question of the day: What will the pitch for the J.D. Salinger movie sound like?
J.D. Salinger is dead. Long live J.D. Salinger, the movie? Maybe now someone will produce the definitive work about the legendarily reclusive author?
There’s already a documentary, by filmmaker Shane Salerno, finished last year, according to Mike Fleming at Deadline Hollywood -- he’s even seen it:
I found the film, which doesn't have narration, to be exhaustively researched and arrestingly powerful. Most importantly, it answers a lot of questions I and everyone have had about the author. There is previously unseen footage and photos, and a rich depiction of that unfathomable period in Salinger's career when The New Yorker magazine was able to publish a new "J.D. Salinger" story fairly regularly.
There also are details of: his WWII soldiering in Normandy and interrogation of Nazi prisoners; his love affair with Eugene O’Neill’s daughter Oona, and the crushing disappointment of losing her to Charlie Chaplin while Salinger fought in Europe; Salinger's habit of locking himself away in his New Hampshire cinderblock bunker for weeks at a time to write; his penchant for taking a week to craft a single sentence; the damage his silences caused his family; the futile efforts of friends to re-introduce him to the world; Salinger's protectiveness towards his work; his refusal to sell anything to Hollywood, turning down 8-figure offers and first-class filmmakers like Billy Wilder and Steven Spielberg; his determination to maintain total control over his prose (so that when a New Yorker editor once added a comma, Salinger never spoke to him again).Even more intriguing, Salerno's documentary also reports on what J.D. Salinger literary works might be in the famed secret vault, where 45 years of unpublished writings are rumored to be kept.
Still, it’s hard to imagine that a documentary, no matter how amazing, will change the impression that those of us who even know who J.D. Salinger is have of the man. An editorial in the Sacramento Bee sums up that impression by what it isn’t:
At the end, with J.D. Salinger dead at 91, we have no memories of him. That is to say, we have no cranky anecdotes about thrown drinks, no second cousins who once stood next to him at a roulette table, no paparazzi pictures of him with his long face and solemn eyes staring with predatory kindness at some starlet in Malibu (careful not to look at her breasts, of course).
Which means, of course, that we can tell any damn story we want about Salinger, and no one can object: Who’s to say that Salinger wasn’t a vampire hunter? Huh? The Bee piece also mentions “endless rumors of insanity or Buddhist monkhood” -- I see a movie about a globetrotting quest to achieve nirvana through offing terrorists and digging up ancient artifacts. Are we sure that Salinger was a recluse? Maybe he was just never home.
Go for it: What will the pitch for the J.D. Salinger movie sound like?
Got a title? I kinda like J.D Salinger: Revenge of the Fallen...
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
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comments
posted by Bluejay (Fri Feb 05 10, 11:48AM)
The title for such a movie should obviously be The Catcher.
posted by Bzero (Fri Feb 05 10, 11:59AM)
Oh, dear Primus. I so hope there's a good lawyer in control of his estate. I don't want to see his ghostly image hawking Coca-Cola in two years...
(Steven Colbert already suggested "Sgt. Salinger's Fried Chicken"...)
posted by bronxbee (Fri Feb 05 10, 12:04PM)
"...see a movie about a globetrotting quest to achieve nirvana through offing terrorists and digging up ancient artifacts."
The Ocam's Razor Edge of Salinger
posted by Dr. Rocketscience (Fri Feb 05 10, 2:33PM)
We could have had this already. In the movie Field of Dreams, one of the protagonists is a fictional author played by James Earl Jones, but in the novel A Field of Dreams the author is J.D. Salinger.
posted by Dr. Rocketscience (Fri Feb 05 10, 2:37PM)
Sorry.. brain fart. The book was called Shoeless Joe.
posted by Tonio Kruger (Fri Feb 05 10, 2:59PM)
Because J.D. the Vampire Slayer would be way too obvious. And only phonies would like a movie like that...
posted by misterb (Fri Feb 05 10, 5:03PM)
How about this? reclusive but wealthy author angers wife by refusing to leave the house. She hires a killer, but the killer idolizes the character created by the author many years before. The author takes the presumptive killer on a journey through his estate whereupon tables are turned - again and again and again.
- "Sleuth" meets "The Perfect Murder" meets JD Salinger
posted by Jurgan (Sat Feb 06 10, 10:54AM)
Alternatively, the obsessive fan has been waiting decades for another book featuring the character, and keeps the author locked up to get him complete a new book. Since he had locked himself up already, however, this has no effect.
So, Salinger meets Misery.
posted by Bluejay (Fri Mar 05 10, 9:46AM)
Sorry to resurrect this thread, but all the talk of Salinger secretly being a vampire hunter came to my mind when I saw this video ad for a just-released book...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X58RPS665V0
posted by Tonio Kruger (Fri Mar 05 10, 3:10PM)
Re: that YouTube video.
At long last we have a sequel to that Bentley Little story, "The Washingtonians," which inspired the Masters of Horror segment of the same name.
See what you miss by not reading American history. ;-)
posted by Bluejay (Fri Mar 05 10, 4:42PM)
LOL, Tonio! I'll have to check that out.
posted by Bluejay (Fri Mar 12 10, 5:17PM)
Man, this "historical figures are really secret badasses" thing is really catching on. Must be something in the air.