'Office' star gives it old college try

Passion for writing leads to Sundance

Newton native John Krasinski (above) wrote the screenplay for the movie adaptation of ''Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,'' which he also directed. (matt sayles/associated press)

Long before the acclaim for his breakout role as Jim in "The Office," before he starred in movies, before being named "Sexiest Funny Guy" by People magazine, Newton native John Krasinski was an impressionable playwriting major at Brown University who had done a little performing and was just trying to fit in, he says, with the cool kids.

In his senior year, it just so happened that a lot of the cool kids were doing a staged reading of some of the monologues in "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace. The book, in a genre of its own, presents an idiosyncratic collection of dark, satirical male ruminations in the form of clinical interviews.

Krasinski didn't know Wallace's work, but he did know the person directing the show and was invited to read one of the interviews. He said he was "blown away" by the audience reaction. "The energy in the room was like nothing I'd ever seen before," Krasinski said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "Without being overly sentimental, it was the moment I knew I wanted to try acting as a profession."

He also knew he wanted to find a way to work with Wallace's writing again some day. It didn't take long before he did: Tomorrow, "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" - the film - will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Krasinski, 29, wrote the screenplay and directed it. He also appears in it, along with a cast that includes Julianne Nicholson, Timothy Hutton, Dominic Cooper, Christopher Meloni, Ben Shenkman, Bobby Cannavale, and Josh Charles.

The project was his first-ever directing job, and first screenplay as well. The story of how it got made is, as Krasinski tells it, a story of youthful passion, persistence, naivete, and no small amount of chutzpah.

After graduating from Brown and attending a 14-week program at the Eugene O'Neill National Theatre Institute in Waterford, Conn., Krasinski moved to New York where he waited tables and tried to get any acting job he could find. But Wallace's work still exerted a pull on him. "It's some of the most honest and powerful writing I'd ever come across," he said. "He doesn't protect the characters. They're chauvinists at times, aggressive at times, and only in revealing their vulnerability . . . and hearing their whole, complete story do they come across as real people."

Around the time he was 22, Krasinski started to think seriously about turning "Brief Interviews" into a movie, though he was more or less clueless about how to actually accomplish this. "Someone explained to me the wonderful world of book rights," he said. "I had no idea."

He contacted Wallace's agent to present the idea, even flying out to Los Angeles to meet her after she initially turned him down. "It was my first pitch meeting," said Krasinski. "I said, "Why would you say no to this project?" She said, "Why would I say yes?" I gave her a much too wordy pitch. I said, "You have an amazing client, one of the best who ever lived. I think more people should know how good this is. I promised her no car chases and no explosions."

A week later, he was offered the rights. (It was a good month for Krasinski. He was also cast in "The Office.")

It took three full years to write the script. He said one of the biggest challenges in adapting the book was figuring out the character of the interviewer, whom Wallace does not identify. Wallace even omits the questions that prompt the monologues; they are delineated in the book simply by "Q" followed by blank space.

"The big question is, who are these guys and why are they being interviewed?" says Krasinski. Also, why would someone be interviewing them? He decided the interviewer would be a woman and came up with a role for her that seemed plausible: She'd be a doctoral student in anthropolo gy. While still being true to Wallace's language, he also invented cinematic devices to explore her imagination as she processed the interviews.

Krasinski still sounds amazed that as a young virtual unknown he was able to assemble an impressive cast and crew, including director of photography John Bailey, who had shot some of his favorite movies, including "Ordinary People" and "As Good As It Gets."

Using connections of friends of friends, he approached several of his favorite actors. "They were all so open to meeting me," said Krasinski, who did not let them read the script at first. "I asked them to sit down with me before they read the script and pitched the idea of what the movie was." He adds: "I wouldn't have done it if I was in their position. I hadn't directed. I didn't know what was right or wrong. I was still that excited kid who had been in a staged reading with the belief that it could be something great."

Krasinski only had one conversation with Wallace, who never read the script; Wallace called him to give his blessing and made it clear he didn't want to meddle. He also told Krasinski he'd considered "Brief Interviews" to be a "failed experiment," an attempt to tell a story about a character - a woman - you never hear or see.

"I said, 'She's a woman?' He said, 'Yeah, I feel like she'd be doing her dissertation at school on something like feminism and she's basically interviewing these men to get into the mind of the modern man, to understand the male psyche.' "

Says Krasinski: "There was a long pause. That is exactly what I had done. I had to sit down. I was totally emotional."

Wallace told him he hadn't decided whether he wanted to see the film when it was done. Nevertheless Krasinski hoped he would and was stunned when he got the news that Wallace committed suicide in September.

"I have to say it's just a tragedy on every single level, first and foremost for his family and friends, but on top of that, as an artist and writer, it's a loss that most of us can't even fathom. It is so sad that there won't be any more of what I think of as such a unique and influential voice."

Krasinski says he's lost a hero, "and when you lose a hero it's a personal loss. I attribute so much of my career, my life, my way of thinking to this book. The movie is only a fraction, a fraction, of the imagination that can be inspired by his work. I was so lucky to play around with what I thought was some of the best material I'd ever read. I hope I did some sort of justice to it."

ALSO OF NOTE

Women in Film & Video New England. Meeting with guest speaker executive director Rae Ann Del Pozzo of Plymouth Rock Studios. Open to the public, Jan. 21 at 7 p.m. 617-987-0259, www.womeninfilmvideo.org.

Theremin: An Electric Odyssey. 1994 documentary about the unusual electronic instrument and its inventor and namesake Leon Theremin. A talk and Q&A by composer and MIT professor of Music and Media Tod Machover follows the film. Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. 617-734-2501, www.coolidge.org

Linda Matchan can be reached at l_matchan@globe.com