![]() ![]() The voiceovers so artfully done in The Thin Red Line and The New World could be used to stay true to the novel's core, while his meditative, impressionistic style would surely suit a film essentially set in one person's head. Terrence Malick – rumoured to be working on a Catcher in the Rye adaptation in 2006, and himself considered the Salinger of directors for a while – would be a popular choice. Ditto the knowing coolness of an auteur such as Wes Anderson. The Coen brothers – specialising in the disaffected and desperate – could do it, yet perhaps their films are too stylised, too ironic, too arch and dry (in short, too Coen) for a book so immersive and un-ironic. Would Spielberg still be up for it, you wonder? He seems the obvious choice, yet you can't help feel it's the down-with-the-kids Spielberg of The Goonies (Richard Donner directed, but it was Spielberg's story) you'd want, not the one currently heading towards late middle age. If his family sell the rights now, they keep all the cash.īut who should make it? And who should play Holden? The list of those who've already tried would make a great dinner party: Sam Goldwyn, Steven Spielberg, Jerry Lewis, Marlon Brando, Billy Wilder, Jack Nicholson, even Harvey Weinstein. And last weekend, the Sunday Times suggested it could happen sooner rather than later, due to a tax loophole caused by the failure of Congress to renew death tax legislation. In the same letter, Salinger talks of "leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy". ![]() He'd already been burnt by 1949's My Foolish Heart – a critical flop based on his 1948 short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut. Noting it's a "very novelistic novel", with the bulk of the book taking place inside Holden Caulfield's head, Salinger admitted what was left could, theoretically, be transferred to the big screen, but that the idea was "odious enough to keep me from selling the rights". A letter to a Hollywood producer in 1957 makes it plain. Salinger never wanted one when he was alive. Finally, someone will get to make The Catcher in the Rye film. ![]() Over in Hollywood, however, the hills shook with the cackling of a hundred avaricious studio execs. On hearing of JD Salinger's recent death, most fans probably experienced a single emotion: sadness. If the film rights to JD Salinger's cult novel do go on sale, who could possibly direct it – or play Holden Caulfield? ![]()
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