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.
John Krasinski: It took a while actually. What I first did was I had to edit the material, which is actually one of the hardest things, because David Foster Wallace is without a doubt one of the greatest writers to have ever written, so cutting down his work just felt wrong. It was just bad news.
But cutting it down into acting length was the first difficult thing, I’d say. I always knew that Julianne [Nicholson]’s character would be key to the whole movie. I think that you can’t emotionally attach to any of these guys, other than the minute you are with them. There’s no lasting affect unless you have someone to bring to the movie.
So as soon as I knew what Julianne was doing and why she was doing it, that really opened things up for me. Then really after that the characters sort of lent themselves to a tonal shift, in the beginning is sort of the embarrassing interviews and things that are slightly more funny. Then you graduate into guys who are sometimes super-intellectual talking over their own heads. Then you move into darker material and even darker material.
That really felt really good on the page, but really none of it made any impact or any sense until we got a cast. So really all of these actors brought every single moment of my script to another place.
And really my script, I will say, is nothing more than his material. It wasn’t like, “How am I going to make this an incredibly cool movie?” All I kept thinking was that it would be more interesting to just watch 17 guys deliver monologues one after the other, and then I wasn’t doing my job. So I owe everything to them, because they really brought this incredibly unique perspective to the characters.
I never really wanted to direct. I never really wanted to write. When you are on a show like The Office, it is not a place where you immediately start saying to yourself, “I want to spread my wings. I want to expand.” It’s actually something hold onto very tightly and try to ride it out for as long as they’ll have you.
This project, because it meant so much to me, I always wanted to get it out there. Really at the end of the day, all I wanted was for people to see how incredibly moving his work is. I think everybody who sees the movie will hopefully see an ounce of what his writing can do. I fully admit that this is only a faction of the imagination that he can inspire as a writer.
But it was something that I wanted to get out there. I never knew that I was going to direct it. Believe it or not, we went to a couple of directors and it wasn’t for them.
Believe it or not, I was sitting with Rainn Wilson at a Sharkey’s in L.A. He said, “Why don’t you just direct it?” I said, “Because I am not a director.” He said, “Who cares? As long as you just adhere to what you believe in the book and shoot it very simply, don’t do that first-time director thing of having a helicopter shot moving over a scene. Just do it.” He said, “It sounds like you would be the only person to do it because you know what you are talking about with it.”
Really that day I called my manager and I was like, “Can I direct it, question mark?” That really started it off there.
Julianne Nicholson: Did he say yes?
John: I don’t know that he did. I think he was like, “Let’s see how other people react to that.”
I started pursuing the rights before we shot The Office. I think I had gotten the pilot. I had gotten the pilot of the show the same week or two weeks in between of getting the pilot and the rights together.
So it was a pretty big two weeks for me. But rights in general, I hadn’t really thought through. So again, ignorance is bliss. I was running around like, “Let’s make this movie! I know it can be incredible.” People were like, “We should go get the rights.” I was like, “That’s is a bummer. Why would we do that?”
I give so much credit to David Foster Wallace’s agent. Really, I was 23 and I had just stopped waiting tables with the money I had from the pilot. So I don’t know why I’d be a candidate to do this if I walked into her office. But instead she really heard me out and she really took the time to understand what it was about the project. Like I said, about the state of the union; how much of an impact it was to me.
So many of my friends had really been a voice at that time in my life when I was still trying to figure out who I am. But when one is trying to figure out who they are, I think that honesty is very rare. So to have this material really changed me; I just wanted to convey that to her that I wanted to do that for more people. I said right to her, “You have an incredible author and I think more people should hear his voice.” She was very, very nice in letting us do this.
When [David Foster Wallace] had passed, we had locked the picture, but we were still doing sound editing and things like that. This movie that I wrote, I am proud to say on behalf of him that we set out to do it because of what he had written, and we ended because of what he had written, not because of what had happened in the world.
So I would never say this is in memoriam because we finished the movie before he had passed. But I pray that it is even a fraction of a tribute that he deserves, because the material that he writes is just astounding and no one will do it again.
His passing is a tragedy in every way, starting first and foremost with his family and friends. An abrupt loss like that, I don’t think any of us can really fathom. And then for any fans or readers, to know that voice will never be heard again is a tragedy. Honestly, I just hope more people go out and read his stuff now that he is gone.
I actually went and saw him speak twice. We were supposed to meet afterwards, but scheduling — he had to go teach in the morning and we never got to set it up.
But there is something kind of nice about the fact that we did this because of our love for him and what he does, rather than being swayed in any way. Because I will fully admit, I would have been that guy that after having a conversation with him I would have run right back to my computer and written down everything he said. I would have been a total fraud had I talked to him earlier on.
James Rocchi of Cinematical: When can we expect your adaptation of Infinite Jest?
John: Well, I’m working on it. Good luck to anybody who goes and does that. There is definitely a script circulating.
James: How heavy is it?
John: Exactly. I don’t know. I’m really looking forward to seeing that. I hope somebody does make it. It’s an incredible book. There is a lot going on there. This is like the JV version of that book.
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