This week, the film The End of the Tour came out in wide release.

It follows Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky as he travels with David Foster Wallace

during the last leg of the 1996 book tour for his masterwork, Infinite Jest.

Over many hours in flight and smoke-filled cars around the frozen Midwest, Lipski recorded their

wide-ranging conversations.

They discuss everything from the role of fiction in modern society to the seductions of

sudden celebrity to, well, Baywatch.

I don't think writers are any smarter than other people.

I think they're made more compelling

in their stupidity or in their confusion. But when Lipski returned, Rolling Stone quickly redirected him

to a breaking story so his tapes gathered dust for 12 years until David Foster Wallace committed

suicide in 2008. Rolling Stone then pressed for the piece, which Lipski wrote, and it won a National

Magazine Award, and then he followed up with a book called, Although, of course, you end up

becoming yourself, composed largely of the tape transcripts.

The end of the tour is based on that book.

Jason Siegel plays Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg, Lipsky.

You're like a nervous guy, huh? No, no, no. I'm okay. How are you?

Because I'm terrified. Are you? Yes, you're not alone in this. Okay. We'll do this together.

No, no, no. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. David Lipsky, welcome to On the Media. It's great to be here, Brooke. Thank you. So, let's go back to 1996.

Wallace's 1,000-page Infinite Justice just made him an instant literary rock star.

New York Magazine's Walter Kern says that it's locked up the National Book Awards.

Now, Rolling Stone hadn't done a profile of an author in 10 years. The movie shows

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