Michael Eisner was Disney’s CEO throughout the late Eighties. Eisner was a giant fan of J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher within the Rye, a lot in order that he needed Disney to adapt the novel right into a film. Nevertheless, movie producer Don Hahn advised Eisner the chilly laborious reality that Salinger was by no means going to promote the rights of his e-book to anyone. However Eisner was persistent, proposing to do an animated movie that handled related themes from Catcher within the Rye however change the unique e-book characters with German Shepherds as a substitute. It was to be an animated film titled Dufus, however evidently, the movie by no means made it out of the manufacturing studio.

Curiously, Eisner will not be the primary particular person to examine a movie adaptation of Catcher within the Rye, contemplating the e-book possesses ready-made settings, identifiable characters, and resonating themes that enchantment strongly to filmmakers. However Salinger’s adamant refusal to promote the rights to any filmmaker stored his fabled novel fully untouched. Catcher within the Rye is a coming-of-age basic a couple of peculiar sixteen-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield, who’s poised on the precipice between childhood and maturity. However that simply feels like your common coming-of-age story… So what’s so particular about Catcher within the Rye? And why do movie administrators – together with Steven Spielberg – need to adapt this e-book into a movie?

What’s Particular About ‘Catcher within the Rye’?

Firstly, the overwhelming majority of Catcher within the Rye is set in Manhattan, which is already a inexperienced flag for a filmmaker because the story is heavy on element and visuals. Holden Caulfield wanders by the town, battling his loneliness by putting up conversations with strangers however then hating them upon realizing that they’re all (as he would describe) phonies. By way of Caulfield’s eyes, every part is a contradiction, together with Manhattan. The town is each glamorous and seedy, rich and poverty-stricken, full of individuals and but equally isolating, and that is proven by the varied locations that Caulfield visits: bars, motels, a theater, Central Park, and the Pure Historical past Museum, all of that are ready-made movie units that may be rendered by the digital camera to painting any temper from melancholy to pleasure. The lengthy historical past of movies set in Manhattan reveals that the town may be each alluring and scary relying on the tone that the director goes for. For Caulfield, he needs the attract of the town, however he largely finally ends up frightened upon ceaselessly battling his nervousness on numerous sidewalks.

Dropped amongst these ready-made units is Catcher within the Rye’s huge array of characters which are numerous, eccentric, and flawed. It might be fascinating to fan-cast this motley assortment of characters, however probably the most fascinating of all could be to see Caulfield tailored to the display. In all his cynicism, immaturity, sensibility, and hypocrisy, Caulfield is just an archetype of human nature that has resonated with readers for seven a long time. As a result of inevitably, everybody grows up, and the complexities of progress are fleshed out in Catcher within the Rye, it’s kind of comforting to see Caulfield grapple along with his insecurities like several common sixteen-year-old would.

Like many coming-of-age tales, the underlying theme of Catcher within the Rye offers with Caulfield’s concern of rising up. How Caulfield pinballs round Manhattan is a illustration of the limbo state that he’s caught in, going forwards and backwards between a want for maturity and a eager for his childhood innocence. He struggles to navigate the chasm between adolescence and maturity and this causes him to insurgent. In Caulfield’s eyes, maturity means being outlined by your profession accomplishments, so he’s reckless along with his intelligence as a result of he’d fairly outline himself by actual connections with others versus his tutorial skills. The story is simply as a lot of an examination of humanity as it’s an perception into Caulfield’s thoughts as a result of, regardless of Caulfield’s cynical irritation with the phoniness of others, he additionally involves admit that he’s simply as phony and superficial because the individuals he despises. However in truth, Caulfield simply needs individuals to confess to their weaknesses as he admits to his personal as a result of his worldly sensitivity begs for connection and understanding, which might be achieved if solely individuals have been prepared to open up.

J.D Salinger Believed That Holden Caulfield Can Solely Exist on the Web page

Up to now, Caulfield stays solely a e-book character, however there’s no denying that he could be a tremendous character to see on display. His inside monologs create an intimate relationship between him and the reader/listener. It’s laborious to not empathize with him particularly when he’s stricken by intrusive ideas, or else distracted by one thing as meaningless as gasoline rainbows – however it’s his peculiarity and sensitivity to the world round him that makes him endearing and relatable. Nevertheless, the ingredient of the narrative voice in Catcher within the Rye is the central purpose why Salinger refused to promote the rights of his e-book to any filmmaker.

In a letter J.D. Salinger wrote in 1957, he explains: “For me, the load of the e-book is within the narrator’s voice, the continuous peculiarities of it, his private, extraordinarily discriminating angle to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in road puddles, his philosophy or manner of taking a look at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons – in a phrase, his ideas. He can’t legitimately be separated from his first-person approach. True, if the separation is forcibly made, there may be sufficient materials left over for one thing known as an Thrilling (or perhaps simply Attention-grabbing) Night within the Theater. However I discover that concept if not odious, not less than odious sufficient to maintain me from promoting the rights.”

‘Catcher In The Rye’ Is Darker Than Your Common Coming-of-Age Story

Michael Eisner’s Dufus adaptation of Catcher within the Rye in all probability wouldn’t have completed the novel justice. Animated German Shepards might not have hit the mark by way of portraying Caulfield’s troubling nervousness dysfunction and his crude and controversial humorousness. As Salinger argues, it’s Caulfield’s idiosyncrasies, his intrusive ideas which are spilled nearly incoherently onto the web page, and his contradicting actions which are induced by a competing want to be younger and previous – that make him extraordinarily human. And although Catcher within the Rye is a coming-of-age novel, the ending doesn’t observe conventional coming-of-age tropes the place the protagonist experiences enlightenment and is about on the appropriate path. Caulfield is maybe much less high-strung by the tip of the e-book, however his life doesn’t take a dramatic flip, he merely accepts that he has no thought what he will do along with his life. It isn’t a typical Disney fairytale ending.