You can't judge the books by the quality of the movies. Wolfe was not involved in the film version.
It was more a comment on what's popular. He's not exactly a household name and I don't understand why this is the frame of reference for him when he wrote a book more people could identify because it was a popular film and people are more familiar with movies Side note. I saw on Twitter that Russ Meyer may have just randomly given him a credit for writing a movie to help sales. Naturally Tom Wolfe sued the fuck out of him
Wolfe is not a household name like Tom Clancy but that doesn't mean his work was not influential. For example, Wolfe had a penchant for summing up American culture and/or cultural facets in succinct and memorable ways. He described the self-centered focus on self fulfillment of the 70s as the "Me Decade." He also created the understanding of "good ol' boy" we have today in an article he wrote on NASCAR in the early 70s. There are many others. Some of the phrases he coined have become so ingrained, you aren't even aware of it. I read somewhere that Wolfe is quoted 150 times in the Oxford English Dictionary.