synopsis of brief interviews with hideous men

Wallace’s story, divided into four shorter pieces interspersed throughout the collection of the same title, documents the transcripts of men identified only by interview number, location, month, and year.

After her recent estrangement from her boyfriend, Sara uses the interviews as a means of exploring her abandonment. The movie juxtaposes her formal interviews with scenes from Sara’s personal and professional life, in which she effectively “interviews” male acquaintances on subjects relevant to her work. The ambitious adaptation follows Sara Quinn, an anthropology PhD candidate, as she conducts interviews with men for her dissertation on female sexuality. John Krasinski’s film dramatizes the series of interviews chronicled in Wallace’s short story. John Krasinski’s recent adaptation of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men attempts to recreate Wallace’s complex, experimental story but ultimately fails to deliver the brilliance of Wallace’s writing. He’s not only one of the most venerated post-modernists in America, but one whose untimely death still haunts the literary world. Thus in the wake of David Foster Wallace’s suicide, the task of adapting his work is particularly daunting.

This, in addition to the prestige of the author, heightens the expectations placed on such an adaptation the film has to be successful in its own right while capturing the essence of the original work. Stanley Kubrick remarked of his adaptation of Lolita, “If it had been written by a lesser author, it might have been a better film.” Through exquisite prose and writing style, revered authors like Nabokov evoke an emotional response that is essentially untranslatable to the screen.

Synopsis of brief interviews with hideous men