I was watching a 1997 interview David Foster Wallace gave to Charlie Rose and then this happened:
ROSE: Can you imagine yourself writing a screenplay? Have you tried?
DFW: 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.
ROSE: What’s he written?
DFW: He’s written “Blade Runner” and he wrote “Unforgiven,” the Clint Eastwood Western which –
ROSE: Did you like it?
DFW: I thought — “Unforgiven”?
ROSE: Yeah.
DFW: I thought “Unforgiven” is the first really smart Western since, I don’t know, early Peckinpah.
ROSE: I do, too. I loved it.
DFW: 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 –
ROSE: It’s interesting you say that.
DFW: — about “Unforgiven” –
ROSE: It’s interesting you say that because –
DFW: — 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.
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.
Later this happened:
DFW: 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.”
ROSE: And you say?
DFW: I — I — if that was going on, it was going on on a level of awareness I do not want to have access to.
ROSE: Do you still play tennis?