devin at CHUD says he has a source who claims that David Foster Wallace was working on adapting his epic, legendary novel Infinite Jest into a screenplay just before he died over the weekend of an apparent suicide. According to Devin, Wallace collaborated with writer Sam Jones (director of the Wilco doc I Am Trying to Break Your Heart) on an adaptation “as recently as last year.”
It’s probably worth noting that without Wallace around to refute it, any source could say anything, and even if this project did exist, there’s no guarantee that anything will come of it. Of course, as Devin points out, death sells, so I guess its possible that some exec might take it upon themselves to try to rush out a quickie version of a completely unfilmable novel in an attempt to tempt Wallace’s saddendened fans into the theater. If that does happen, we’ll be the first in line to fantasy cast Joelle Van Dyne, but as of this writing, Wallace’s sole IMDb credit is in association with John Krasinski’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, and we imagine that’s the way it’ll stay.
Writer/novelist David Foster Wallace has reportedly been found dead of an apparent suicide. In 1996, Wallace wrote this Premiere Magazine story about David Lynch, which is widely considered (at least, by me and my friends) to be the greatest set visit story of all time. Wallace’s collection of short stories Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is the basis of the forthcoming feature directorial debut from actor John Krasinski. Wallce was 46. More details here and here.
Leave it to George Clooney to make a football movie that actually looks good to people like me. And by people like me, I mean people with no interest in American football whatsoever (I attend Super Bowl parties exclusively for the 7-layer dip). Yahoo! is hosting the trailer for Leatherheads, Clooney’s much-anticipated directorial follow-up to Good Night, and Good Luck, and the romantic sports comedy looks like the most appealing football flick — particularly for women and also guys like me — ever produced.
Part of the appeal for me, though, is those old uniforms, which bring me back (cinematicaly — I’m not that old) to the football fields of Horse Feathers, Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman and that famous still of Ronald Reagan from Knute Rockne All American. Then, of course, there’s the appeal of Clooney in old-timey clothes, ala O Brother Where Art Thou? Considering how much Clooney resembles Cary Grant in both appearance and acting style, it’s no wonder that I prefer him in stories that take him back to periods in which Grant was a big star. Okay, so Leatherheads is actually set in the 1920s, before Grant and his silly accent made it to the big screen, but I’m willing to ignore that little historical inaccuracy (just as the Coen Bros. ignored a lot of historical fact with O Brother). Had sound films come about earlier than they had, Cary Grant could have been wooed by Hollywood much sooner than he was.
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