Before the end credits rolled, leaving a sold-out crowd at the IFC Center to anticipate the follow-up Q & A session with the film’s director John Krasinski, a quote from David Foster Wallace appeared, as if Krasinksi made sure the proverbial “last word” on Brief Interviews With Hideous Men go not to its filmmaker, but to its original, deceased author—“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
Sitting among an audience of kissing couples and talking buddies—who were there either for Krasinksi, for Wallace, or for the ceremonial Movie Date—I thought to myself how the theatre can unveil a certain truth about us without our realizing it. The knowing, if not obnoxious, laughter at the Not-So-Funny lines taken verbatim from Wallace’s four-part short story; the synchronized giggles from women upon seeing their favorite paper salesman of Dunder Mifflin, both on-screen and in-person; the soft chorus of confused, derisive murmurs delivered on cue whenever the film deviated from the book; the litany of commonplace post-movie reactions, wherein clusters of the well-versed crowd would recite lines like, “That-Wasn’t-So-Bad. What’d-You-Think,” and “Ugh-I-Knew-That-Would-Suck! The-Film-Is-Never-As-Good-As-The-Book.” These snippets of theatre etiquette show how we all observe the practices of human intimacy—the sayings and vocal gestures customary among friends or peers; the displays of affection between established or would-be lovers; expressions that aim towards a real connection between one and the other. Whether or not we achieve this ultimate goal is another story, a story which both the book and film version of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men tell.
Wallace and, by extension, Krasinski show how our attempts at human intimacy, however sincere or benevolent they appear to ourselves, are, at best, flawed, at bottom, self-serving, and, at its most extreme, destructive. Wallace/Krasinksi shed light on this otherwise furtive truth by breaking down the selfish, and self-defeating, pursuit of connection into a series of interviews, done in the name of research, and with members of the one species that, in Brief Interviews and beyond, are considered the most selfish, the most hurtful, and the most Hideous—Men.
The men of Brief Interviews aren’t all hideous…well, some, anyway. Subject #14 (Ben Shenkman) only has a gripe with a bizarre, relationship-killing involuntary impulse (shouting “Victory for the forces of democratic freedom!” every time he climaxes). Subject #51 (a spazzy Will Forte) plainly declares his love for women, adding that “Some of his best friends are women.” Subject #42 (Frankie Faison), in arguably the most compelling scene of the film, and of the short story, eloquently recounts the livelihood of his estranged father as a dedicated bathroom attendant. Since his words vacillate between respect and revulsion for his father, however, Subject #42’s monologue can serve as the thrust of Brief Interviews, despite it being comparatively tame and nonsexual.
The Sir in a collection of Boys, Guys and Dudes, Subject #42 nevertheless shares a conflicted ambivalence with the rest of the Hideous Men—on one end, there’s an intent to understand, and connect with, someone; on the other end, there’s a deep-seated proclivity to deny that someone their humanity, which always, whether intended or not, ultimately serves one’s own interests. With his sharp words and his sharp dress, Subject #42 stands like a peak of social status, towering over the menial nonexistence of his own father. Subject #3—a gossipy businessman played in the movie by Christopher Meloni—explains how he consoled a deserted, heartbroken woman he ran into at an airport, who he kept referring to as “the girl with the tits,” and who he ended up sleeping with after hours of “lending the ear” (“Well you know how it is I mean what are you going to do.”). Even Subjects #14 and 51 may not be as free from this conflicted ambivalence as we would likely think. Though clearly concerned over his lack of success with women, #14 would completely avoid and never call back his sympathetic conquests, if only for his own sake (“[I]t’s the ones that’ll act all understanding […] that embarrass me the most […] the ones that say ‘I think I could love you anyway.’”). For all his love of women, who knows if, behind every innocent statement, there isn’t a suppressed desire of #51’s to just fuck their brains out.
You would think the women, or rather woman, of Brief Interviews is morally pristine by comparison, and it’s likely that you do. The female interviewer who lends the ear to all these Hideous Men is virtually nonexistent in the short-story but is given life, and a name, in the film (Sara Quinn, played by Julianne Nicholson). Sara, a graduate student in search of understanding the male psyche in a post-feminist world, decides to get “the truth about men” not from women or from books, but from real men. This decision comes after a sudden, mysterious breakup; Ryan (played by John Krasinski himself) leaves Sara one day, ending what was once believed to be a mutually loving relationship, but later comes back only to make an attempt at some closure, and only for Sara to pen him down as Subject #20 in her Interviews. Sara’s thesis, then, becomes just as much about herself as the Post-Feminist Man; her quest to find out the sexual agonies of her subjects is therapy for her very own. Though both her intention and her research method are harmless, Sara’s goal is essentially the same as her lovelorn interviewees; mutual understanding and connection are more of a means than an end to one’s own interests.
The de-humanized quality of the interviews is limited in the film to how the men, with the exception of Subject #20/Ryan, are identified not by their names but by their assigned numbers, and how their interviews are edited down to their most telling, and most incriminating, bits, leaving the rest of their character a non-issue. In David Foster Wallace’s original short story, the de-humanization is more pronounced for the men, and for the woman, who has no name, no lines, no history, and is simply represented throughout as an abbreviation—Q. for Question. Since the film version affords the Subjects their facial expressions and tones of voice, their monologues come off as more personal, but on paper, it is just their words you see, as transcribed and edited by Q. This is why Wallace and, by extension, Krasinksi, communicate the de-humanizing, selfish pursuit of mutual connection awfully well—by cutting down the men’s monologues to their bare bones, and showing you only what was intended to be seen.
Though Krasinksi’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is certainly not one of the year’s best, it is also not one of the year’s worst, as some reviewers would have you believe. If anything, Krasinksi’s adaptation makes you appreciate both the author and his short story more, the former an untimely loss in American culture, the latter a timeless modern classic in American letters. During his Q & A, John Krasinski said about his directorial debut that he did want to “shy away from the literary sense of what [David Foster Wallace] was doing”--the truth that comes to free us only when it is finished with us. According to Wallace, we will only know ourselves and our relationship to others after all is said and done, rather than during, and what we’ll get to know then is how inherently selfish, partially artificial, and potentially catastrophic is our drive for human connection, whether it’s Subject #3 using his sympathy to get at “the girl with the tits,” or me attempting to understand my surrounding audience only in generalized terms, an attempt itself to make the beginning of my essay a little more interesting.
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