While The Weinstein Company presentation at Cannes this year left a bit to be desired (though, it would be pretty hard to top 2012’s unveiling of “The Master,” “Django Unchained” and “Silver Linings Playbook“) one title that did stand out was the documentary “Salinger.” Harvey showed off the trailer for the first time on the Croisette where our correspondent Jessica admitted that “it certainly looks riveting, with…plenty of emphasis on the mysteries and enigmas that surround Salinger’s life and legacy.” And now it’s here for the rest of us to see, and we couldn’t agree more.
In the works for at least five years, if not longer, writer/director Shane Salerno has gone deep, putting $2 million dollars of his own personal cash into the making of the movie which tries to figure out the life of literature’s most famous recluse (sorry Harper Lee). An absolutely ridiculous list of participants are involved including: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, John Cusack, Danny DeVito, John Guare, Martin Sheen, David Milch, Robert Towne, Tom Wolfe, E.L. Doctorow, A. Scott Berg, Elizabeth Frank and Gore Vidal. Even more, a deal for a book is already in place, with Salerno to display more of what looks to be some incredible research, which seems to shed a lot of light on the mysterious author.
We gotta say, we’re hooked and really looking forward to this one. “Salinger” opens on September 6th, and if we know Harv, this will be at Telluride and TIFF too. Watch below.
Leave him the fuck alone. This reeks of TMZ-era media coverage.
for Salinger
https://vimeo.com/26060234
Maybe, just maybe, he didn't want to be famous. Or is that just too un-American to understand?
I know they're trying to rachet up the excitement over what could be a very dry, academic subject…but the marketing on this thing is just absurd. From the trailer alone, you'd think he was the North Pond Hermit. They're making a man's privacy into something vaguely perverse.
The thing is: Salinger published quite a bit of material beyond Catcher, but almost no one has read it. The only reason anyone is interested in whatever he might've written later in life that went unpublished is the mystery surrounding it. If he'd published it in the course of his life as he had published Raise High the Roof Beam, etc. no one would have cared. But it does make for fun speculation