Salinger on screen

In theaters Friday: Dear John, From Paris with Love

New on DVD/Blu-ray: Amelia, New York, I Love You, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Zombieland

“If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies.” – Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye

With J.D. Salinger’s death at age 91 last week, fans of his iconic novel The Catcher in the Rye and his many celebrated short stories are eagerly awaiting the release of something, anything, that the reclusive and enigmatic author may have written but chosen not to publish after his self-imposed exile from public life in the late 1960s.

While I expect we’ll see a new collection of posthumously-published writings, and maybe even a novel in the near future, let’s not get carried away and anticipate movie versions of his most famous stories. Salinger consistently expressed his disdain for filmed versions of novels and never sold the rights to Catcher in his lifetime—despite consistent attempts by everyone from Jerry Lewis to Steven Speilberg. Still, Salinger’s life and work have made a huge impact on cinema.

Many may not know that his son Matthew Salinger is a longtime character actor of stage and screen, though I’m not suggesting anyone run out and rent his star turn as the titular hero in 1990’s dippy Captain America. But there are dozens of feature films that can claim Catcher and its author as inspiration.

Here are just ten modern films strongly influenced by the work and the myth of J.D. Salinger—counting down to my favorite.

10. Finding Forrester (2000) Gus Van Sant’s much-dismissed follow up to Good Will Hunting, is, like Catcher, a Manhattan-set morality play. Sean Connery plays a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of a single novel and a neurotic recluse who emerges from obscurity to befriend and mentor a young African American writing prodigy.

9. The Ice Storm (1997) When Salinger passed last week, NPR asked author and essayist Rick Moody for some thoughts on his hero. This adaptation of Moody’s novel is told through the quickly fading innocence of four kids—Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Toby Maguire and Katie Holmes—and in the hands of director Ang Lee the rolling psychodrama becomes a tour through the horror show of adult behavior in 1970s Connecticut, all the while perfectly capturing Catcher protagonist Holden Caulfield’s “put-upon” desperation.

8. The Good Girl (2002) As angst-filled stock boy and outcast Holden Worther, Jake Gyllenhaal crusades against the daily grind of modern existence, literally believing himself to be “Holden Caulfield” and waving a tattered copy of Catcher like a warning sign while yanking Jennifer Aniston into his unique world view and an illicit affair.

7. Wonder Boys (2000) Director Curtis Hanson followed L.A. Confidential with this Catcher-inspired drama in which Michael Douglas personifies each of the nightmares Salinger perhaps believed he would face had be continued publishing and living a public life after the massive success and deification of Catcher. Douglas suffers severe writer’s block, relationship issues, pressure from his agent to finish a long-overdue book and the headache-inducing politics of academia.

6. Winter Passing (2005) Based loosely on the real-life incident of Margaret Salinger publishing Dream Catcher, a book about her childhood with dad, J.D., indie comedy Winter Passing stars Zooey Deschanel—who was named after Salinger’s character of Franny and Zooey fame—as a struggling actress offered tons of money to secure for publication the love letters her brilliant author-turned-shut-in father wrote to her mother years ago. Upon arriving home, she finds her cranky loose-screw dad is living with two ambitious fans of his work, one a graduate student and writer, the other, Will Ferrell’s wannabe musician.

5. Into the Wild (2007) Sean Penn’s underrated adaptation of John Krakauer’s book about wayward adventurer Christopher McCandless, plays out like a potential sequel to Catcher. As McCandliss, Emile Hirsch is an upper class recent college grad who rejects his parents’ country club lifestyle, gives his trust fund to a charity and hitchhikes across the country looking for real people, real experiences, and ultimately, the real him. Like Caulfield, McCandless is disenchanted with adulthood and the vulgarities of modern America. His quest ends tragically in the Alaskan wilderness, of course, but the journey and the attempt, like Caulfield erasing all those curse words, is beautiful.

4. Igby Goes Down (2002) Perhaps the most blatant rewrite of Catcher ever committed to film, Burr Steers’ Igby Goes Down parrots and comments on Salinger’s famous work in dozens of ways through plot, setting, characterization and theme, though it is Keiran Cullkin’s oddly affecting and charismatic performance as quick-witted mischief-maker Igby that carries this drama to its moving, Salinger-worthy conclusion.

3. Field of Dreams (1989) A long-time Catcher fan, Author W.P. Kinsella not only wrote the reclusive Salinger into Shoeless Joe Jackson—the novel on which Field of Dreams is based—he also borrowed the name Ray Kinsella from one of Salinger’s uncollected stories for Kevin Costner’s farmer-turned-ballpark builder. From his mythic status to his controversial renown, James Earl Jones’ character in the film, known as Terence Mann, is a thinly veiled substitute for the real Salinger, who features prominently by name in Kinsella’s book.

2. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) While everything from Margot’s butterscotch sundae to the characters’ quirky, almost uniform-like fashions recalls Caulfield’s gauzy and nostalgic vision of New York City, Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson’s Alec Baldwin-narrated screenplay bulls-eyes the preternatural and literary world of Salinger’s favorite dysfunctional family, the Glass family. Both bucking at and basking in their upper crust upbringing, the Tenenbaum kids are flawed prodigies and the parents are simply flawed. This is by far the most lighthearted and fun Salinger-inspired film.

1. Dead Poet’s Society (1989) Swimming in the same blue blood prep school milieu that Caulfield flees from at the outset of the novel, Peter Weir’s stately and melancholic tale of adolescent romanticism disects the idealistic schism between youth and adulthood and revels where Salinger’s protagonist only lightly treads—that is, in its big empathetic and nostalgic heart. Plus, Robin Williams’ phony-spotting Mr. Keating is probably just the teacher Caulfield needed.