Jesse Eisenberg, left, and Jason Segel in The End of the Tour (A24)

Since David Foster Wallace’s suicide in 2008, a few comforting items have trickled out to fill the Wallace-shaped hole in the hearts and minds of his legion of obsessive, overly cerebral readers. In 2009, a version of a commencement speech he gave was released in book form (This Is Water), and in 2013, an excellent biography, Every Ghost Story Is a Love Story, was published. There was also the poorly received film version of Wallace’s short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009). But probably nothing compared to journalist David Lipsky’s 352-page transcription of his recorded conversations with Wallace from 1996, released in a 2010 book called Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. After Wallace’s death, Lipsky’s book was one of the closest ways to really get inside Wallace’s head, as page after page of his real-life dialogue leapt out at you, making you realize that the writer was just as compelling as any of the characters in his magnum opus Infinite Jest.

Wallace fans have been rewatching and relistening to key interviews to see and hear him in action, like his Charlie Rose interviews and appearances on Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm radio show. But with the new film, The End of the Tour, adapted from Lipsky’s 2010 book, forlorn readers now have their best piece of consolation and remembrance yet. Directed with sensitivity, intimacy, and intelligence by James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), the film takes viewers into Wallace’s world in a way they haven’t quite experienced before.

Readers may feel like they know all about Wallace’s world, but they were privy only to the hyperliterate, impossibly intellectual side he presented in his writing. Of course, that is not the self he lived with on a daily basis. His everyday life was almost shockingly normal, and the film brings that Wallace to life vividly.

Wallace’s fans, of course, will love this movie, as will fans of literary culture in general and anyone who gets a kick out of peak 1990s nostalgia, circa 1996. There are conversations about Alanis Morrisette and hours spent cruising around in station wagons smoking cigarettes listening to local radio. This was a time when Rolling Stone was considered a culturally important magazine (there actually were important magazines), the idea of being an “important fiction writer” was still alive, no one cared about organic food or gluten, and smartphones hadn’t turned everyone into cyborgs yet.

Jesse Eisenberg plays David Lipsky, a Rolling Stone journalist frustrated with writing 500-word gush pieces on boy bands. He convinces his bosses to send him to interview Wallace as he completes the book tour for Infinite Jest. Jason Segel portrays Wallace, who at the time of that book’s publication in 1996 was living in Normal (literally), Illinois, in a sparsely furnished, one-level house with his two enormous dogs and teaching at Illinois State University, when he could have been teaching at any school in the country.

Segel nails the part down to every last detail—the stringy hair popping out from a sweaty bandana, the oddly hulking presence, the way his voice kind of tapers off and disappears at the end of sentences. Segel’s Wallace alternates between long stretches of trying very hard to put everyone at ease with jokes and pop culture references and adolescent, sensitive flare-ups at perceived slights. Wallace seems like a very easy person to be around, like a fun uncle who just wants to drink soda and watch TV all day, until he accuses you of violating his meticulous moral code and not Being a Good Guy.

There are really only two characters, the Davids, but the third is probably Wallace’s addictions that pop up in nearly every scene. They center on cigarettes, chewing tobacco, soda, fast food, candy, Hollywood movies, TV movies, and TV reruns. In one telling scene, after hanging out at the Mall of America and seeing one of the dumbest Hollywood action movies ever (Broken Arrow), his companions ask him what he wants to do next, and he asks if they have a TV. They then go back to their apartment and Wallace guzzles soda and candy while watching The Late Shift TV movie. Though his writing was relentlessly focused on dissecting the corrosive effects of the capitalist culture industry, Wallace was hopelessly addicted to popular entertainment.

Lipsky’s bosses press him to ask Wallace about the rampant rumors of heroin addiction in his youth, but Wallace insists he was never interesting enough to have a proper heroin addiction. “I spent most of my life in libraries,” he says, “and the closest thing to an addiction I ever had is television.” Everyone knows how much of a gifted writer Wallace was, but we didn’t really know what a deeply normal, average Midwest American he was, too. The tension of the two made his writing incredibly unique and attractive, but must have been dizzying and bewildering to live with.

If there’s any narrative tension, it’s in Lipsky’s jealousy of Wallace’s unquestioned status as the apex predator of the literary world and Wallace’s envy of how Lipsky could adapt to any social situation with charm and ease. Wallace had the talent that Lipsky wanted, and Lipsky had the freedom that came with not being viewed as an otherworldly super prodigy.  The film does a nice job of building this tension slowly and subtly, and though it never boils over into a full-on confrontation, their chummy relationship noticeably changes.

All we can do is thank David Foster Wallace for being so endlessly generous with his prodigious talent while he was alive, and thank Segel, Ponsoldt, Eisenberg, and Lipsky for bringing him back to life in a whole new way.