Director's Statement

The first time I read Tom Wolfe was when a friend handed me a dog-eared copy of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Ten pages in and I was consumed with one thought: “Who is Tom Wolfe?” I devoured the rest of his work over the next few months, delighting in his inimitable style work and perplexed with how he could infiltrate so many different worlds and their central characters. Tom inspired me to seek my first writing job at Rolling Stone and a decade later to make this film.

It turns out Michael Lewis had the same question twenty years earlier as a twelve year-old in New Orleans reading Radical Chic. In 2015, Michael answered his question (and mine) in the celebrated Vanity Fair article: “How Tom Wolfe Became…Tom Wolfe”. Tom became a touchstone for Michael as he filled his hero’s shoes as America’s leading non-fiction writer, with an eye for the stories that shape our culture.

Michael’s Vanity Fair profile is the blueprint for telling Tom’s life story in Radical Wolfe. Adapting the article into a documentary allowed us to hear from more voices including Tom’s friends, family, colleagues, collaborators, and rivals alike, and breathe new life into his writing through the voice of Jon Hamm.

In making the film I was able to explore the real life consequences of Tom’s writing on people such as former Black Panther and Columbia University professor Jamal Joseph, while younger writers like Emily Witt, Tom Junod and Christopher Buckley shared how Wolfe shaped and influenced their work. And it was moving to meet and hear from his closest friends, hearing anecdotes and reminiscences from people like Lynn Nesbit and Paul McHugh who knew about Tom’s sensitive side and often guarded personal life.

From his beginnings as a Washington Post beat reporter to his later celebrity status as the leader of the New Journalism movement, Tom Wolfe was at the forefront of reshaping how American stories are told and what stories are important. Unlike many of his peers, Tom recognized the importance in often overlooked micro-cultures and people: teenagers customizing cars in Southern California garages, stock car racers in rural North Carolina, hippies in Haight Ashbury. Fusing a conservative upbringing in Virginia with a cultural antenna honed at Yale’s PhD program in American Studies, Tom went on to write some of the most memorable and culturally impactful stories of the 20th century. His ability to bridge racial, cultural and class divides and recontextualize the most important events in American life was unique in both fiction and non-fiction. As Michael Lewis recalls: “Tom Wolfe shined a light on people in a way that made you take notice…and there’s power in that.”

After years in the making we’re thrilled to release this film, which gives cinematic life to Michael Lewis’ seminal article and will introduce Tom’s work to a new generation of readers, while revealing the stories behind the stories to his longtime fans.

– Richard Dewey