Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

You may have heard that David Foster Wallace's short story collection was being made into a film.

There is now a trailer.

I like John Krasinski, and I would like for this project to work. I just don't see how it will.

It appears that Krasinski has developed the character of the interviewer, a probably necessary step if the film is going to cohere much, but this seems to miss whatever points Wallace was making when he decided to redact (or just not write) the questions put to the interview subjects, marking each with the letter "Q." (The Moment magazine interviews excerpted in Infinite Jest are also printed like this.)

Well, that's a complaint about the film not being faithful to the source material, which is hardly a reason why it may not work. But you can still put me down as skeptical.

At any rate, one interesting tidbit: the film is being released by IFC Films, which just announced a collaboration with Criterion Collection, where Criterion will be releasing "selected" titles from recent and upcoming IFC films. No word, I think, on whether Brief Interviews will be selected, but there is a chance, and it would be interesting to see what kind of materials Criterion could pack such a DVD release with.

Second micro-tidbit: it appears that Police Commissioner Burrell is in the film. I'm always excited to see alumni from The Wire in new roles.