David Foster Wallace on cinema
(David Lynch, Unforgiven, The English Pat...
00:00Cia: It was two year ago that the national attention was brought to plight of Jennifer Harbury. An American citizen whose husband, a Guatemalan rebel commander had vanished. She received no help from the American or Guatemalan governments despite her suspicions that CIA operatives may have been behind his disappearance. Finally after a string of hunger strikes, a prime time profile 60 minutes, and the efforts of then representative, now senator Torricelli, she was given the news that she was dreading. Her husband had been killed. Rather than providing closure, however this news only increased her desire to call attention to the CIA involvement in the abuses of human rights, joining me now Jennifer Harbury, her new book "Searching for Everado", tells the story of her ordeal. Also with us senator Robert Torricelli, the man who has championed her cause in congress. I am pleased to have both of them. Welcome.01:05Both: Thank you Charlie.01:07Charlie Rose: Congratulations on the book, congratulations on the election. Uh, I want to get to the future rather than the past, but just briefly, I've told a little bit of it, when we say CIA operatives, we're talking about people in Guatemala on the payroll of the CIA who knew about what had happened to your husband, but were still receiving money from the CIA and the U.S. Government and people in the government who knew what had happened to your husband, or should of known what happened to your husband, and despite your efforts to find out, uh, didn't come foreword. But in a capsule, give me a sense, tell me the story. that we've told before. LAWYER01:41Jennifer Harbury: My husband was a Mayan leader of the resistance for assistant Guatemala. The army captured him alive in combat, faked his death, and tortured him for about a year. According to the CIA files, he was tortured repeatedly, he was drugged repeatedly by army physicians. He was placed in a full body cast to avoid his being able to escape, and was eventually executed without trial. All that time he was secretly detained with the army insisting that he had died in combat. In the files I've also found notices that um, the CIA reported to the White House and the State Department 6 days after his capture that he was a prisoner of war. When I found out he was still alive after witness escaped, um, in 1993, apparently somebody did speak to military officials and received a report that he was still alive. That was not passed on to any of us. I was told repeatedly that there was no information about him. I went through a series of hunger strikes when in fact there were reports that he was in fact dead. Not only that, that he was in the hands according to the02:49Iob Report: What is it, that you have not yet been able to, find and have returned to you, his remains.02:56Jennifer Harbury: Most of the reports indicate that he's buried under the Las Cabanas military base near the Mexican border, which is in the zone where he was held and seen being tortured. It's a small military base, a string of barbed wire, a few huts, and their villagers report that there are 500 to 2,000 Guatemalans buried under that base. We had a number special orders from the court to allow an exhumation This special prolocutor tried again and again to open that mass graveyard he was shot at, he was put under 24 hour day death threats together with his son until he was ran out of office. No one else has been able to get into that graveyard to open it.03:37Charlie Rose: What do you want now? I mean what is the thrust of the book which tells the history, but also what remaining questions are there what are your imperatives, what story do you want to tell?03:48Jennifer Harbury: I want to know everything about what happened to him, Who did it, who knew what, when did they know it, who participated in what. I want some kind of closure to the case in the sense of something happening that I can be certain that this will not continue to happen. When I did human rights work in Guatemala in '85 and '86, I lost an average of a friend a week to the death squads. People who were found mutilated and dead in cornfields and gutters, or never seen again. They're still dying even though the peace accords have been signed. A week later too, two Mayan leaders for civil rights groups were shot to death in their car. A former supreme court judge is now missing. Several court officials are under death threats et cetera et cetera. I want something so I know that this type of conduct by United States officials will not be repeated, and I want something so the Guatemalan army not feel that it can with full impunity continue to kill at will.04:44Charlie Rose: Has there been any change, because of all this taking place? In attitude towards your request?04:49Jennifer Harbury: Well yes. I mean there have been some changes I've received a good chunk of the files, pursuant to my lawsuit under the freedom of information act. I've gotten some files. Um, we have a civil rights case now pending in the federal disctrict court in Washington that I hope very much will bring about needed reforms. We're pressing through congress to have the files on human rights violations opened up so the Guatemalans can find out what happened to their family members. I can't tell you what it's like to think about someone you really care about is in a secret cell somewhere being horribly abused by some maniac. You can't sleep, you can't eat, you can't think about anything else except about trying to bring an end to that suffering, while you're by your family member. 200,000 people are disappeared or dead in Guatemala by the death squads, those families are still in pain, and I think they have the right to some answers. They also have a right to go to the courts and get these killers put off the streets.05:48Charlie Rose: What do you think the United States government should be doing, that it's not doing? SENATOR (D-NJ)05:54Robert Torricelli: I think Charlie that a lot of this is symptomatic of the fact that for so many years, through the fight against fascism, and in the cold war, our country had to make, so many, understandably, had to make so many moral compromises and the kind of people we had to deal with, to survive, that we don't have to turn it off. We don't have to hire Guatemalan colonels anymore to work for the CIA. We don't have to deal with people who traffic in narcotics to get information about global communism. It's over. Turn it off.06:27Charlie Rose: But are you saying they haven't turned it off?06:29Robert Torricelli: They haven't turned it off.06:32Charlie Rose: Even today?06:34Robert Torricelli: Well the fact that as late as in Jennifer's experience we were paying officers in the Guatemalan military, who we knew were involved in the murder of not just Guatemala citizens, but of American citizens. And involved in human rights abuses, and even in narcotic trafficking to our own children and our own people. That this was going on as late into the1990s I think is the case that the intelligence community --06:55Charlie Rose: But since then,06:57Robert Torricelli: Adjusting slowly at least.07:00Charlie Rose: But since then we've had all the attention that you have generated because of the powerful and eloquent voice you have brought to this, uh, on lots of national media, this one included, it would seem to me that we now know about the kind of people that were on the CIA payroll.07:14Robert Torricelli: And John Deutch before he left, was head of the agency, he has now claimed there is going to be human rights standards, that we've learned the lesson that sometimes, the information that usually, ironically, comes from these sources isn't reliable anyway because of the kind of people that they are, and even if it is reliable, the association of these pe, gives more political damage then any security benefit we get. As a virtue of that, it is claimed that there a re 1,000 of these assests around the world, cause of narcotics or human rights abuses that we will no longer employ. I think that's good news.07:48Charlie Rose: Do you think that'll be carried out?07:52Robert Torricelli: Well I was very hopeful that with Toney Lake I think given who he is, he would of been the kind of >>CIA director that really would of enforced it. Now with Mr. Tenet: Why do you not know about Mr. Tenet, because he's too much what? Or too little what? The record is of being part of the agency. Getting control of it is not good, by most who have tried. And second whether or not he has too much of the intelligence community. But I think that remains to be seen. Eh, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.08:21Charlie Rose: Ok. And we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I mean he was chairman of the staff committee on intelligence in the senate. Uh, went over there and been deputy for what, 18 months or a year. Uh was going to continue to be deputy if Tony Lake had been confirmed, now president seemed to have appointed him as an easy way out and with recognition of his abilities, we're not taking anything away from him. Are you saying that to get things straight at the CIA, it's unlikely to happen because what's necessary and essential is someone from outside who will really change things?08:51Robert Torricelli: Uh first I think it starts with the administration. the law requires that the CIA share information, as in these cases. If an American is abused, the laws are violated, the president should be told. The congress is to be told. that's never going to be taken seriously until the president and the congress insist upon it. The agency still acts when they give us information about intelligence operations as if they're doing us a favor. It's not a favor, it's the law. That has to start with the president. And then I think ironically it may be the one agency of government where the man or woman who leads it, needs not to be of it. Not to have experience with it. From the outside.09:36Charlie Rose: Then you just said the president has the kind of09:40Cia He Wants: At the moment I have seen it promised a different CIA I have not seen the level of demand that convinces me it's going to happen.09:45Charlie Rose: I want to come back to Jennifer in a second, but let me just to stay with the CIA for a second, what about all the revaluations about moles here and moles there, and all of the uncovering you think that there is a new mindset there about those kinds of things?09:56Robert Torricelli: You know Charlie, I served in the intelligence community in those years, in the cases of the moles and in fact the operatives we now know are working for the Soviets during the cold war and the years after.10:10Charlie Rose: And he ain't going to arrest them. Ironically, the greatest responsibility of that falls upon this same mindset of the CIA. Those moles should have been found out long before. And the reason they weren't, they weren't allowed access by the FBI. Cause the FBI is in fact in charge of counter intelligence.10:28Robert Torricelli: They wouldn't cooperate with the agency of the United States government that could of found these moles, because of this same attitude of the agency being separate, and being apart. And the United States paid a high price for that with Aldrich Ames and other cases.10:39Charlie Rose: Let me come back now, I want to talk about two different strains here. But the meet10:44Jennifer Harbury: They meet10:47Charlie Rose: In your case. they meet here. What happened to the man who was a CIA operative? Guatemalan, on the payroll, who knew of your husbands murder?10:55Jennifer Harbury: Well, he more than knew, that was colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, a school of the Americas graduate, who was seen by an eye witness as he bent over my husbands body, my husband was bound hand and feet to a table, there was an unidentified gas tank next to the bed, he was swollen enormously. The word the man used was deformed. His arms and legs were heavily bandaged as if they had ruptured, or hemorrhaged. And he was raving. Colonel Alpirez more than knew what was happening to my husband. He was one of the people in charge, for a long period of time, of the secret detention and of his torture an interrogation, and there's one document that indicates that he actually gave a confession about requesting permission to have him executed, to the attorney general of Guatemala.11:39Charlie Rose: What happened to him?11:41Jennifer Harbury: He um, is supposedly not on military payroll anymore, and is supposedly not on CIA payroll anymore. I assume he is not on CIA payroll, de facto. Um, he is still active among military circles, he was teaching at a military school for a while, and I hear intermittently that he is still in fact closely involved with the army. I think, as a number of the files indicate, he knows way too much about both the army and the CIA to really cross.12:08Charlie Rose: What do you think, if anything, can bring closure for you? I mean just to know that this man that you loved so much, was in that prison, in that cell, enduring that kind of torture.12:20Jennifer Harbury: Well, nothing can bring a person back, and nothing can erase that. There is nothing we can do, at that level. I would like to see the case go through the inter-American court it's actually been accepted as a full international trial in Costa Rica by OAS, that's highly rare, it's a very special situation. At that point the army for the first time ever will face an international panel of judges that it cannot assassinate and cannot terrorize. There will be some kind of, I believe, I'm confident. some kind of final ruling that yes the army did kill him, that they cannot say that he ran off with another woman, they can't say that's really him buried in the first grave, that I just got confused because all Indians look a like. They won't be able to say any of those things, There will be an international recognition and condemnation of what had happened. And that's a major step in breaking the army's impunity. For once, at the highest levels, they will be accused and sentenced so to speak. Not criminally sentenced, they can be fined, but just found guilty of torture, of a hoax, of lying, of obstruction of justice, of murder. That will be very very important, and it will make me breath a little easier that the Mayans in Guatemala will be safer in the future, As for the U.S. I would like to see those files opened, all CIA files, all agency files on major human rights cases in Guatemala and in other countries in the hemisphere. I want everyone else in this hemisphere to be able to sleep at night too.13:46Charlie Rose: I assume they're going to reject that immediately by saying you know, we cant compromise certain people, I mean by opening all human rights files we're going to compromise somebody and we can't do that and that's part of the problem.13:59Jennifer Harbury: They don't need to name the names of innocent bystanders, do we want as a matter of national security to obstruct justice and hide the identities of those who commit murder, torture and secret detention? Is that part of our national security? But even if those names are withheld, at least the families need to know, where was my son of my wife taken, what happened to them? Where are they buried? Are they alive or dead? Et cetera et cetera. At least the basic underlying facts, in fact in the criminal court system we do exactly that every single day with drug informants. The basic underlying fact minus identifying details of informants are given routinely. There's no reason why that can't happen on the same level with these files. No reason whatsoever.14:45Charlie Rose: I remember, and you talked to me at the time, you-, at some, and you'll help me to understand this, at some political risk, because, help me unremember exactly what you, what you, when you made available information you had because you were a member of the intelligence committee. You got in trouble in the house, and there were screams for your head.15:07Robert Torricelli: Well uh, I had actually seen on 60 minutes the case of Jennifer being on her hunger strike in Guatemala15:14Charlie Rose: And that's what drove you to act? Seeing her on 60 minutes?15:19Robert Torricelli: Well I saw this and I, at the conference of the Americas in Miami the year that followed, I had to occasion to see the foreign minister of Guatemala, and I asked her about the program, and what she knew about Jennifer Harbury and the disappearance. And she told me a story that was clearly so convoluted, that it peaked my interest. And I went back to Washington and I met with the assistant secretary Mr. Watson, of the Latin American state department, and his story was equally convoluted. It is by that I started to ask questions, and uh then a very brave man, who has since lost his career as consequence of this case, came to me and said you need to know you're not being told the truth. Jennifer was sitting outsid-16:00Charlie Rose: He is now your employee, is he not?16:03Robert Torricelli: I hired him. Jennifer was sitting outside the White House on a hunger strike and he told me, not only do they know what happened to her husband, they know when and who's responsible. I told her, I wrote a letter to the president-16:18Charlie Rose: And they were included whom?16:21Robert Torricelli: Well the agency-16:23Charlie Rose: But do you know people who said, we don't know? Who actually lied to you because you knew they, that individual knew?16:30Robert Torricelli: I don't believe Bill Clinton knew, I believe Bill Clinton was in the same situation the congress was in, that we were not told. But clearly, in the National Security Agency and in the State Department, at significant levels, people knew that she was sitting out there on a hunger strike needlessly16:43Charlie Rose: Did Tony Lake know?16:45Robert Torricelli: I don't know.16:47Jennifer Harbury: There's a defense intelligence agency document from September 1993 that was sent to the White House and the16:53Robert Torricelli: Saying?16:56Jennifer Harbury: State department at the United States embassy in Guatemala that says yes,17:02Bámaca Was Captured Alive: At the same time you're simply outside the White House on a hunger strike, begging for information.17:07Jennifer Harbury: That was 1995, that was my third hunger strike. That DIA CHARLIE17:13Charlie Rose: And who do you know saw the bulletin? bulletin went out during my first hunger strike.17:16Jennifer Harbury: Good question, I'd like to know the answer to that.17:19Robert Torricelli: I have to, I have to accept that Tony Lake and Sandy Berger didn't know, or frankly I couldn't work with them17:24Charlie Rose: But you don't, we, this is as timely as today's headlines in terms of is the left hand talking to the right hand? Is it not?17:31Robert Torricelli: They're talking Charlie, but people come about these things with a strange mindset, you know? It's a forest for the trees Your earlier question to Jennifer was what would happen if we released all this information, well their argument is, well if you release all this information about people who disappeared, and who did all this torturing and murdering, no one will work for us anymore.17:50Charlie Rose: Because they say we don't protect our sources.17:53Robert Torricelli: Yeah, well the kind of people that do that one, I don't want working for us anymore, but second, the conflict becomes, when these disappeared are Americans, it appears to me that the loyalty to a foreign source in the intelligence community and the loyalty to an American citizen whose family member has disappeared, shouldn't be hard to figure out. At this point there are still American families, American families, who need to know what happened to somebody they cared about, who has never been seen since.18:21Charlie Rose: Did the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report that none of the allegations raised by you, had proven to be true?18:30Robert Torricelli: Actually they answered a question that wasn't asked. The Republicans on the committee, not the full committee, The Republicans on the committee wrote and then leaked a report Right. claiming that it was not true that Alpirez actually committed the murder18:44Charlie Rose: The man we talked about earlier18:45Jennifer Harbury: Correct18:47Charlie Rose: who was employed by the CIA18:48Robert Torricelli: Well, I didn't say he committed the murder, he was18:51Charlie Rose: You're not even saying he committed the murder18:52Jennifer Harbury: No. responsible18:53Robert Torricelli: He was responsible for people-18:55Charlie Rose: you're just saying he was there18:56Jennifer Harbury: Well I know even more then that from the files but don't let me interrupt the senator.19:01Robert Torricelli: He was responsible for people who did, and clearly at a minimum was involved in a cover up, of trying to solve the murder. That's what was charged, and that's what remains true. The interesting part of Mr. Gingrich and the Republican majority on this is, that they, they went after me, they continue to defend the CIA, even when the agency wasn't defending itself. The agency demoted, fired, or reprimanded 25 agents who were involved in the Guatemala affair. They accepted, at least to some limited extent, what was wrong. But to this day, in the congress, there's been no effort, to do anything other than what was done against me my source in the state department Mr. Nuccio.19:40Charlie Rose: What's next for you- go ahead, you want to make a point.19:44Jennifer Harbury: Well I just want to support what the senator is saying, which all of the files indicate that everything he said is exactly right. The files state that El Perez was in charge, or one of the several people in charge of my husbands secret detention, interrogation, et cetera. Another document says that he is the one that was responsible for his murder eventually, although he wouldn't of done it with his own hands, he would of delegated that to someone lower down. And there is still another document that shows Alpirez actually confessing to the Guatemalan attorney general that yes, we had him as a prisoner, he would not give us any information after a whole year, he lead us into an ambush, he tricked us, someone was injured, we called to the capitol and asked for permission to have him killed and got it. And so everything that the senator indicated has been shown to be exactly correct in the files. And I find the House response to be pretty coy in avoiding that issue by saying well he didn't actually kill him with his own hands. That was never said.20:37Charlie Rose: Searching for Everardo, Jennifer Harbury A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala, "In the silence I try to stare past the shroud of sparking fireflies, past the machine gunner in the circlet of trees, are you out there Everado, you've been missing for so long, vanished for 3 years now, have I finally found you here you're still so real to me. It's hard to believe that you're dead and broken, lying motionless in some shallow grave. This is not what I fought for not what I hoped for all of the time, I don't want to believe it no matter how hard my heart resists, for it has the ring of truth. You will never let me hide from the truth. I want to take you from their hands, free you, but I don't know if that will ever be possible, I will try, I am here for you, I am here for you." Your words, this book, Thank you.21:24Robert Torricelli: Thank you Charlie.21:28Charlie Rose: We'll be right back. Stay with us. The style of David Foster Wallace defies description. In an age where the novel is constantly being threatened by the allure of technological advancement, he put it back on the map with his mammoth work , Infinite Jest. When he is not writing novels of extraordinary length, he is out chronicling America for publications like Harper's, Esquire and Premiere. "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is a collection of the pieces he has written on everything from the genius of David Lynch to tennis to the horrors of a cruise ship. I am pleased to have him back on this broadcast. Your Dad is a professor of philosophy. AUTHOR22:07David Foster Wallace: Yeah.22:10Charlie Rose: He was a protege of George Will's father, who also taught same school, same department.22:14David Foster Wallace: Uh-huh.22:16Charlie Rose: And considered him --22:18David Foster Wallace: Well --22:20Charlie Rose: -- as an influence --22:23David Foster Wallace: Dad's been at the University of Illinois since the early '60s and when Dad first came, Fred Will, who's now I think in his 70s, was, you know, maybe in his 40s or 50s and was a guy of major stature and he was nice to Dad. And I think most junior academics, this is what happens is, you know, you find, you find older people in the department whose intellectual approach is congenial to you and who are nice to you and you kind of become friends with him. I was a philosophy major in college, but my, my areas of interest were mathematical logic and semantics and stuff, which my dad thinks is kind of gibberish, so it's very weird. In a certain way, I'm following in Dad's footsteps, but I'm also doing the required, you know, thumbing the nose at the father thing. And the stuff, the stuff that I was doing was really more math than it was philosophy and I don't know whether I would have taught. If you're good enough at that, they just kind of put you in a think tank and let you write on yellow paper. There's a thing at Princeton where they've hired, they're supposedly professors. They don't teach any classes. They just sit and, you know, devise proofs.23:18Charlie Rose: But I don't think everybody should have to teach, do you?23:21David Foster Wallace: I heartily agree with you.23:23Charlie Rose: Yeah. I mean, I would hope we're getting away from that sort of, or, and then, likewise, you hope that you can get away from this notion of "publish or perish," too.23:31David Foster Wallace: Yeah. Oh, boy. Don't even get me started on teaching. Teaching, you learn an enormous amount. The cliché turns out to be true. The teacher learns a lot more than the students. You do for about two or three years and then the curve falls off sharply and most, most of the older teachers that I know, except for a very few geniuses, are extremely bored with teaching and are not very interested in their students and they're going through the motions and it's, there's a weird schizophrenia about higher education because people are hired to teach and to teach college students who are preparing to enter the field themselves, yet on the other hand, very often they're judged and given or denied tenure based on their own work. And I think administrators believe that the two are compatible. They're really not. They're entirely different. And the more time and energy spent on teaching, which is extraordinarily hard to do well, the less time spent sort of on your own work. I'm in a good position because I was hired, I mean, I didn't have much teaching experience. I was hired because, you know, I write a lot and publish stuff and that's really all they care about. And I hadn't had much teaching experience and so you learn a lot right at the beginning. But I'm coming up on, this is my fourth year and I'm already realizing-24:36Charlie Rose: So you're kind of burned out and bottomed out and plateaued.24:40David Foster Wallace: No, I think, no, I think what's the, I think I've developed an esthetic or I've developed a position and I'm now, I find myself saying this year the same thing I said last year and, and it's a little bit horrifying. I got very lucky and got a grant, so I can take next year off as an unpaid leave and I don't really have to confront the decision.24:58Charlie Rose: And so what will you do with that year?25:00David Foster Wallace: I will, if past, if past experience holds true, I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.25:08Charlie Rose: Worrying about not writing?25:10David Foster Wallace: Yeah.25:12Charlie Rose: Not worrying about what to write.25:14David Foster Wallace: Right. Yeah. Worrying about not writing. Confutation.25:18Charlie Rose: Yeah. Respect means a lot to you, sort of a sense that I'm taken seriously and respected for my work.25:25David Foster Wallace: You can read this in my face?25:28Charlie Rose: Yeah. I can read it in terms of what's been written about you and what you've said.25:35David Foster Wallace: Well, show me somebody who doesn't like to be respected. I guess there was a certain, there's a certain amount of ambivalence about, say, the reception that "Infinite Jest" got because, you know, every writer dreams of having a lot of attention.25:49Charlie Rose: You bet.25:51David Foster Wallace: But the fact of the matter is this is a long, difficult book and a lot of the attention began coming at a time when I, I mean, I can do elementary arithmetic. A lot of people hadn't had time to read the book yet. So the stuff about me or interesting rumors that developed about the book and all that stuff getting attention, I found that, I didn't like that very much just because I wanted people to write -- to read the book. I'm sorry that I'm essentially stuttering.26:15Charlie Rose: No, you're not. You're doing just fine.26:17David Foster Wallace: So other than that, I mean, I, you know, I don't think I'm more hungry for respect than the average person.26:23Charlie Rose: Let me ask about this book, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," which is one of the pieces in here.I want to talk about David Lynch, who after I read your piece in Esquire, was it Esquire? No, Premier. Premier. I interviewed David Lynch. You never got to interview David Lynch.26:36David Foster Wallace: Well, I said from the outset it's the reason they let me on the set of all the other journalists, because I was the only one who said he did not, in fact --26:43Charlie Rose: Why?26:45David Foster Wallace: -- want to interview David Lynch.26:47Charlie Rose: Why did you want to go observe David Lynch?26:49David Foster Wallace: I found -- you mean why did I not want to interview him or why did I --26:53Charlie Rose: No, but, well, why was David Lynch interesting to you as a subject of a magazine piece?27:00David Foster Wallace: I, for me, the number of, the number of film directors who get national distribution in this country are truly interesting as artists is very, very small and Lynch was one of them for me. I've been interested in Lynch's films for a long time and actually, in grad school, I think there's a thing about this in the essay. "Blue Velvet" came at a time for me when I really l needed to see it and it helped me a lot in my own work. And then it, after that, I went and, you know, found "Eraserhead" and had sort of followed this guy's career and I find him, I find him instructive and useful to think about. For whatever that's worth.27:34Charlie Rose: Did you like the movie "Lost Highway"?27:36David Foster Wallace: I have not seen the movie "Lost Highway." I've seen the rough cut of "Lost Highway" or scenes. They let me go in and sit in what I believe to be David Lynch's personal editing chair --27:47Charlie Rose: Yeah. And you sat there and --27:49David Foster Wallace: -- and looked at on the little, on the little monitor and see, which was the thrill of my life. But I've been on this tour and even though I'm in big cities, I have not yet gotten to see it. And I'm kind of terrified because there's a big part of the essay that talks about what the movie's about and if, indeed, the movie is nothing like that, I'm going to look --28:05Charlie Rose: Yeah. When he was here, I asked him about what was "Lynchian" and I took that right out of your piece.28:10David Foster Wallace: And I'm sure he just looked at you and blinked slowly.28:13Charlie Rose: Well, he didn't have a great answer because I don't think he thinks that way. He obviously doesn't think that way.28:19David Foster Wallace: There was, I mean, yeah, there's a part in the essay that kind of does this academic "Let's unpack the idea of Lynchian and what Lynchian means is something about the unbelievably grotesque existing in a kind of union with the unbelievably banal," and then it gives a series of scenarios about what, what is and what isn't Lynchian. Jeffrey Dahmer was borderline Lynchian.28:39Charlie Rose: Borderline?28:42David Foster Wallace: Well, the refrigerator. And actually, what was Lynchian was having the actual food products next to the disembodied bits of the corpse. I guess the big one is, you know, a regular domestic murder is not Lynchian. But if the man, if the police come to the scene and see the man standing over the body and the woman, let's see, the woman's '50s bouffant is undisturbed and the man and the cops have this conversation about the fact that the man killed the woman because she persistently refused to buy say, for instance, Jif peanut butter rather than Skippy, and how very, very important that is, and if the cops found themselves somehow agreeing that there were major differences between the brands and that a wife who didn't recognize those differences was deficient in her wifely duties, that would be Lynchian, this weird, this weird, confluence of very dark, surreal, violent stuff and absolute, almost Norman Rockwell, banal, American stuff, which is terrain he's been working for quite a while, I mean, at least since, at least since "Blue Velvet."29:43Charlie Rose: You think the failure of "Dune" was good for his career.29:47David Foster Wallace: I --29:49Charlie Rose: Because it made him understand a system that he didn't want to be part of.29:54David Foster Wallace: What happened to Lynch with "Dune" and now, I'm getting a lot of this from my research, which was published stuff. It's not like, you know, Mr. Lynch and I had coffee and he told me this stuff. But Lynch's career for a while had a kind of Richard Rodriguez arc to it. "Eraserhead," like "El Mariachi" --30:07Charlie Rose: Yeah, right.30:10David Foster Wallace: -- this enormous, enormously cool independent film, and it attracts the attention of people with money. The first one is Mel Brooks and Brooks hires him to do "The Elephant Man." And "The Elephant Man" is a fantastic, fantastic film and it's lighting and atmospherics, nothing else. So anyway, because of that, you know, DeLaurentis hires him to do "Dune" and now this is "Dune," at the time, is equivalent to what, like, "Twister" or "The Rock" would be now. It's this enormous, this is, this is a "product" and, here's all this money at stake. And "Dune" itself, the novel, I don't know if people read it anymore, but it's a tremendously complicated science fiction novel. Anyway, Lynch, so you don't need an hour-long narrative of this, but Lynch does the thing and doesn't do it all that well, but what really happens is the money men come in and they cut, like, I think 35 minutes out of the movie and it renders the movie incoherent. I mean, literally incoherent. And it was a huge flop and I think Lynch ate the flop and decided that what he wanted to do is he wanted to, you know, rule over small films, rather than serve large corporate ones. I mean, he was really one of the first, we see a lot of them now, the, you know, Cinemax and Fine Line directors, these kind of independents who are doing stuff a little out of the mainstream, but still getting national distribution. As far as I can tell, Lunch really, Lynch really pioneered that ground. He was really the first one to be doing small, eccentric films that got a very wide release, "Blue Velvet" being the best example. And this may be entirely false. I mean, I'm not a film scholar.31:32Charlie Rose: But you like movies.31:34David Foster Wallace: I do like movies.31:36Charlie Rose: A lot.31:38David Foster Wallace: Front row.31:39Charlie Rose: Okay. Me, too. "The English Patient."31:41David Foster Wallace: You're seriously asking me for my view on "The English Patient"?31:44Charlie Rose: I am. Of course.31:46David Foster Wallace: I thought "The English Patient" was an extremely well-done, slick, commercial movie. I thought it was beautifully lit. I thought, you know, the desert looks like a body. I mean, it's got an erotic --31:54Charlie Rose: It was David Lean-ian for you.31:56David Foster Wallace: I thought it was like David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" in some ways. I felt the story, I felt the story was somewhat predictable and some of the, some of the sentimental stuff at the end seemed to me like stuff I've seen 250 times before. But in all fairness, and in all respect to Michael Ondaatje, felt the same way about the book, which I actually really like Ondaatje's poetry. He's got a book called "A Few Tricks I Can Do With a Knife" that's really good. I didn't think "The English Patient" was his best book.32:18Charlie Rose: But it's a good book.32:20David Foster Wallace: It's a, it's an outstanding book.32:21Charlie Rose: Yeah. And the film is interesting in that it's not the book.32:25David Foster Wallace: That is --32:26Charlie Rose: And he recognizes --32:28David Foster Wallace: -- difficult to argue with.32:29Charlie Rose: Well, no, no. But that's not it. I don't mean to make a simple point, but it is a perfect example of where somebody makes a film that's every bit as good as the book.32:35David Foster Wallace: Yeah. It's a --32:36Charlie Rose: -- not doing the book.32:37David Foster Wallace: A "Godfather" thing.32:38Charlie Rose: Yeah. A "Godfather" thing.32:39David Foster Wallace: Yeah.32:41Charlie Rose: Yeah.32:42David Foster Wallace: Absolutely.32:43Charlie Rose: How about "Shine"? I'm going to go down three, David.32:46David Foster Wallace: This is -- a lot of this is going to get cut out, right?32:50Charlie Rose: Perhaps. But I'll make the decision as to what's cut out.32:53David Foster Wallace: It's funny. This, I mean, I'm totally intimidated. I'm sitting next to the guy in the Green Room and, you know, not saying a word. Then the minute he leaves, I start haranguing his publicist. The thing that interested me about "Shine" was I thought, I mean, besides being a manual for how to build a mentally ill child, I mean, all the early, early adult stuff, I thought it was absolutely incredible up until the end, and then I just thought, the causes of the dysfunction and the symptoms of the dysfunction are unpacked with such complexity and such care. And the ending, charming though Lynn Redgrave is, just the move from the time he becomes a hit in the bar to the time Lynn Redgrave meets him to the time she consults an astrology chart to marry him, to, you know, his very moving "Mr. Holland's Opus"-like --33:31Charlie Rose: Right, right.33:32David Foster Wallace: -- performance at the end, it's terrific, but it happens at about 10 times the speed that all the other stuff did. So the thing I was asking the publicist is: "Did the money guys or the studio guys make him wrap the ending" --33:42Charlie Rose: And they said no. In fact, it was his script.33:43David Foster Wallace: They got a little bristly. The got a little bristly.33:46Charlie Rose: But why would --33:47David Foster Wallace: And I am not trying to bust on "Shine," which --33:49Charlie Rose: I know you're not but, I mean, what we're trying to do here is just understand you by talking about things other than your work. And we'll come back to --33:54David Foster Wallace: Unfortunately, most of the things hat are leaving my mouth seem to be mean.33:57Charlie Rose: What?33:58David Foster Wallace: Most of the things that are leaving my mouth seem to be mean.34:00Charlie Rose: Well, we'll get to that.34:01David Foster Wallace: Okay.34:03Charlie Rose: Now, here, why wouldn't you talk to Scott Hicks in the Green Room?34:05David Foster Wallace: Because --34:06Charlie Rose: Because what?34:07David Foster Wallace: Well, because he's --34:08Charlie Rose: I mean, you're a big-deal writer.34:10David Foster Wallace: Well, it, I don't know. I think of myself as the schmuck in the Green Room.34:14Charlie Rose: Well, you may be the schmuck in the Green Room too, but why wouldn't you turn to him, I mean, did you have no curiosity to turn to him and ask the filmmaker the question that you were curious about?34:22David Foster Wallace: I think if I had known him or he was my friend --34:25Charlie Rose: Yeah.34:26David Foster Wallace: -- I would have been comfortable. Just doing it out of, I think part of it is going to readings, you do a reading at a book store34:31Charlie Rose: Yeah. Right.34:32David Foster Wallace: -- and then afterwards there's usually a Q&A --34:35Charlie Rose: Right.34:36David Foster Wallace: -- which it's very difficult to get out of. I've tried all kinds of things. And many of the questions have this kind of belligerence about them. You know, "Did you think that this ending was weak?" And part of you kind of goes, "Well, why don't you and I go have supper and we'll talk about this. You don't just come at somebody with a question like that." What, what I was trying to do is, I don't know anything about filmmaking from the perspective of making a film. What I know is watching them, as a movie fan. I mean, Pauline Kael is sort of my idol this way. She was, she was the fan. She was the consumer and her authority came from that. I wanted -- I felt as if the ending of "Shine" had been mucked with, either to get the time down or the guy said, you know, the producer said, "This is kind of -- we need a more upbeat ending." And I was curious to know whether that was true and it turns out no. It turns out Hicks -- apparently the story got really happy really fast in real life and that's the way it happened.
Charlie Rose:
Can you imagine yourself writing a screenplay? Have you tried?
David Foster Wallace:
No, I haven't tried. I've talked a couple times, my best friend writes mysteries and he and I have talked about doing a screenplay. I think, I think I would have a very difficult time writing something that's a product that other people would mess with. And the amount of money that's at stake in movies and the amount of, the dispersal of responsibility for the thing, I mean, the director, the actors,
the producer, in order to do,
writing is very difficult for me and
it takes a lot of time and energy.
And once I've done it, it's my thing.
I can't imagine putting in the time
and energy to do a good screenplay,
I mean, something like what
David Webb Peoples can do.
He's a screenwriter I think
is really, really superb.
Charlie Rose:
What's he written?
David Foster Wallace:
He's written "Blade Runner"
and he wrote "Unforgiven,"
the Clint Eastwood Western which --
Charlie Rose:
Did you like it?
David Foster Wallace:
I thought -- "Unforgiven"?
Charlie Rose:
Yeah.
David Foster Wallace:
I thought "Unforgiven" is the first
really smart Western since,
I don't know, early Peckinpah.
Charlie Rose:
I do, too. I loved it.
David Foster Wallace:
What's interesting is I don't know
a single female who likes the film.
It's very odd. I talk to all these people --
Charlie Rose:
It's interesting you say that.
David Foster Wallace:
-- about "Unforgiven"
Charlie Rose:
It's interesting you
say that because --
David Foster Wallace:
-- and females think,
"Western? It stinks."
And if you can get them to watch it,
it's not a Western at all.
I mean, it's a moral drama.
It's, you know, it's Henry James,
basically. But it's very odd.
Charlie Rose:
My girlfriend and I --
Amanda hates the film
and it's the one film that I just have
a wider difference with her than
any other film that
we've seen together.
David Foster Wallace:
Yeah. If I were going to try to do something,
I'd want to do something like that.
But that was also an enormous
success story, luck story.
David Webb Peoples,
reclusive, weird screenwriter
I don't know much about him.
This script had been shopped around for years and finally Clint Eastwood bought it and Clint Eastwood's got enough juice to go, "Okay, I'll star in it so they'll make it."
This was a weird Western.
This is very cerebral for a Western
and I think the only way that
it could have got made
was if a, you know, star director, you know, was willing to do it. And the thing about it is, I think for every script like that that gets made, they've got to be, you know, hundreds of these really intelligent, cool scripts --37:33Charlie Rose: Absolutely, that there's not somebody that comes along who has the power to get it made.37:36David Foster Wallace: Right. Or else it gets worked on by the rewrite guys, you know, and John Gregory Dunne's got that whole book, "Monster" --37:43Charlie Rose: "Monster," yeah.37:44David Foster Wallace: -- about, you know, their working on the Jessica Savitch story, which became, you know, what was it --37:48Charlie Rose: "Up Close and" something --37:49David Foster Wallace: -- "Up Close and Personal," which was --37:50Charlie Rose: Michele Pfeiffer.37:52David Foster Wallace: -- a film so bad it doesn't even have charm. You know, some things are so bad that they're enjoyable. This was worse than that.37:59Charlie Rose: I know. It was. It was. How about writing essays? I did an interview the other night, not on television, but, with Alfred Kazin. I mean, the kind of thing that he does -- does that appeal to you, in a sense?38:09David Foster Wallace: I think of myself as a fiction writer and I'm not even a particularly experienced fiction writer, so a lot, like, a lot of the essays in this book, if there's a schtick, the schtick is, "Oh, gosh, look at me, not a journalist, who's been sent to do all these journalistic things."38:21Charlie Rose: Yeah, but I mean, as some critic wrote about you, you have two things that are, that most journalists wish they had. One is a great, you have a great memory for the phrase, the delivered phrase --38:31David Foster Wallace: Yeah.38:32Charlie Rose: And you also have a great power of observation for the moment.38:35David Foster Wallace: Oh --38:37Charlie Rose: You'd agree with that?38:39David Foster Wallace: I would agree with that and the things, the things in this book that most people like are the sensuous or experiential essays, which is basically an enormous eyeball floating around something, reporting what it sees.38:49Charlie Rose: Yeah.38:51David Foster Wallace: When you're talking about Kazin, you're talking about something different, which is, you know, the art essay, the belles lettres --38:56Charlie Rose: Right. Exactly.38:58David Foster Wallace: -- essay. I think there are one, maybe a couple like that in there, but I -- I have this problem of thinking that I haven't made myself clear or that the argument hasn't been sufficiently hammered home, so I will make the same point five, six, seven times. And I did, the "E Unibus Plurum" thing in there is an argumentative essay that I did six or seven years ago and I just gave up after that because it seems as if, to make the argument truly persuasive requires 500, 600 pages and nobody wants to read it.39:23Charlie Rose: Yeah. Talking about style, what's the, what are the footnotes about? I mean, is that just simply --39:30David Foster Wallace: The -- in "Infinite Jest," the end notes are very intentional and they're in there for certain structural reasons and -- well, you don't need to hear about it. It's sort of embarrassing to read this book. You could almost chart when the essays were written because the first couple don't have any. But the footnotes get very, very addictive.39:44Charlie Rose: Right.39:46David Foster Wallace: I mean, it's almost like having a second voice in your head.39:49Charlie Rose: But where does it come from? I mean I'm now on page 981 of "Infinite Jest" and the footnotes run, notes and errata, run to page, you may know the answer to this, but there are 200 --39:57David Foster Wallace: Yes, but the reader doesn't experience it in that way because the end note tags are --40:00Charlie Rose: Three-oh-four --40:02David Foster Wallace: -- in the text.40:03Charlie Rose: Three hundred and four footnotes, sir.40:04David Foster Wallace: There are, there are quite a few. Not, some of them are very short. Some of them are only one line long. It is a way, no, see, this is --40:10Charlie Rose: This is what?40:11David Foster Wallace: Well, I'm just going to look pretentious talking about this.40:13Charlie Rose: Why, quit worrying about how you're going to look and just be!40:17David Foster Wallace: I have got news for you. Coming on a television show stimulates your "What am I going to look like?" gland like no other experience. You may now be such a veteran that you're, like, you don't notice anymore.40:25Charlie Rose: Yeah.40:28David Foster Wallace: You confront your own vanity when you think about going on TV. So I'm, no apologies, but just that's an explanation. The, the footnotes in the -- there's a way that, there's a way, it seems to me, that reality's fractured right now, at least the reality that I live in. And the difficulty about writing one of those writing about that reality, is that text is very linear and it's very unified and you, I, anyway, am constantly on the lookout for ways to fracture the text that aren't totally disoriented. I mean, you can, you know, you can take the lines and jumble them up and that's nicely fractured, but nobody nobody's going to read it, right? So you've got, here's got to be some interplay between how difficult you make it for the reader and how seductive it is for the reader so the reader's willing to do it. The end notes were, for me, a useful compromise, although there were a lot more when I delivered the manuscript. And one of the things that the editor did for me was had me pare the end notes down to really the absolutely essential.41:23Charlie Rose: Who's your editor?41:24David Foster Wallace: His name is Michael Pietsch --41:26Charlie Rose: Yeah.41:28David Foster Wallace: -- spelled P-I-E-T-S-C-H, not like the fruit, senior editor at Little Brown and a fine individual.41:34Charlie Rose: What did it do to you, Newsweek, "Truly remarkable. What weird fun 'Infinite Jest' is to read." The New York Times, "Uproarious. It shows off Wallace as one of the big talents of his generation, a writer of virtuosic talents who can seemingly do anything." That's the way I feel about you. I mean, I, I'm a little bit, I mean I hear a brain at work there, sort of,- where do you want it to go? What is it --41:54David Foster Wallace: I think not exploding would be a nice start. That kind of stuff -- I'm -- I dissociate very well --42:00Charlie Rose: Yeah.42:02David Foster Wallace: -- and it's a useful talent. Writing for publication is a very weird thing because part of you, part of you is a nerd and you want to sit in libraries, you don't want to be bothered and you're very shy. And another part of you is the worst ham of all time. "Look at me. Look at me. Look at me." And you have fantasies about writing something that makes everybody drop to one knee, you know, like Al Jolson or something. We -- of course, you never get it as much as that part wants, but to get a little bit of it is just, is very, very strange because very often, for me I didn't read a whole lot of the reviews, but a lot of the positive ones seemed to me to misunderstand the book. I wanted it to be extraordinarily sad and not particularly post-modern or jumbled up or fractured and most of the people, the reviewers who really liked it seemed to like it because it was funny or it was erudite or it was interestingly fractured, so --42:51Charlie Rose: What does "post-modern" mean in literature?42:53David Foster Wallace: No, no, no, no. After modernism" is what it means.42:57Charlie Rose: Okay.43:00David Foster Wallace: -- what it means. It's a very useful catch-all term because you say it and we all nod soberly, as if we know what we're talking about --43:05Charlie Rose: As if we know what it means --43:07David Foster Wallace: -- and in fact we don't. There are certain, what I mean by post-modern, I'm talking about maybe the black humorists who came along in the 1960s, the post-Nabokovians. I'm talking about Pynchon and Barthelme and Barth.43:18Charlie Rose: Yeah.43:22David Foster Wallace: DeLillo in the early '70s, Coover. I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot. Let me see --43:27Charlie Rose: But that's the camp you put yourself in.43:30David Foster Wallace: I think I think that's the camp that interested me when I was a student. The problem is, I think post-modernism has, to a large extent, run its course. The biggest, thing for me about, that was interesting about post-modernism is that it was the first text that was highly self-conscious, self-conscious of itself as text, self-conscious of the writer as persona, self-conscious about the effects that narrative had on readers and the fact that the readers probably knew that. It was the first generation of writers who'd actually read a lot of criticism --43:58Charlie Rose: Yeah.44:01David Foster Wallace: -- and there was a certain schizophrenia bout it. It was very useful, it seems to me, because the culture, this was a real beaker of acid in the face of the culture, the culture at the time that this came out. This was before, you know, the youth rebellion in the '60s. It was very staid and very conservative and very Alfred Kazin-ish. And the problem, though, is that a lot of the schticks of post-modernism, irony, cynicism, irreverence, are now part of whatever it is that's enervating in the culture itself, right? Burger King now sells hamburgers with "You gotta break the rules," right? So I'm, I don't really consider myself a post-modernist. I don't consider myself much of anything, but I know that that's the tradition. that excited me when I was starting to write.44:40Charlie Rose: Paul --44:43David Foster Wallace: Is that anything like an answer to your question?44:48Charlie Rose: It is. I mean, Paul Cezanne, the painter, always felt that he had, I mean, up until the end of his life, until he created "The Bathers" in, like, 1907, always felt like he had to create a big painting, a big painting both in terms of size, but in terms of a great piece of work, you know? Do you think about that?45:09David Foster Wallace: Well, see, it's, a book is a different kind of object than a painting. A painting, however big it is, is taken in all at once. Size is an entirely different component of it. For a book, a big book means the reader is going to have to spend a long time reading it, which means your burden of proof goes up, right? Big books, big books are more challenging. They're more intimidating. So, you know, if you're talking about "Infinite Jest," I have a problem with length and it's one reason why I'm grateful to have found a really good editor. "Infinite Jest" did not start out to be this long. It started out to be a fractured, multiple narrative with a number of main characters and it became -- perhaps I was just in denial that this was going to require great length. And at a certain point, it became clear that it was going to be very long.45:51Charlie Rose: All right.45:52David Foster Wallace: Feminists are always saying this. Feminists are saying white males say, "Okay, I'm going to sit down and write this enormous book and impose my phallus on the consciousness of the world."46:00Charlie Rose: And you say?46:02David Foster Wallace: I, I, if that was going on, it was going on on a level of awareness I do not want to have access to.46:06Charlie Rose: Do you still play tennis?46:07David Foster Wallace: I do play tennis. I no longer play competitively.46:10Charlie Rose: You played as a junior.46:12David Foster Wallace: I was --46:14Charlie Rose: And you were competitive and good.46:16David Foster Wallace: I was good. I was not even very good. I was between good and very good. I was good on a regional level. And one of the things about writing the piece about Michael Joyce, who was hundredth in the world and junior champion, is I really had to, had to realize that there were a lot of levels beyond the level that I was on. That , that essay, for me, which I know you haven't asked me about and now I'll tell you about, is, ended up, it's very weird and I'm surprised that Esquire even bought it. It ended up being way more autobiographical than it did, it was supposed to. It was supposed to start out as a profile of this tennis player.46:44Charlie Rose: But it was about you.46:45David Foster Wallace: Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of these, I think, end up being about me.46:48Charlie Rose: I think so, too.46:51David Foster Wallace: As a couple reviewers have pointed out.46:52Charlie Rose: But, and then, therefore, back to David Lynch. How is that about you?46:56David Foster Wallace: I'm trying to think of a way so that this will have anything to do with what we've talked about before. Imagine you're a hyper-educated avant garde-ist in grad school learning to write.47:04Charlie Rose: Right.47:06David Foster Wallace: The screen gets all fuzzy now as the viewer's invited to imagine this. Coming out of an avant garde tradition, I get to this grad school and at the grad school, turns out all the teachers are realists. They're not at all interested in post-modern avant garde stuff. Now, there's an interesting delusion going on here -- so they don't like my stuff. I believe that it's not because my stuff isn't good, but because they just don't happen to like this kind of esthetic. In fact, known to them but unknown to me, the stuff was bad, was indeed bad. So in the middle of all this, hating the teachers, but hating them for exactly the wrong reason, this was spring of 1986, I remember, I remember who I went to see the movie with, "Blue Velvet" comes out. "Blue Velvet" comes out. "Blue Velvet" is a type of surrealism it may have some, it may have debts. There's a debt to Hitchcock somewhere. But it is an entirely new and original kind of surrealism. It no more comes out a previous tradition or the post-modern thing. It is completely David Lynch. And I don't know how well you or your viewers would remember the film, but there are some very odd -- there's a moment when a guy named "the yellow man" is shot in an apartment and then Jeffrey, the main character, runs into the apartment and the guy's dead, but he's still standing there. And there's no explanation. You know, he's just standing there. And it is, it's almost classically French, Francophilistically surreal, and yet it seems absolutely true and absolutely appropriate. And there was this, I know I'm taking a long time to answer your question. There was this way in which I all of a sudden realized that the point of being post-modern or being avant garde or whatever wasn't to follow in a certain kind of tradition, that all that stuff is B.S. imposed by critics and camp followers afterwards, that what the really great artists do, and it sounds very trite to say it out loud, but what the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves. They've got their own vision, their own way of fracturing reality, and that if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings. And this is what "Blue Velvet" did for me. I'm not suggesting it would do it for any other viewer, but I, Lynch very much helped snap me out of a kind of adolescent delusion that I was in about what sort of avant garde art could be. And it's very odd because film and books are very different media. But I remember, I remember going with two poets and one other student fiction writer to go see this and then all of us going to the coffee shop afterwards and just, you know, slapping ourselves on the forehead. And it was this truly epiphantic experience.49:24Charlie Rose: Now -- that's right. I -- you feel the same way when you see "Lost Highway," too.49:28David Foster Wallace: I hope so because --49:30Charlie Rose: Same thing, and you walk out and you say, I have no idea. It just was an experience. And it was an experience inside of David Lynch's head.49:36David Foster Wallace: What's weird about Lynch, though --49:37Charlie Rose: And that's what it is. I didn't get any message. I don't --49:40David Foster Wallace: Did you see, did you see "Wild at Heart"?49:42Charlie Rose: No.49:43David Foster Wallace: That was --49:44Charlie Rose: Yeah, I did see it. I did see it.49:45David Foster Wallace: See, I don't think "Wild at Heart" --49:46Charlie Rose: This was Laura Dern and --49:47David Foster Wallace: -- is good at all.49:48Charlie Rose: -- and --49:49David Foster Wallace: Yeah. Yeah. Laura Dern and Nicholas Cage and --49:51Charlie Rose: Right. Right.49:51David Foster Wallace: -- they were great performances.49:52Charlie Rose: Was Willem Dafoe in that?49:53David Foster Wallace: Willem Dafoe was in that --49:54Charlie Rose: Right.49:54David Foster Wallace: -- with black stumps for teeth.49:56Charlie Rose: Right. Right.49:58David Foster Wallace: I mean, there's all kinds of, and it's set up exactly the same way and yet it falls flat. There was some magic that "Blue Velvet" had and I think it has to do with the hoary old concept of a well-developed central character, who is Jeffrey, Kyle MacLachlan, whereas in "Wild at Heart", "Wild at Heart" is a weird, inter-textual allusion to "Fugitive Kind" with Marlon Brando and this Italian actress.50:14Charlie Rose: Yeah. Yeah.50:16David Foster Wallace: And there's all these arch sort of, but there weren't really any characters in it and, so I don't know. The interesting thing about Lynch is, is it going to be absolutely great or is it going to be cringeingly horrible? And I ended up really rooting for "Lost Highway." Get ready for Robert Blake in this movie. I don't know whether you've seen this movie.50:29Charlie Rose: Oh, he's fantastic. He's fantastic.50:30David Foster Wallace: The movie does --50:31Charlie Rose: He's fantastic.50:32David Foster Wallace: This movie does for Blake what "Blue Velvet" did for Dennis Hopper, who, if you remember, was in oblivion before this movie.50:37Charlie Rose: Yeah. Yeah.50:38David Foster Wallace: And now, all of a sudden, you know, he could do Coke commercials if he wanted50:40Charlie Rose: I don't know whether it'll do that for Robert Blake, but, you mean Dennis could?50:42David Foster Wallace: Yeah.50:43Charlie Rose: Dennis could do Coke commercial.50:44David Foster Wallace: Yeah. ROSE Yeah. He could. Yeah.50:46Charlie Rose: I mean, he --50:47David Foster Wallace: But I, my memory of Robert Blake is, you know, "That's the name of that tune," in "Baretta" or something and now, all of a sudden, they've got him made up like Max Schreck in "Nosferatu."50:55Charlie Rose: We're way over time. Let me ask one last question. You have gone through, your personal life is kind of bent to hell and back. Yes?51:01David Foster Wallace: No, I don't think any more than most people my age.51:05Charlie Rose: Oh, come on.51:08David Foster Wallace: Well, most of the people I -51:10Charlie Rose: I mean, do you look at that as simply sort of passing through the valley and coming out -- I mean, come on.51:17David Foster Wallace: I think, I mean, I, I think I got, I got some attention for some work that didn't really deserve it at an age when I had a hard time handling it. And it wasn't a whole lot of attention, but it seemed like a whole lot to, you know, a library weenie from the lower level of Frost Library at Amherst College and I had a hard time with it. And I was lucky enough so that there was something left of my life when it was over. Whatever that means. If you wanted something, like, really exciting or sexy, there isn't much. I just got really --51:47Charlie Rose: Well, but you, I mean, it was drugs and you were suicidal and the whole nine yards, yes?51:52David Foster Wallace: Yeah. Here's why I'm embarrassed talking about it, not because --51:54Charlie Rose: I want to know why.51:56David Foster Wallace: Not because I'm personally ashamed of it, because everybody talks about it. I mean, it sounds like --52:00Charlie Rose: In other words, everybody --52:01David Foster Wallace: It sounds --52:02Charlie Rose: Everybody talks about it for themselves or everybody talks about you?52:05David Foster Wallace: No, everybody talks, it sounds like some kind of Hollywood thing to do. "Oh, he's out of rehab and -- "52:08Charlie Rose: No, I --52:09David Foster Wallace: "--back in action."52:11Charlie Rose: -- didn't say anything about rehab.52:12David Foster Wallace: This, this was --52:14Charlie Rose: No, I said something about the course that took you from Amherst College to, back to Illinois.52:18David Foster Wallace: I did, I did some recreational drugs. I didn't have the, I didn't have the stomach to drink very much and I didn't have the nervous system to do anything very hard. Yeah, I did some drugs. I didn't do as many drugs as most of the people I know my age. What it turned out was I just don't have the nervous system to handle it. That wasn't the problem. The problem was I started out, I think, wanting to be a writer and wanting to get some attention and I got it really quick and --52:37Charlie Rose: By writing.52:38David Foster Wallace: -- and realized it didn't make me happy at all, in which case, "Hmm. Why am I writing?" You know, What's the purpose of this? And I don't think it's substantively different from the sort of thing, you know, somebody who wants to be a really successful cost accountant, right and be a partner of his accounting firm and achieves that at 50 and goes into something like a depression. "The brass ring I've been chasing does not make everything okay." So that's why I'm embarrassed to talk about it. It's just not particularly interesting. It's -- what it is, is very, very average.53:04Charlie Rose: Yeah. Do you see yourself chasing a brass ring now?53:08David Foster Wallace: I, this is what's very interesting is I, there's part of me that wants to get attention and respect. It doesn't really make very much difference to me because I learned in my 20s that it just doesn't change anything and that whatever you get paid attention for is never the stuff that you think is important about yourself anyway. So a lot of my problem right now is I don't really have a brass ring and I'm kind of open to suggestions about what, what one chases that, there are real abstract ideas about, you know, what art can be and the redemptive quality of art and, you know, kindness to animals and, you know, all the cliches that we can invoke. But it's, I, the people who most interest me now are the people, are people who are older and who have sort of been through a mid-life crisis. They tend to get weird because the normal incentives for getting out of bed don't tend to apply anymore. I have not found any satisfactory new ones, but I'm also not getting ready to, you know, jump off a building or anything.53:57Charlie Rose: Well, that's good news. David Foster Wallace -- "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," essays and arguments by the author of "Infinite Jest." Thank you.54:04David Foster Wallace: Thank you.
