Salinger (film)

Last updated
Salinger
The official movie poster for SALINGER documentary film.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Shane Salerno
Written byShane Salerno
Produced by
  • Shane Salerno
  • Buddy Squires
  • Deborah Randall
  • Craig Fanning
Cinematography
  • Anthony Savini
  • Buddy Squires
Edited byJeffrey Doe
Music by Lorne Balfe
Production
company
The Story Factory
Distributed by The Weinstein Company
Release dates
  • September 2, 2013 (2013-09-02)(Telluride)
  • September 6, 2013 (2013-09-06)(United States)
Running time
129 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$650,675 [1]

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 [2] and had a second premiere on the opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival. [3]

Contents

Salinger was one of the top-ten highest-grossing documentaries of 2013, [4] with the highest per screen average of all the films that were released on its opening weekend. [5] Two million viewers watched its broadcast on American Masters on PBS. [6]

Production history

According to Salerno, the project initially started as a feature film, with Daniel Day-Lewis as his choice to play Salinger. [7]

Buddy Squires, Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated cinematographer, was hired to shoot the film. [8]

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. [9] On February 4, 2010, Entertainment Weekly detailed the elaborate security surrounding the film. [10]

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. [11] 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." [12]

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." [13] 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. [14] It did not receive a nomination.

Cast

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. [15]

Reception

Salinger received mixed reviews. [16] 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." [17] On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100 based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [18]

Peter Rainer from The Christian Science Monitor called the film both "fascinating and infuriating". [19]

When Salinger premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood noted that the "riveting and stunning" film "caused a stir" at the festival. Ken Burns moderated the post-screening panel discussion and called the film "extraordinary." [20] The first official reviews from the Festival both were grades of "B+", with Eric Kohn of Indiewire calling Salinger "unquestionably enthralling," adding that it "capably strips away the fanaticism associated with his books to create the impression of a human being," [21] and Chris Willman of The Playlist calling the film a "compelling mystery yarn." [22] Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast also wrote a piece after the Telluride premiere, saying "it is truly unbelievable how much research went into the making of this film, and it shows on screen," adding that Salinger is "equal parts fascinating and exploitative, but one can’t deny the astounding level of comprehensiveness on display." [23]

Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film three out of four stars, saying "insightful gems are unearthed throughout the flawed but engrossing Salinger...it's an exhaustively researched look at a compelling subject." [24] Michael Ordona wrote in San Francisco Chronicle that "Salinger overcomes some melodramatic moments and hit-or-miss cinematic devices to present a fascinating picture...a complex portrait of a complex man." [25] Richard Roeper of Chicago Sun-Times wrote that Salinger is a "valuable and engrossing biography of the author of arguably the most beloved American novel of the 20th century." [26] In the Los Angeles Times , Kenneth Turan stated that "the photographs and information Salerno unearthed over all that time are impressive" and that the documentary is "energetic, informative and at times over-dramatized." [27] Mike Scott of The Times-Picayune gave the documentary four out of five stars, calling it "comprehensive, authoritative and exhaustively researched...on the whole, Salinger is an engrossing and eye-opening film." [28] In the Seattle Times , Soren Andersen wrote that the film is "rich in anecdote and visually arresting." [29]

By contrast, writing in The New York Times , A. O. Scott found the film "garish and confusing," as well as "sloppy in matters of judgment and craft." Scott found that it "does not so much explore the life and times of J. D. Salinger as run them through a spin cycle of hype." [30] In Vanity Fair , Bruce Handy called the film "awful," "breathless," "humid" and "overheated." Handy cited its many re-enactments, dubious use of personalities such as Martin Sheen as Salinger authorities, and "unforgivable use of corny cinematic devices to fill in the gaps and goose its own drama." He concluded, "In elevating Salinger into a gothic superman, the Dr. Doom of letters, it reeks with simple-minded grandiosity, a kind of inverse narcissism." [31]

"Salinger proceeds in an order that's neither chronological nor thematic," wrote Dana Stevens in Slate.com, "making the film as a whole feel shapeless and pointlessly long." She thought it "no goddamn good," a "tabloid undertaking" and filled with "solemn, literal-minded vulgarity," concluding that Salinger's aura of "mystery is certainly hardy enough to withstand the voyeuristic onslaught of this self-aggrandizing, lurid documentary, which leaves the viewer feeling that we've been given a tour of Salinger's septic tank in hip waders without ever getting to knock on his door and say hello." [32] Calling the film "the ultimate invasion of the author's privacy," Odie Henderson from RogerEbert.com found it "stalkerish," featuring "a creepy parade of people who were willing to hunt Salinger down in the hopes of getting answers to their psychological issues." Henderson wrote it was "a relentless assault" and concluded, "Salinger tells us almost nothing we don't already know." [33] David Denby of The New Yorker found Salinger to be "self-important, redundant, and interminable." He compared the film to "a monstrous balloon that keeps re-inflating. If Salinger were around, he would reach for a pin." [34]

Despite some "fascinating stories" and "undeniably interesting" material, wrote Jocelyn Noveck The Huffington Post , the film is "exhaustive, exhausting and overly hyped," characterized by a "kitchen-sink approach" and "needless dramatizations" that "will make some viewers feel queasy." [35] Also in The Huffington Post, Marshall Fine called the film "an overblown, overlong documentary about a famous writer, with little that is either truly revealatory or earth-shaking, at least if you've been paying attention at all for the past, oh, 50 years." He concluded, "If secrets were dynamite, this movie wouldn't have enough of them to blow its nose." [36] In The Washington Post , Stephanie Merry found that "the film is much longer than it needs to be" and "riddled with overly evocative music, some of which sounds like it belongs in a thriller." [37]

Despite "a few genuine gems" of information, wrote Andrew Barker in Variety , the film is marked by a "restless, ill-fittingly bombastic style," "jumpy cuts" and a "wildly inappropriate score" that is "almost comically out of sync with the subject, full of Zimmerian sub-bass pulses and saccharine string swells." [38]

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References

  1. ↑ "Salinger". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved September 30, 2013.
  2. ↑ Hammond, Pete (September 2, 2013). "Telluride: Weinstein's 'Salinger' World Premieres To Strong Response On Fest's Last Day". Deadline Hollywood .
  3. ↑ Vlessing, Etan (4 September 2013). "Toronto: Festival Books First-Night Screening For J.D. Salinger Documentary". Hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  4. ↑ Knegt, Peter (5 January 2014). "The 15 Highest Grossing Indie Documentaries of 2013". Indiewire.com. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  5. ↑ "'Salinger' strong, 'Winnie Mandela' soft in debuts". Yahoo.com. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  6. ↑ Fleming, Mike Jr. (March 11, 2014). "How Did That 'Salinger' Docu Do On PBS? 2 Million Views". Deadline Hollywood.
  7. ↑ "Filmmaker Shane Salerno describes his fascination with the enigmatic author, J. D. Salinger, and the events that led to his documentary, Salinger, and its companion biography.". Charlie Rose . PBS. September 3, 2013.
  8. ↑ "Shane Salerno's decade-long obsession with J.D. Salinger - latimes". Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on 2017-12-15. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  9. ↑ Fleming, Mike Jr. (January 29, 2010). "Secret J.D. Salinger Documentary & Book, Now Revealed (Mike Has Seen The Film)". Deadline Hollywood.
  10. ↑ Sperling, Nicole (February 4, 2010). "J.D. Salinger documentary: the top-secret film five years in the making". Entertainment Weekly . Archived from the original on February 7, 2010.
  11. ↑ Guthrie, Marisa (9 February 2013). "How PBS Landed the Rights to Sought-After J.D. Salinger Documentary". Hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  12. ↑ Fleming, Mike Jr. (January 30, 2013). "Next Up For J.D. Salinger Docu: Film Distribution Deal To Follow S&S Book Pact". Deadline Hollywood.
  13. ↑ Fleming, Mike, Jr. (March 21, 2013). "TOLDJA! Weinstein Company Confirms Worldwide Rights Deal For Shane Salerno Docu Salinger; Sets September 6 Release". Deadline Hollywood.
  14. ↑ Fleming, Mike, Jr. (February 27, 2013). "J.D. Salinger Documentary Acquired By Harvey Weinstein". Deadline Hollywood.
  15. ↑ "Universal Music Classics - A Universal Music Company". Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2015-10-07.
  16. ↑ Labrecque, Jeff (September 18, 2013). "'J.D. Salinger biopic on the way, based on 'Salinger' documentary". Entertainment Weekly.
  17. ↑ "Salinger (2013)". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  18. ↑ "Salinger". Metacritic .
  19. ↑ Rainer, Peter (September 6, 2013). "'Salinger' chases a recluse out of the shadows". The Christian Science Monitor.
  20. ↑ Hammond, Pete (September 2, 2013). "Telluride: Weinstein's 'Salinger' World Premieres To Strong Response On Fest's Last Day". Deadline Hollywood.
  21. ↑ Kohn, Eric (September 2, 2013). "Telluride Film Festival Review: 'Salinger' Provides An Enthralling Account of J.D. Salinger's Reclusive Life and Teases the Posthumous Publication of New Work". Indiewire.
  22. ↑ Willman, Chris (September 2, 2013). "Telluride Review: Shane Salerno's 'Salinger' Documentary Makes For A Compelling Mystery Yarn". The Playlist.
  23. ↑ Stern, Marlow (September 2, 2013). "'Salinger,' the Documentary on Reclusive Author J.D. Salinger, Premieres at Telluride". The Daily Beast.
  24. ↑ Puig, Claudia (September 8, 2013). "'Salinger' documentary is far from phony". USA Today .
  25. ↑ Ordona, Michael (September 19, 2013). "'Salinger' review: A portrait of a conflicted". San Francisco Chronicle.
  26. ↑ "American Masters (2014 Season) - Salinger | Press Release | Pressroom". Thirteen.org. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  27. ↑ Turan, Kenneth (September 5, 2013). "Movie review: 'Salinger' is a treasure-trove of details about writer". The Los Angeles Times.
  28. ↑ Scott, Mike (September 19, 2013). "'Salinger' review: Doc peels back veil of mystery from reclusive 'Catcher in the Rye' author". The Times-Picayune.
  29. ↑ Andersen, Soren (September 20, 2013). "'Salinger': Piercing the world of devoted, reclusive author". The Seattle Times.
  30. ↑ Scott, A. O. (September 5, 2013). "'Salinger,' a Documentary by Shane Salerno". The New York Times.
  31. ↑ "Movie Review: Salinger Will Make You Want to Burn The Catcher in the Rye—in Frustration". Vanity Fair. 6 September 2013. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  32. ↑ Stevens, Dana (5 September 2013). "Salinger: A Vulgar Documentary That Fails to Capture the Man or His Writing". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  33. ↑ Henderson, Odie. "Salinger movie review & film summary (2013) | Roger Ebert". Rogerebert.com/. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  34. ↑ "Search Missions". The New Yorker . 16 September 2013. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  35. ↑ "'Salinger' Doc Takes Kitchen-Sink Approach". Huffington Post. September 5, 2013.
  36. ↑ "Movie Review: Salinger". Huffington Post. September 4, 2013.
  37. ↑ Merry, Stephanie (September 19, 2013). "â??Salingerâ?? attempts to decode the enigmatic author, but mostly leaves viewers puzzled and wanting". The Washington Post.
  38. ↑ Barker, Andrew (September 4, 2013). "Film Review: 'Salinger'". Variety.
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