Sundance 2015, By the Books: David Foster Wallace and More
January 27, 2015 · from the Word & Film archive
Sundance has always premiered adaptations, but the 2015 lineup reads like a seminar reading list. The headline act: The End of the Tour, James Ponsoldt's two-hander built from David Lipsky's book-length interview with David Foster Wallace, with Jason Segel's casting as Wallace the festival's most argued-about decision — until the first screening ended the argument.
The literary slate runs deep. Brooklyn brings Colm Tóibín's emigrant novel to the screen with Saoirse Ronan and a Nick Hornby script. Z for Zachariah adapts Robert C. O'Brien's post-apocalyptic YA classic into a three-hander with Margot Robbie. The Diary of a Teenage Girl translates Phoebe Gloeckner's graphic-prose hybrid with startling fidelity, and True Story pairs Jonah Hill and James Franco in Michael Finkel's stolen-identity memoir.
Even the documentaries came from the shelf: Alex Gibney's Going Clear, from Lawrence Wright's Scientology exposé, premiered to standing ovations and legal threats in roughly equal measure.
Festival buyers noticed the pattern — nearly every bidding war this year had an ISBN attached. The full slate's book-to-screen entries are being added to the catalog, starting with the Wallace film.
