"The Catcher in the Rye" film version – should it happen?
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To many fans, the mere idea of J.D. Salinger's classic "The Catcher in the Rye" being turned into a movie seems wrong. After all, didn't protagonist Holden Caulfield very clearly state: "If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me"?
But since Salinger's death in January of this year, . While Salinger definitively shut the door on the idea in his lifetime (he once wrote to a movie producer that “Holden Caulfield himself, in my undoubtedly super-biased opinion, is essentially unactable”), he did also add in the same letter that he might think of "leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy."
Will his heirs take the bait? There has been further speculation this year that might pressure them to do so – and do so quickly.
A new indicates that 65 percent of voters believe that a film version will be made.
Those who say yes are, perhaps, hoping for a miracle along the lines of "To Kill a Mockingbird," in which a great book was turned into an equally great movie. But how many times in the average lifetime does such a thing happen?
Already, pundits are pleading for Hollywood to keep its hands off Holden. "Is 'The Catcher in the Rye' really unfilmable?" asks Stuart McGurk in , only to conclude that, when it comes to casting Holden, "even the more realistic candidates don't feel quite right." Matt Zoller Seitz, writing for , is even more definitive. Even after conceding a film probably will be made, Seitz declares: " 'The Catcher in the Rye' should never be made into a movie. Period."
You have only to go on YouTube, of course, to see or of the visions that some have had for such a project. Whether these horrify or entice you – well, that's probably a personal matter between Holden and you.
Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor's book editor.
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