Karina on SpoutBlog

That rumor that David Foster Wallace had collaborated on a screenplay adaptation of his own massive novel, Infinite Jest within a year before his recent suicide? As we suspected, it’s turned out to be somewhat off the mark––but not completely without a grain of truth. Glenn Kenny, who worked with Wallace on three stories at Premiere (including the infamous David Lynch profile and a story on Terminator 2 which was eventually published elsewhere), made some calls and wrote in with his findings. The gist: there is an Infinite Jest screenplay, which Sam Jones was at one point attached to direct, but other than writing the novel on which it was based, Wallace had nothing to do with it. Full details after the jump.

The following is excerpted directly from an email from Kenny, who spoke with Wallace’s agent, Bonnie Nadell:

The story is: a couple of years back, around the time of “Infinite Jest”’s tenth anniversary, a company called Open City bought an option on the book, and had Keith Bunin write a screenplay. Several attempts at adapting is had been made before, but according to Bonnie, the resultant screenplay was the best she had ever read. Sam Jones was then brought on as director. But the option ran out before Open City could acquire financing, and is now available again. Bonnie told me that if it ever gets picked up again, she hope’s Bunin’s screenplay is put back into play, as she was very impressed with it.

What is not true, as I suspected, is the rumor that Wallace “collaborated” on the screenplay in any way, shape, or form. He held the film industry at arm’s length or better, and trusted Bonnie’s judgment with respect to these issues. He accepted that adaptation of “Infinite Jest” in the sense that he accepted that Bonnie was looking after it, and of course he accepted the check for the option. As for Bunin’s screenplay, not only did Wallace not consult on it, he never read the completed version. And “Jest,” as I said, remains in movie limbo.

Under discussion:

Burn After Reading  (2008)

After reading Anne Thompson’s post on the dismal reception given to the youth-baiting rethink of At The Movies starring Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz, I decided I had better watch The Two Bens’ first episode online to see what all the griping is about. It actually starts off rather well: Mankiewicz is totally qualified for this job, although it’s a bit of a wonder he was even hired, what with his TCM-honed, “I am going to explain this very slowly because my viewers may be aged” manner of speaking. But then he tosses it to Lyons, who says something completely incoherent about Burn After Reading being “almost like an exercise in drama,” and then they cut back Mankiewicz, who struggles to croak out, “Yeah, that’s an interesting point,” whilst swallowing his own testicles. At that point, I stopped.

Interestingly, another thing that I wasn’t able to force myself to watch all the way through this week also had to do with the sorry contemporary incarnation of the former gold standard for televised movie reviews.

It was the first episode of the new season of Entourage, which begins with a fictional At The Movies segment in which (retired before their time in real life) hosts Richard Roeper and Michael Phillips trash Vincent Chase’s Medellin, which the show’s Harvey Weinstein clone has just dumped straight to DVD. The next day, Ari Gold walks into his agency and all of his employees are offering condolences, and he gives one of his big shouty speeches about how no one is ever allowed to mention Richard Roeper to him ever again. Roeper hasn’t been off the air that long, but still, the lack of timeliness to the reference made me cringe even more than I usually do whilst watching Entourage, and I had to turn it off.

Of course, The Two Bens make one appreciate Roeper in a way that didn’t seem previously possible. But the Entourage reference didn’t seem out of date just because he’s no longer got a weekly TV gig. The idea of an agent reacting so vehemently to a bad review––not to mention that each and every one of his employees actually took the time to watch the show––just seems crazy old fashioned. And on a DVD dump, no less! Even if Ben and Ben were better (and as I said, I think the older Ben is actually pretty good), I just can’t imagine a televised soundbite critic having that kind of effect on an agent or an exec these days. Really, I can’t imagine any single critic having that kind of power, except for maybe Manohla. Maybe. I can imagine Nikki Finke having that kind of power. Maybe.

Did I get this wrong? Do let me know. See video above for the Roeper cameo, and below for the “Ari moment.”