"Secret" J. D. Salinger documentary 5 years in the making

Wow, cannot wait to see this!

From EW.com:

More details from the DeadlineHollywood.com article, including 5 minutes of possible Salinger footage:
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/secret-j-d-salinger-documentary-book-revealed-and-ive-seen-the-film/#more-23930

 

I was surprised the only mention I could find of this documentary on the forum was three years old. I was looking for anything on this this in the search engine after reading the following:
http://fridaynightboys300.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/j-d-salinger-documentary-more-news.html

Anyone got any more news...?

 

It's currently listed at IMDb to be in post-production with a September 2013 release date.

 

There seem to be an endless stream of these eternally pushed back and delayed documentaries.


Looking at the cast list I'm not impressed. 120 minutes of celebrities who never met the subject gushing about how amazing he is.

 

More 'news'...

http://fridaynightboys300.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/j-d-salinger-screening-at-cannes.html

 

Wow. This looks bad!

http://fridaynightboys300.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/salinger-documentary-trailer.html

 

Like I said 120 minutes of celebrities gushing about Catcher in the Rye.

There are two things I read about this in every article. First, there is so big huge secrete that no one will talk about. Second, that no one who atually had any relationship with Saligner took part in this.

I hate this type of documentery. I really don't give two s**ts what John Cussak thinks.

 

You never know, maybe Danny DeVito's a secret literary scholar...

 

A must see

 

My understanding is that one of the big secrets is that Salinger never stopped writing, and there's a ton of unreleased short stories and books sitting in a vault that nobody can touch due to lots of legal issues.

One assumes they answer the important question: why did Salinger stop releasing any books? And why did he stay out of the limelight so vigorously? He is a fascinating literary character, but I kinda question the wisdom of releasing a theatrical film on the subject. To me, this should be a 90-minute Bravo special (at best).

 

Well if that's the big huge secret they show it in the trailer.

It has the potential to be fascinating, but I doubt we will get answers to many of the core issues.

Like you said there is probably an amazing American Masters in there somewhere but this seems to be riding on gimmick and padded with celebrities.

Salingers son is very upset about this whole thing. He even went as far as trying to have laws passed to stop it.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/13/salingers-son-stunned-by-veto-of-nh-bill/

I'm glad they didn't pass his law, but I also get why he is upset. I'm pretty sure the "photographer" is the person who made this documentary.

 

Why not include people who knew him well? I know his godson. Why wasn't he given a voice in a project like this? He actually knew him and also his mother (who is still around)? Did Phillip Seymour Hoffman know him or the fact he read his book and has an Oscar give him a credible voice?

 

Yep.

 

" “There is no PBS-type narrator, no black background or talking heads,” says the source. “The look, sound, and editorial pacing is consistent with a feature film.” As for a premiere date, filmmakers are hoping to take the film to the Cannes Film Festival in May."

Well, this is wrong. That trailer shows its ALL talking heads.

In "Conversations with (Truman) Capote," the book of interviews by Lawrence Grobel, Capote says that Salinger never stopped writing, but what he was writing turned very weird -- lots of Zen buddhist material that the New Yorker rejected. I might guess that, encountering rejection, Salinger just said "screw it" and stopped trying to publish. Sometimes you just hit that wall where you say, "what's the point?" And when you have massive royalties always coming in, who the hell wants to write if its a painful experience? And, except for those nuts like Stephen King who can't stop cranking stuff out, if you read the interviews, most authors view writing as a very painful process. When a football player feels his knees going out, does he want to keep playing.

 

They all refused to take part.

 

Nothing from Kenneth Slawenski either - Salinger's last biographer (and it's a book well-worth reading)

 

http://fridaynightboys300.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/salinger-new-works-on-way.html

More on this. I'm not inspired by the makers' pedigree, but I'm open to surprises!

 

So the big secret is really no big secret and is just a huge amount of hype about a Doc full of people who know nothing about the man talking about how great Catcher in the Rye is.

 

If this becomes profitable, just imagine what a Catcher in the Rye movie would do. Salinger always refused to grant movie rights, saying the movie would be unactable. The book is too much dependent on Holden's dialogue and thoughts ... not so much plot driven. But it is unclear what he said in his will to the heirs. There's been some hope after his death that his estate would allow a movie.

 

Hopefully, they were able to track down Sheryl Crow for an interview, between appearances at benefit concerts.

Honestly, if you didn't know Salinger or work with him, then unless you are a Salinger scholar used to provide context and connection, I don't want to see you on the screen in a documentary about him. I am not interested in how much Philip Seymour Hoffman loves his work.

 

The secret they've wanted to keep under wraps isn't that Salinger kept writing, but that the estate plans to publish five books containing previously unreleased writing over the next five years:

—an anthology, The Family Glass, which will include the existing Glass family stories along with five new ones as well as a Glass family geneaology.

—a World War II novel inspired by Salinger’s enormously complicated relationship with his first wife, Sylvia, who may have been a Gestapo informant.

—a manual of the Hindu Vedanta religion, which Salinger followed for the last 50 years of his life.

—a novella based on Salinger’s own experiences that, according to the authors, “takes the form of a counterintelligence agent’s diary entries during World War II.”

—“a complete retooling” of Salinger’s unpublished Holden Caulfield story “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans,” which will be packaged with the existing Caulfield stories as well as new stories and The Catcher in the Rye, “creating a complete history of the Caulfield family.”

 

I can't wait for Jerry Bruckheimer's The Lost Leonardo, in which he waxes lyrical about recently discovered Da Vinci masterpieces painted in Las Vegas during his 'missing years.'

 

It does, and the Weinstein company are behind it which doesn't help. I'll probably still watch it when the dvd comes out, but I'm not expecting much.

 

If they are planning to publish the books in a few years that is far from this earth shatering secret that they have been trying to hype for this movie.

 

People have wondered for decades what Salinger might have been writing when he went into seclusion. Now they're going to find out. It's pretty big news, as literary stories go.