Salinger is a 2013 American documentary film about the reclusive writer J. D. Salinger directed and produced by Shane Salerno. The film tells the story of Salinger's life through interviews with friends, historians, and journalists. The film premiered at the 40th annual Telluride Film Festival and had a second premiere on the opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Salinger was one of the top-ten highest-grossing documentaries of 2013, with the highest per screen average of all the films that were released on its opening weekend. Two million viewers watched its broadcast on American Masters on PBS.
Production history
According to Salerno, the project initially started as a feature film, with Daniel Day-Lewis as his choice to play Salinger.
Buddy Squires, Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated cinematographer, was hired to shoot the film.
On January 29, 2010, the website Deadline Hollywood first reported on the documentary, which had been kept secret for five years. Michael Fleming, the first journalist to view the film, called it "arrestingly powerful and exhaustively researched". Additionally, Fleming announced that Salerno had co-written a 700-page biography on Salinger with New York Times bestselling author David Shields. On February 4, 2010, Entertainment Weekly detailed the elaborate security surrounding the film.
When American Masters executive producer Susan Lacy read about the project, she began a three-year pursuit to acquire the television rights to the documentary. On January 27, 2013, Lacy and PBS American Masters concluded a deal for the domestic television rights to Salinger for a low-seven-figure sum. Lacy said: "Shane's film is an extraordinary piece of work; the more recognition Salinger received, the more reclusive and enigmatic he became, refusing all interviews and trying to block all coverage. With the embargo finally lifted, it is my intellectual and emotional thrill to bring the inimitable J. D. Salinger into the American Masters library. I cannot envision a more appropriate subject for our 200th broadcast in January."
On February 27, 2013, it was announced that producer Harvey Weinstein had acquired the documentary for theatrical distribution after being the only studio head to see the finished film following the 85th Academy Awards. Weinstein stated: "Shane Salerno has created a haunting piece of documentary filmmaking in Salinger. We are in awe of the painstaking detail used in depicting a man who created truly timeless works of literature, but otherwise remained an enigma for so many years." The theatrical purchase price was $2 million and the release date of September 6, 2013 was chosen so that the film could be a candidate for the 86th Academy Awards. It did not receive a nomination.
Cast
Stephen Adly Guirgis
Tom Wolfe
Gore Vidal
E. L. Doctorow
A. Scott Berg
John Guare
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Edward Norton
John Cusack
Martin Sheen
Judd Apatow
Danny DeVito
Elizabeth Frank
Margaret Salinger
Robert Towne
Joyce Maynard
Soundtrack
The film score was composed by Grammy Award-winning composer Lorne Balfe. It was released on September 17, 2013, by Decca Records, part of the Universal Music company.
Reception
Salinger received mixed reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 36% based on 88 reviews, with an average rating of 5.40/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "A so-so documentary about a fascinating personality, Salinger has moments of insight but is too often bogged down by reenactments and a lack of attention to the man's actual writings." On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100 based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Peter Rainer from The Christian Science Monitor called the film both "fascinating and infuriating".