Watch Jason Segel channel David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour trailer

Sundance favorite The End of the Tour doesn’t arrive in theaters till July 31, but the new trailer illustrates exactly why Utah audiences were so charmed. Jesse Eisenberg portrays writer David Lipsky who, in 1996, pitched Rolling Stone on a story about rising star novelist David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel), who had just published Infinite Jest. Based on Lipsky’s memoir, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace and directed by James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), the film follows the uneasy yet intense relationship that develops between the two writers.

When Ponsoldt approached Segel about playing the famed author, the actor was floored. “I’m relatively self-aware. There was a big part of me that thought, ‘Why me?’ He said, ‘Because I think you’re right for this—there’s something in your eyes that I think is right,'” recalls Segel. “That was an incredible compliment and challenge. So then I set off to do the best job I could.”