The End of the Tour

THE END OF THE TOUR              B                
USA  (106 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  James Ponsoldt

There’s something altogether uncomfortable about this film, and not in the obvious sense, where the construct of the film allows the audience early in the film to understand the featured character commits suicide, leaving an empty feeling in the pit of our stomachs as we then go back, retrace our steps and digest the life of a man who would eventually take his own life.  The format is reminiscent of a similar occurrence in Gus van Sant’s ELEPHANT (2003), where early on the audience hears the sound of triggers being pulled in a high school film resembling the Columbine murders.  In a sense, what follows is an artful snuff film, as it’s all about what leads us into certain death, unfamiliar territory for anyone, to be sure.  Based on American author David Foster Wallace, who took his own life September 12, 2008, his suicide is the source of the discomfort, as no words and certainly not a movie could possibly do justice to the surviving family that has to continue to deal with his loss.  Imagine having to watch a fictional version onscreen that would only reignite the pain and passion associated with that death, not to mention having to hear all the superficial talk generated by the film’s publicity, where people might describe the actors and their performances, the music, what stood out in the film, the quality of the writing, and how they may or may not have even heard of the man whose life story the film is based upon.  As the movie gets caught up in the fictionalized Hollywoodization of reality, they have to contend with the staggering loss of someone they knew and loved.  It’s admittedly a sticky situation where the director is walking upon dangerous ground, creating an unauthorized version against the expressed wishes of Wallace’s family, (Alison Flood from The Guardian, April 22, 2014, before shooting of the film began, David Foster Wallace's family object to biopic The End of the ...), and the results are to some extent uneven, partially due to the source material upon which the film is based, written by Donald Margulies, a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and the director’s college professor at Yale, adapting journalist David Lipsky’s 2010 book, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, a collection of conversations they had while on the road together promoting Wallace’s book, published two years after Wallace’s death. The film recreates a 5-day road trip Wallace took in 1996 with Rolling Stone writer and struggling novelist David Lipsky right after the publication of his heavily acclaimed masterwork Infinite Jest, where it’s impossible not to be reminded of Cameron Crowe and his film ALMOST FAMOUS (2000) that showcases the experiences of a young, wild-eyed Rolling Stone reporter still in his teens who goes on the road with an emerging band in the early 1970’s, a fictionalized yet autobiographical recreation of Crowe’s own experience of going on the road for three weeks with the Allman Brothers Band at the tender age of 16, where he was the magazine’s youngest-ever contributor.  This film treads on similar territory, but explores an entirely different landscape, where the artist being depicted, were he still alive, would probably have found this a contemptable exercise, as he was intensely suspicious of fame and reverential celebrity worship as the potentially dehumanizing impact of having a public persona, writing extensively about how artists lose control over their own identity and ideas when they get sucked up in the world of entertainment and Internet technology, preferring the ideas “inside” his head to the steady stream of ideas swirling around “outside” that he had no control of that were attempting to label him or easily define him using conventional pat phrases that change the meaning altogether.  “The more people think that you’re really good, actually the stronger the fear of being a fraud is,” he tells Lipsky, which is similar to author Jonathan Franzen, one of the few literary figures with whom Wallace kept in touch, deciding “not” to go on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2001 when his book The Corrections was selected to her heralded “book club,” questioning the merits of placing the book club’s “logo of corporate ownership” on the cover, as it would be betraying his core audience of readers.        

While the film never indicates, the piece was never published in Rolling Stone magazine for reasons that are never given, but one can only speculate that either the publisher felt he never had a legitimate story or the writer never figured out how to present the material.  It evokes a phone conversation Lipsky has with his employer during the Tour, when they scold him for not asking the tough journalistic questions, reminding him that he’s “a reporter, not his friend.”  A huge fan of the novel, considered one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years, Wallace is one of the director’s personal heroes, the same man who made The Spectacular Now (2013), where his motivation for making the film is largely filled with the same youthful rush of enthusiasm that Lipsky must have felt when he read the novel.  As played by Jesse Eisenberg, Lipsky is himself well-educated, but he is dwarfed by the intellectual stature of this brilliant literary sensation, always feeling as if he was in the presence of greatness.  Jason Segel is nearly unrecognizable behind the persona of Wallace, who almost always downplays his enormous intelligence and presents himself as just a regular guy, living an ordinary and unpretentious life in a modest central Illinois home with his two dogs.  The down home, folksy nature of the Midwest continually saturates the screen throughout, where the East coast bred Lipsky must feel like a fish out of water, never really finding his bearings, where the claustrophobic interior of Wallace’s home literally swallows him up, with cavernous gulfs left unfilled.  A writing professor at a local college, following in the footsteps of his parents, Wallace grew up in an exceptional academic household, remembering his parents reading Ulysses out loud to each other when they went to bed.  His father would read Moby-Dick to Wallace and his younger sister when they were 8 and 6, graduating from Amherst with the highest GPA in his class.  From an early 1987 profile written by Bill Katovsky, "David Foster Wallace: A Profile":

“Writing fiction takes me out of time,” he explains.  “I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours.  That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.  I’m scared of sounding pretentious because anyone who writes fiction is saying, ‘Look at this thing I’ve written.’”

This is precisely the kind of thing Lipsky and Wallace discuss when they finally meet during a winter snow in Normal-Bloomington, Illinois at Wallace’s home and begin to interact, overcoming their initial tentativeness and natural shyness as they attempt an intellectual rapport.  The mammoth implications of success have already begun to be felt by Wallace, as he realizes his life is quickly changing beyond his control.  While the discussion feels overly safe, the adulation of female attention after publishing a successful book, including his views on the down-to-earth nature of Alanis Morissette whose poster graces a wall in his home, the question of a lasting relationship comes up, and his views on kids, while Lipsky never goes anywhere without his handheld, cassette-driven tape recorder whose red light is invariably always on.  While both are exceedingly polite, it’s clear that Lipsky is awed by this one-of-a-kind mentor, wondering what it would be like to be him, where his mind is filled with naiveté and childish illusion, often stunned by some of the unintentional revelations of a man who has spent the better part of his life fighting an ongoing war with depression, including suicidal idealizations.  Lipsky longs for Wallace’s success while completely missing the profound nature of his thoughts on depression.  The depth of these private confessions have a way of separating the two, as one is in possession of this kind of devastatingly intimate personal knowledge while the other doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, but can only imagine, as in his mind all he sees is a heralded “genius.”  On their flight to Minneapolis, Lipsky follows up by asking about Wallace’s hospitalization for suicidal thoughts, which has the effect of stopping the conversation dead in its tracks.  For one, it’s a routine question he feels required to ask, but to the other it’s a shocking invasion of privacy coming from someone he barely knows.  Clearly Wallace has been hurt and wounded by the starkness of the question, which didn’t develop in private context, but seemed to come out of nowhere in a very public place.  While the difficulty of Lipsky’s job is evident in every frame of the film, what’s also apparent is his lack of maturity and tact, including an ability to process the severity of this information in a more suitable fashion.  The man across from him is a walking time bomb, where deep-seeded inner turmoil is literally eating away at him, which he’s able to confide openly to a certain extent, but Lipsky, clumsily enough, is unable to figure out what to do with this gesture of openness.  Making matters worse, rather than defer to Wallace’s comfort zone, Lipsky openly socializes with his friends and acquaintances, as if he has free reign to interview them as well.  While Lipsky is clearly around someone he greatly admires, Wallace on the other hand has to endure this rude intrusion into his life, come what may, where occasionally he’s not too happy about it, losing patience with the innocence of his young protégé, registering his concerns, “If you wanted, I mean, you’re gonna be able to shape this essentially how you want, and that, to me, is extremely disturbing.  Because I want to be able to try and shape and manage the impression of me that’s coming across.”  The distance that ultimately develops between these two men is of cataclysmic proportions, like man and boy, where clearly Lipsky is out of his element.

To say that this film is dialogue-driven is an understatement, as it recalls the lengthy dinner conversation of Louis Malle’s MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981), which is more of a free spirited, two-person conversation, where they’re free to discuss anything, while Wallace and Lipsky don’t actually engage in conversation, as Lipsky is on an assignment of limited duration, where he’s free to shape the interviews as he sees fit.  So the structure throughout is centered around questions and answers, though they do occasionally spend free time with others, improbably taking a side trip to the Mall of America to watch John Travolta in John Woo’s nuclear bomb fantasy, BROKEN ARROW (1996), where Wallace is literally entranced by what he sees onscreen.  Something of a television junky, where there’s no sign of a TV in his home, he allows himself to get lost in thought as if retreating into another world.  Segel is amazing transforming himself into another figure, much like Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Truman Capote in CAPOTE (2005), and at times he can be so captivating, where words literally flow out of his mouth like literary morsels, but what continually dominates his thoughts are outcast feelings of loneliness and self-loathing.  Lipsky truly misses the mark in identifying the tormented soul of this man that continually cries out for help, but is greeted only with the sheer emptiness of silence.   A man alone with an empty page, day in and day out, is a daunting task that grows more and more ominous, especially when it becomes expected that he is supposed to fill those empty pages with unending ideas of literary wit and candor.  Instead of ever getting behind the man in the mask, the genius who has the capacity to understand what no one else can, this film centers more on the limitations of a mortal man, becoming a portrait of the flawed man asking all the curiously irrelevant questions, as they’re not leading him anywhere, as it’s never clear how truthful either one is being with each other.  Despite a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, writing a feature Rolling Stone article on a brilliant contemporary writer, something the magazine had never done before, with the chance to expose an open vein of literary terrain the readers have never experienced, there’s simply no focus in what he’s trying to accomplish.  While Lipsky is smart and clever, the gulf of knowledge between the two men who are nearly the same age is enormous, where Lipsky is so awed by the stratosphere of his intellectual superiority that he never quite sees the man, as if he’s already communicating from the beyond.  On the other hand, Lipsky’s mix of anger and jealousy, where he’s painfully aware of his own human limitations, provide the emotional journey of the film, which is largely seen through his eyes.  His frustration becomes our frustration, as he’s never able to unlock the key to Wallace’s cleverly concealed mind, or even ask what inspires him, or to share a favorite passage, including other influential literary works.  We’re never able to tap in on what drives this man to write except to escape the loneliness of his own anguished soul, having fought so many of his battles alone locked in a tiny room.  Lipsky actually has a chance to befriend a comrade in arms, but refuses to enter the field of battle.  There is something cowardly about that, where only in death does he summon the courage to reveal the contents of these conversations that form the basis of the film.  It’s a sad portrait, where Wallace’s family, friends, and associates are not involved in any way, where the final image, set to the music of Brian Eno’s “The Big Ship,” Brian Eno "The Big Ship" - YouTube (3:04), exactly the same music used in the enthralling finale of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), but here, instead of a transforming moment, it resorts to illusion and fantasy, believing the feel good myth that Wallace suspected he wanted to hear all along, foregoing the agony of the truth.  

Postscript

To clarify a few lingering issues.

That dance sequence never happened - - is what I mean.  It was all an invention, telling the young reporter exactly what he wanted to hear by telling him a fictitious feelgood story, the kind of thing his readers would love to hear.   But it’s just a story.

By that time, things between the two men had deteriorated to the point where there simply wasn’t any truth left in the relationship between them. 

So yes, I am questioning Lipsky’s account as unreliable.  Not that he didn’t say it, but that he didn’t mean it.  By that time he couldn’t tell the difference. 

While it’s clear that an entire life is filled with peaks and valleys, where a joyful moment may have been chosen as a final image to remember.  I just got the feeling this one was completely made up. 

And Ponsoldt bought into it hook, line, and sinker, as if it was true, which is a myth that he’s feeding to the viewers.

In my view, it’s all just part of a dishonest vein that I believe runs right through this film, which is why I’m not as high on it as others.

2014 Top Ten List #10 Frank

FRANK           A-             
Great Britain  Ireland  (95 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Lenny Abrahamson       Official Site

One of the more unconventional films dealing with outsider art, a social reality outside the comprehension of most viewers, where the character Frank, Michael Fassbender in a giant cartoon, papier-mâché head that he never takes off, is the leader of a small, almost exclusively unseen and unheard of rock band called the Soronprfbs, a name even the group itself can’t pronounce.  While they are the picture of dysfunction, playing a style of music that defies definition or form, perhaps noise to some, they are a band where the anti-social behavior habits are curiously intriguing, featuring Clara, the ever dour and always angry Maggie Gyllenhaal (outstanding, literally carrying the picture with her resolute defiance) in the Yoko Ono role as the outrageously extreme Theremin and synthesizer player, two French-speaking bohemians (François Civil and Carla Azar) on bass and drums that refuse to even speak most of the time, and the artistic master Frank as the lead singer, a man they all seem to worship, where the demented humor is so off-the-wall that it’s easily one of the funniest films of the year.  Jon Burroughs, Domhnall Gleeson, son of actor Brendon Gleason and one-half of the Weasley twins from HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS Pt’s I and II (2010, 11), is a more ordinary kid stuck in a small town in Ireland with ambitions to write songs and play in a rock band.  Purely by chance, Jon happens to be at the beach one day when the keyboard player for the band is seen knee deep in the water supposedly trying to commit suicide, with the police and paramedics on the scene fishing him out of the water.  When the band’s manager and guitar player Don (Scoot McNairy) expresses remorse that they’ve lost a keyboard player, Jon almost instinctively exclaims he’s a keyboard player.  Don walks to a nearby van and confers with the other members of the band before returning, asking, “You play C, F, and G?”  Nodding happily, Don invites him to show up for a performance later that night.  The intersection of Jon’s mediocrity and the group’s outright weirdness becomes the focal point of the film, where Jon becomes our man-on-the-scene narrator offering insight into Frank and Soronprfbs, while also exploring hero worship through a somewhat surreal, musical groupie mindset of Cameron Crowe’s ALMOST FAMOUS (2000).  The film’s premise borrows from a similar cartoon-headed character of Frank Sidebottom, the stage persona of English musician and comedian Chris Sievey who appeared on British television throughout the 80’s and 90’s, passing away in 2010.  The film is dedicated to Sievey, using his image as Frank, so to speak, while taking off from there into unforeseen territory. 

A decade ago this director made his debut with ADAM & PAUL (2004), a likeable losers buddy movie following two down-and-out heroin addicts around the streets of Dublin as they drift aimlessly from fix to fix, suffering the humiliation of rejection wherever they go, yet told in a hilarious and heartbreakingly realistic manner, so Abrahamson is familiar with characters on the outer fringe of society.  The writing team of Peter Straughan and Jon Ronson deserve much of the credit for creating such a uniquely original look inside the world of outsider artists, where Ronson based the film on his own experiences playing keyboards for Chris Sievey’s Oh Blimey Big Band, using Gleeson as a stand-in for his own real life character, adding elements of Daniel Johnston, who’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and also Captain Beefheart, whose own band eventually quit on him due to his abusive conditions, but who also suffered from multiple sclerosis during his career.  From the first show, however, it’s clear the band has hostility issues, (“Stay away from my fucking Theremin!”) so when they explode in a fury of anger onstage, with Clara breaking her instrument and throwing it at her other band mates, all leaving the stage in an explosion of rage and confusion, Jon is left appropriately stunned as they drive off in their van afterwards without a word.  But when Don invites him to join the band, telling him Frank thought he brought something “cherishable” to the group, Jon jumps at the chance, though what he apparently thought would be a weekend performance turns into an eighteen month long retreat into seclusion at a private estate in Scotland where they could work on recording an album.  To perhaps no one’s surprise, he’s immediately met with a wall of resistance, where the band members believe he’s unworthy of sharing the stage with Frank, Clara especially, as she feels an obsessive need to protect Frank, especially from the likes of someone as mainstream and conventionally normal as Jon, as like the rest of society, clearly he doesn’t “get it.”  For lack of anything better to do, Jon starts tweeting about the band, placing video clips on YouTube and sharing them with the world, where his social media entries become the narration of the film, perhaps centering more on Jon than we’d like, as the person we want to know more about is Frank.  While Jon is in a state of curious bewilderment over that fake head, he asks Don, “He never takes it off?  He sleeps in it?  What about eating?  How does he clean his teeth?”  Don’s toned down, deadpan response is simply, “Jon, you’re just gonna have to go with this.”

As it turns out, Frank is the heart and soul of the band, leading them all to their “farthest corners,” where everyone is in awe of him, refusing to record a single note until the entire album is ready, as instead he puts the group through rigorous exercises which always seem to evolve into fights, where “Chinchilla!” is their chosen safety word, though routinely ignored.  Don, we learn, has his own issues, as he has a history of doll fetishism, where the relationship that he prefers most is with mannequins, as otherwise women have to lie completely still.  Having met in a mental institution, Don thinks Frank is the sanest guy he’s ever met, believing they all want to emulate him, but there can only be one Frank.  When an irate German family arrives to their retreat, where Don acknowledges they’ve spent all the rent money and were supposed to be out a month ago, Frank goes out to speak to them in fluent German, not only calming them down, but as they leave voluntarily, one of them is thanking him for “this new truth in my soul.”  Jon’s dabbling on social media, however, eventually accumulates an audience with 23,000 hits on one of the videos he posted, so he secretly signs the group up for the SXSW music festival in Austin, informing Frank that they have an “audience.”  While Frank appears tempted by the idea of getting his music in front of an actual audience, composing what he calls his most “likeable” song, Frank 2014 - Frank's most likable song ever YouTube (30 sec), the rest of the band has no interest in money or fame, finding it a meaningless diversion which has nothing to due with their true calling—making art—seeing it more as a sell out, the worst kind of bourgeois capitulation.  Shooting the scenes in America in New Mexico and the mountainous plains of Kansas as a substitute for Austin, Texas, Jon leads the band to the Mecca and supposed promised land of indie music, where the film is an outrageous comedy of defied expectations, becoming something more than theater of the absurd, where Jon’s push for stardom and public interest has a detrimental effect on the others who want no part of this publicity stunt, as they could care less about pandering to an audience, eventually having some serious things to say about mental illness, where we find ourselves asking, “How crazy is Frank?”  Instead of this thunderous rush of SXSW Mardi Gras excitement, it’s a plunge into a downbeat, Lynchian netherworld reminiscent of BLUE VELVET (1986) with Maggie Gyllenhaal reprising the Isabella Rossellini role onstage, singing a moody, super slow-motion version of “On Top of Old Smoky” in some empty dive bar to drunks and derelicts that couldn’t be farther away from where Jon wanted to take them, while Frank, without the controlling help of Clara, veers totally out of control, and only then does Jon finally realize he doesn’t “get it.”  It’s a look behind and under the mask, told without any fanfare, quietly probing under the surface at the real anguish and pain that drives some of these troubled artists, who are overcome by an assault of mangled nerves and psychoses, where an audience finds entertainment in the performance of their inner turmoil, unleashed as it is in a stream-of-conscience barrage (“Screeching frequencies of pulsing infinity!”) of wounded psychedelic images that resemble the crazed inner ramblings of Alan Ginsberg’s Howl, leaving the audience transfixed in a haunted state of bewilderment.    

Mistaken for Strangers

MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS     B                       

USA  (75 mi)  2013  d:  Thomas Berninger 

Don't make me read your mind
You should know me better than that
It takes me too much time
You should know me better than that
You're not that much like me
You should know me better than that
We have different enemies
You should know me better than that

I should leave it alone but you're not right
I should leave it alone but you're not right

Can't you write it on the wall?
You should know me better than that
There's no room to write it all
You should know me better than that
Can you turn the TV down?
You should know me better than that
There's too much crying in the sound
I should know you better than that

I should leave it alone but you're not right
I should leave it alone but you're not right
I should live in salt for leaving you behind
Behind

Think about something so much
You should know me better than that
Start to slide out of touch
You should know me better than that
Tell yourself it's all you know
You should know me better than that
Learn to appreciate the void
You should know me better than that

I should live in salt for leaving you behind
Behind
I should live in salt for leaving you behind
Behind
I should live in salt for leaving you behind
Behind

The National performing "I Should Live in Salt" Live on . YouTube (4:12), performing live in KCRW radio studios in Los Angeles, August 13, 2013

Heralded by Pitchfork as “the funniest, most meta music movie since SPINAL TAP (1984),” and Michael Moore as “one of the best documentaries about a band that I’ve ever seen,” it follows the success of last year’s award winning music documentary 2013 Top Ten List # 8 20 Feet from Stardom.  While the audience for the most part is comprised of followers of the indie rock band The National, they might be disappointed that little performance footage is actually shown, yet the incredible twist is the boneheaded persona of the filmmaker himself, whose lack of focus and overall air of ineptitude becomes the dominant force of the film, where it takes a certain amount of guts to release a movie showing yourself in such an unflattering light.  The director is eight years younger than his brother Matt, who is the songwriter and lead vocalist for The National, a band strangely enough comprised of two other sets of brothers, with Aaron (also keyboards) and Bryce Dessner playing guitars, while Scott and Bryan Devendorf play bass and drums respectively.  Thomas has no connection to the band whatsoever, where we see him in his mid-thirties doodling around and still living with his parents in a beautiful upscale home in Cincinnati, receiving a call out of the blue from his brother, who he’s barely seen for the past twenty years, where perhaps the only contact is over holidays, but out of his aimless complacency he’s suddenly offered a job as a roadie for the band’s upcoming High Violet European Tour in 2010.  While many would be thrilled at the offer and see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—not Thomas, who instead prefers metal bands.  What the viewer quickly understands is that this movie is not so much about The National, or even Matt, as it’s all about Thomas, who is the real goofball centerpiece of his own film.  While Thomas is offered minimal job requirements, he largely ignores his duties and instead decides to wander off and film whatever catches his eye while drinking and partying and leading the life of a hellraising rock band on the road.  He’s actually disappointed to discover his brother is not in a metal band like Axl Rose and Guns N’ Roses, so his dreams are shattered.  At one point, Thomas is seen commiserating with grunge-looking drummer Bryan, suggesting he seems more “metal” than the rest of the band who are so “coffeehouse,” where at least initially he intended to name the film For Those About to Weep, in reference to AC/DC’s For Those About to Rock.   

Initially, Matt is comfortable with the constant presence of Thomas’s camera, “I wanted him to bring his camera to maybe make some videos or stuff for our website.  He didn't even know he was gonna be making a feature film at that point.”  So once the tour begins, the focus is on whatever the band needs, where Thomas is a behind-the-stage presence giving the band members 5-minutes notice, but there’s little interaction between the brothers, as Matt seems to be in his own little world when he comes offstage and doesn’t want to be bothered by the incessant camera pointed in his face from Thomas, where Matt’s wife is seen trying to explain the moodiness of a budding rock star who has certain anxieties, as he isn’t sure what to expect from this tour, explaining “He has to go to a place when he’s up there.  That’s the job.”  All of this seems to fly over the mental capacity of Thomas, where the first sign of trouble brooding is being called on the carpet by the band manager for ordering bottles of extra alcohol.  From that point on, we never see Thomas without a drink in his hand, where he’s still living in Wayne's World (1989 – 2011) or the Cameron Crowe fever dream depicted in ALMOST FAMOUS (2000).  But with this melancholic, low key band, there’s no drugs, no girls, no drinking, and no in-fighting, where it’s all just about the music, so Thomas takes it upon himself to become the alternate indie-band party animal, where he drinks too much, is brash and overly loud, where he often forgets what he is doing.  Unfortunately, he gets in the way of what others are doing by continually pointing his camera at them, where one of the guys trying to set up the lights and the electricity literally tells him to go away.  Thomas, however, is immune to the needs of others, and turns everything around to himself, continually peppering the members of the band with questions about his brother, wondering if he’s ever lost his temper, asking the guitar brothers which one can play the fastest, how many drugs have they done, whether they bring their wallets with them onstage, following them into the shower, or asking them to strike ridiculous poses for the camera, where despite their polite cooperation, for Thomas it’s all about doing whatever pops into his head while ignoring the menial tasks he was actually hired to do.  Incredibly, he grows offended when the five members of the band take a photo shoot with President Obama and Thomas was excluded (as was everyone else), where in his mind he’s an integral part of the band.  While we do see backstage footage of the band interspersed with a brief look at onstage performances, it’s surprising how few songs from the album are actually heard, where one of the hidden treasures that we are treated to is a healthy dose of The National - Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks - YouTube (4:12). 

While it’s clear Thomas has a hard time living in the shadow of his older brother, spending much of the film harping to others about that, it’s as if he uses this opportunity in an attempt to perpetrate his own delusion of self-importance, which adds a darker element to the film, as he comes across more as a slacker or a buffoon, where the viewer is not laughing with him, but at him, where at some point (mostly afterwards) he realizes, “Most of the things I thought would be really funny was actually depressing, sad and awkward.  And the stuff I wasn’t really happy with became the great stuff.”  One wonders what John Lennon or Bruce Springsteen might have been like with a pain-in-the-ass brother like this?  While staying at a plush Hollywood Hills hotel in Los Angeles, Matt points out what he believes to be Moby’s house at the top of the hill while Thomas is dog-paddling in an outdoor pool with an inflatable raft, immediately yelling out at the top of his lungs, “Hey Moby!”  But the more he screws up, forgetting to bring water bottles and towels onstage for every band member before each show, the more Thomas starts griping and complaining at continually being told what to do, where he obviously resents his lowly status as a grunt, and sees instead himself more as a struggling artist, just like the band.  But the tour is a huge success, greater than they could have imagined, but Thomas remains an embarrassing side show, where his brother calls him on it at one point, sharing a hotel room together, yet he leaves cereal and milk on the floor of the bathroom in the middle of the night, where he acts like a little kid saddled with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  He obviously drinks too much, something his brother calls “his allergy,” and can’t focus on what needs to be done, missing the tour bus at one point because he’s still hanging around in the bar, spiraling further out of control when he loses the guest list, causing comped celebrities like Werner Herzog to remain stranded outside waiting on the street, which eventually costs him his job, as he’s sent home for dereliction of duties.  Back home, he commiserates with his parents, who remind him he’s the kid that never finished anything he started.  Once the tour is over, Matt and his wife Carin Besser, who is credited as a co-editor and a former fiction editor at The New Yorker magazine, invite him to move in with them to finish editing his film, which has become a wall of post its pinned to the wall describing each shot.  Ultimately, Thomas makes a decision that he’d rather make the movie about himself than the band, becoming an often hilarious, self-deprecating portrait of a lovable loser’s futile attempts to live up to his more-perfect-in-every-way brother, where there’s an interesting shot where Thomas goes into the studio and hears the band working on their most recent album, Trouble Will Find Me, which includes the song The National - I Should Live In Salt (Live at the ... - YouTube (4:00, performed in the Gibson Showroom in Austin, Texas).  Throughout the film we hear Thomas continually rail on about his feelings of self-loathing, but in this four-minute song we hear Matt’s eloquent response to his younger brother, as he recognizes they’re not alike, but offers a sense of estrangement, where he feels guilty about having left him behind to pursue his musical career, while the film concludes, appropriately enough, still stuck in Thomas’s world, Oh Holy Night by Halford - YouTube (4:09).