Tribute: J.D. Salinger

Posted on January 29, 2010 at 9:29 am

J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, and perhaps the country’s most famous recluse, died at home at age 91. His classic novel narrated by a 16-year-old named Holden Caulfield as he wanders around New York before he has to tell his parents he has been expelled from prep school is one of the most widely-read books of the 20th century, and enormously influential on readers and on writers. Caulfield is cynical and alienated. He calls everyone “phony,” one reason teenagers identify with him so strongly. But the other reason they connect to him is the way he yearns not to be cynical and alienated, the way he wants to be a part of something, to help someone. The title comes from a fantasy he has of protecting children.

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.

In Six Degrees of Separation, Will Smith as the enigmatic young con man delivers a monologue about the influence of Catcher in the Rye.

Salinger would not allow his books to be made into movies, and I suspect that his literary executor will continue the prohibition. There is something quaint and appealing about the idea that Holden Caulfield will be for each of us our own individual and very personal vision.

But there are two movie connections worth mentioning. According to Turner Classic Movie’s Robert Osborne, Salinger got the idea for his most famous character’s name from a theater marquee advertising the movie “Dear Ruth” and its stars, William Holden and Joan Caulfield.

And one of Salinger’s works was filmed. A short called “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” became a movie starring Susan Hayward called “My Foolish Heart.” The movie has so little connection to the story that it is easy to see why he decided not to have that happen again.

If I were going to get permission to make a movie based on Salinger’s writing, I would pick the short story, “For Esme, With Love and Squalor,” about a soldier’s encounter with a precocious young girl. Salinger loved to write about precious children.

Holden Caulfield said,

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

Certainly, The Catcher in the Rye made many readers feel that way. But if they thought about what they read, they did not have to; the book itself and its main character were there to catch those of us who felt no one understood us or felt like us and let us know that someone did.

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Tribute: Erich Segal

Posted on January 19, 2010 at 9:56 pm

Erich Segal, who died today at age 72, was a classics scholar who studied ancient literature. He also wrote a blockbuster movie script that became a blockbuster novel, Love Story. We know from the first sentence that its irrepressible heroine is going to die, leaving the narrator, her young husband, devastated. And her explanation to him that “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” became a cultural phenomenon. (Ryan O’Neal, to whom the line was delivered in the film, got to say it as a joke later on in “What’s Up, Doc?”) Segal also contributed to the deliciously witty script of “Yellow Submarine” and wrote several other novels, but he will always be best known for Love Story, corny, yes, but one of the all-time great tear-jerking romances.

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Tribute Writers

Interview: Scott Cooper of ‘Crazy Heart’

Posted on January 11, 2010 at 3:57 pm

I spoke to writer/director Scott Cooper, whose first film, Crazy Heart has been acclaimed for its authenticity, its captivating music, and a performance by Jeff Bridges that many people believe will bring him his long-deserved Oscar.

You must be thrilled with the reaction your film is getting.

Oh, Nell, for a first time writer/director who has never been to film school or directed a commercial or a rock video — I am over the moon. Not just the critical response, but the reaction from my colleagues who have sought me out and who really loved the film. It just means the world to me.

And it must be a special joy to see the response to the performance of Jeff Bridges as the lead character, country singer “Bad” Blake.

I wrote the role for Jeff, and once I finished the film and sent the script to Robert Duvall, I told him that there are two people I need to make this film happen. One is Jeff Bridges and the other is T. Bone Burnett. In my estimation, both Jeff and Duvall are America’s two finest screen actors and I was able fortunately to get those guys. But I don’t want to overlook Maggie fine work and Colin Farrell.

I’m glad you mentioned Farrell, because I thought he was extraordinary as Tommy Sweet, the big country star Bridges’ character had mentored on the way up.

When I cast the movie, Colin Farrell is not the obvious choice. He looks like a movie star but he is really a character actor. He is a very humble guy. I felt like he’s the kind of guy who would support Jeff Bridges and Robert Duvall. And in such a short time on screen he gives such a nuanced, masterful performance, and he has a beautiful singing voice. It just was inspired all the way around. I wanted to design it so that you were set up to dislike his character and then he is humble and gracious and owes everything to this elder statesman and it all comes through.

One thing I respected about the film is what you left out — a lot of people would have put in a rehab montage and the usual scenes to make us feel we see all the details but you suggested them and then left it alone.

I think it is important that we realize this man is on a road to redemption. We all see redemption. We all are flawed individuals. The themes of hope and regret and loss, all of those course through this movie and course through our daily lives and course through the great country songs. So all humans who see this and suffer through the human condition will understand this.

So you’re a fan of country music?

Oh, I am! I literally cut my teeth in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia going to really great blue grass festivals in Virginia with my parents and then I segued to my father’s LP collection — Waylon and Cash and Haggard and Kristofferson. I loved that these guys wrote about their life experiences. So I was very well steeped in these songs and it was very personal to me. I hope that country music listeners will enjoy the picture and find a little bit of themselves in these characters and relate to it.

I wanted the pacing of the film, the look of the film, everything to have the feeling of an old George Jones song, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” You have to really listen closely and let the song develop. It has a third less cuts than most films, a more languid pace.

So if you didn’t go to film school, did you watch a lot of movies and study them on your own?

I watched a lot of films from the 1970’s, my favorite decade of American film, and I would watch with the sound off, so I could see how they would move the camera, how they would tell the story through performance and lens selection. I would watch the greats like Terrence Malick, with “Days of Heaven” or “Badlands” or Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Coppola, all those guys. And film-makers of today, Sean Penn, Robert Duvall, Ed Harris, Billy Bob Thornton, guys who are complete film-makers, actors and writers and directors.

You said you could not do the movie without T. Bone Burnett. What does he bring to the movie?

He really is peerless in his Americana roots genre. He understands behavior, he understands characterization, he understands the un-obvious and he understood the alternate universe I wanted to create, one part Willie, one part Waylon and Kris, some Merele and Townes Van Zandt, Billy Joe Shaver. He could do that and bring it into this fictional character. He’s just a master at what he does. I told him we have to have a narrative thread through the course of this movie that him write a song over the course of this movie that helps him rediscover his artistry and helps him rediscover who he is as a person. Then we had Ryan Bingham, a young man who in my opinion is the heir apparent to Hank Williams, and he came in with “The Weary Kind” because that’s who Bad Blake is, he is a weary individual. It captures all the themes that I wanted and it’s a stunning, stunning song. It’s a part of the fabric of the film.

What inspires you?

My two beautiful girls inspire me every day. Great art. Music, gospel, classical, jazz. It’s part of my life. Mostly by people who aren’t afraid to take risks intheir lives, who live their lives as if every day was their last. People who have strong convictions.

What did you learn from your first film?

The most important lesson I learned was to always trust your instincts, never stop learning — and steal from the best, because I surely did.

Screenwriter Dale Launer Talks About Comedy

Posted on January 2, 2010 at 10:36 am

Dale Launer wrote three of the funniest and best-constructed comedies of the late 80’s and early 90’s, “Ruthless People,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” and “My Cousin Vinny.” This interview he did with Writer Unboxed is like a master class in writing, comedy, and inspiration. I hope very much he does another movie soon.

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Behind the Scenes Writers

Interview: Kirk Jones of ‘Everybody’s Fine’

Posted on December 13, 2009 at 9:43 am

Kirk Jones, a British writer/director, is best known in America for the delightful comedy “Waking Ned Divine.” His first American movie is Everybody’s Fine, a remake of an Italian film, with Robert DeNiro as the father of four adult children who don’t feel they can tell him the truth about what is going on in their lives. I spoke to him about parents, children, and an outsider’s view of the American landscape.
NM: How do you decide how much to protect your parents or children or how much to tell them?
KJ: That’s a fantastic question. It’s the first time I’ve been asked that but I was expecting to hear it a lot more often. I have to say I don’t know the answer. It’s an incredibly fine line. We should all be totally and completely honest with each other. But we’re all sophisticated enough to know and our emotions are sophisticated enough to know that there are times when if you don’t need to fill people in on every detail of every situation then that can only help protect them and their own emotions. I’m certainly not proposing that we keep huge secrets from each other but it is human nature to want to protect the person you care about the most and at times that means not being 100 percent honest with them
NM: How did you as someone from outside the US use the settings to help tell the story?
KJ: I was very aware that as an English writer and film-maker that I needed to take this road trip very seriously, so I flew to New York and went cross-country to Vegas mostly on Greyhounds and Amtrak. I drove a little bit as well just to get off the main highways. And I went across the country on a three-week trip. I took about 2000 photographs and interviewed about 100 people.
A number of things happened. I felt I really got under the skin of this country and felt I was much more qualified to go back to London and write a road trip movie that takes place here. The second thing was on a daily basis I was inspired with ideas that I saw out of the window of the bus and the train and they went directly into the script. Things like Frank’s occupation. I knew it was important. I knew I wanted it to have some relevance. I kept looking at truck stops and factories, trying to work out what he could do. Literally, I was traveling from St. Louis to Kansas on an Amtrak train. I looked out the window and my focus shifted to the telephone wires, and I just thought how beautiful and elegant they were and I looked at the wire and I thought, “Someone has to cut that wire and someone has to protect it from the elements.” And what a beautiful irony it would be if Frank had helped all these people communicate and protected the line of communication but was struggling to communicate with his own family. So that kind of dropped into place.
And I realized this was a chance to show these stunning landscapes. This country is so beautiful. Most of the people I talked to have not traveled as much as I did. I think that’s very common. I haven’t traveled very much in the UK. We take our own homeland for granted. We feel like we know it because we see it on the news or we see it in pictures, read about it in encyclopedias or studied it in school. But I think it is very important to get out there and appreciate the beauty of your own country.
I knew I wanted to include these landscapes but I didn’t want to just insert them in the movie as I think happens in other films just because they’re pretty pictures. I wanted to dramatically have a reason for them being there. So, I thought, the wires are stretching between the poles. The poles are incredibly graphic, these wooden crosses stretching across the country, through deserts and mountainous areas. So there was a dramatic reason to include the poles and the wires and we could hear the conversations and at the same time it allowed me to present the beautiful landscapes.
NM: Your stars in this film are all very accomplished and talented actors but they have very different styles of acting. How did you make that work for the movie?
JK: I was very keen that the level of acting throughout the film should be very natural. This is a film about a real family and the real problems they have. As a film-maker, I always find that it’s more effective to present a realistic view of the world because then you have a better chance of the audience believing in it and therefore investing in it emotionally. So the brief for the actors in general was to underplay, to keep it believable. As the younger daughter, more insecure, drawn to the bright lights, Drew’s way was to overcompensate and be bubbly and charming and more affectionate. I think that is often the way with the youngest.
NM: Is there one theme you keep coming back to?
JK: In the modern world, the importance of us communicating as families. It’s common for us to consider keeping in touch as something on our to-do list. When we used to live more predominantly in communities, more people had direct contact with their brothers and sisters and parents and children. Now it’s much more common for people to say, “I need to be in LA” or “I need to be in New York.” Supposedly we have more sophisticated ways to keep in touch with cell phones and the internet and texting and Skyping and video conferencing. But it takes quite an effort to make that call. Even though it is easier to keep in touch I am not sure that translates to actually keeping in touch. So many people leave this film saying, “I have to ring my Mum. I have to talk to my brothers and sisters.” That is a very fulfilling theme to be able to address.