Knowing J.D. Salinger: Shane Salerno talks about Salinger

Along with being a veteran Hollywood screenwriter who is currently working on an Avatar (2009) sequel for James Cameron, Shane Salerno is also an avid book collector.  “I have a 15,000 book library.  I was in a book store and saw this book on J.D. Salinger which was 10 years ago.  I picked it up thinking it would be about his work but it turned out to be about his life.  Like most people I loved Salinger’s work but I didn’t know virtually anything about his life.  I had bought the conventional story that he writes the book, gets overwhelming fame, doesn’t like it, and disappears.  I had no idea that J.D. Salinger had been in World War II and that his first day of combat was D-Day.  When I learned that he lost the love of his life to Charlie Chaplin [The Great Dictator] I was stunned.  You just don’t think about that.  The woman who came between Chaplin and Salinger in this love triangle also happens to be beautiful and the daughter of Eugene O’Neill [Long Day’s Journey Into Night].  I didn’t know that J.D. Salinger checked himself into a mental institution after the war or that he entered a concentration camp just prior to that or that he married a woman who was a German spy.   All of these things were so fascinating that I was completely hooked.  I read the book in one sitting overnight and closed it saying, ‘I’m going to making this movie.’  I had no idea it would take 10 years of my life.  I was 30 when I started and 40 when I finished it.”

“The Salingerbiography by Paul Alexander had been published in 1999 so it had certain limitations because a lot of the story wasn’t there,” explains Shane Salerno who was able to discover photographs and speak with associates of the famous American author who had never before been interviewed for his documentary titled Salinger (2013).  “The core elements were in Paul’s book.  The journey of a kid who grew up on Park Avenue who had never suffered so when he entered World War II he was serviceable short story writer and when he came out of that war became the J.D.Salinger we know.  If it hadn’t been for World War II we never have had heard the name J.D. Salinger and he believe that.  It’s why Salinger has never allowed those pre-war stories to be published.  It’s also why none of the stories for which we know Salinger most fondly Bananafish [1948], Zooey [1957], Franny [1955] and even Catcherwere all written after the war. There were small elements of Catcher which were written before but they bare little resemble to the voice of the character in the book which was published in July of 1951.”  Salerno believes, “World War II is the ghost in the machine of all of Salinger’s stories.  One of the things we found sitting with audiences all over the country and all over the world because of Netflix is that they now understand how that war forever changed him.  When you see the film and go back to read the stories you have a different reading experience.”  There has been a growing sense of public awareness.  “When the film came out there was all of this publicity and Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye jumped to number seven on Amazon for the first time in many years; he didn’t need our help with sales but it was cool to be part of people rediscovering him and discovering him for the first time.”

The experiences of the young American counterintelligence officer during D-Day, being artillery shelled by the Germans in a wintry forest and in discovering a concentration camp, eerily mirrors the tale told in an acclaimed HBO series.   “I don’t think it has been reported but the camp they go into at the end of Band of Brothers [2001] is specifically modelled on the one at Dachau which Salinger entered.”  The director’s cut adds an additional 15 minutes of footage allowing the World War II story to be explored more fully.  “We extended the Hürtgen Forest Battle.  “I wanted to spend seven to nine minutes there because it was such a formative experience but we weren’t able to do that.  People will casually say, ‘It was horrible.’  But you almost want to say, ‘Let me walk you through how horrible it was.’  One of the veterans who talked about the Hürtgen Forest said, ‘They wanted to crawl inside their helmet.’  People were having their arms and legs blown off, and were laughing because it meant they would be going home.   There’s a great insight into Salinger’s psyche in his daughter’s book where he has some 18 to 20 year old guys working on his house who are in the prime of their life and in great shape.  He zoned out for a second looking at them and she asked, ‘Are you okay?’  I’m quoting loosely but he starts talking about all of those young boys in the prime of their life.  J.D. Salinger walked out of World War II with P.T.S.S. [Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome].  They didn’t call it that at the time. They had the wonderful name of battle fatigue.”

“For me the answer to truly understanding Salinger lies in his contradictions,” notes Shane Salerno.  “He had so many contradictions.  So many things where you would think he would do this and ends up doing the complete opposite.  He hated private prep schools and sent both his kids to one.  There were two types of critics for the film.  There were critics who loved the film and there were critics who criticized the film.  We had major critics on both sides.  I found that the people who criticized the film sometimes didn’t want to hear those contradictions. They didn’t want to hear those flaws and imperfections. They were so attached to this idea of an artist living in a house in the woods and being this recluse. But what you find out when digging is that he wasn’t a recluse at all.  There was a good reason for why he was private.  Salinger was courting 15 to 18 year old girls as a 30 to 50 year old man.  There are interesting parallels.  When he lost Oona O’Neill she was 18 and Charlie Chaplin was 54.  When Salinger met Joyce Maynard he was 54 and she was 18.  His life had come full circle.”  Losing the love his life while he was off to war was a formative and traumatic experience for the author.   “The way and age Salinger lost Oona resulted in all of the women who followed being imprinted by her; he was obsessed with this period of time where a girl, I use this word intentionally, is on the cusp of womanhood.”  The contradictions also existed within relationship between Salinger and his family.  “The son Matthew talks about his father in the highest terms and with the greatest respect and love.  The daughter Margaret describes the polar opposite and wrote a book about it.”

“When Salinger was rejected for service in World War II he was adamant about serving and fought tooth and nail and wrote and campaigned and pushed and did everything possible to get accepted,” states Shane Salerno.  “When Salinger went after Joyce Maynard he went after her in a serious way.   When Salinger went after publication in The New Yorker he was relentless in making sure that he was accepted.  When Salinger set his mind to something be it a young woman or publication he succeeded.  It wasn’t always true. Salinger pursued a woman who was an actress on Dynasty who did not accept his pursuit.  When you read the letters from The New Yorkerparticularly the ones we published in our book they’re extraordinary because not only do they reject his early work but there is a famous letter now because we published it which states, ‘J.D. Salinger just doesn’t seem right for us.’  They also passed on A Perfect Day for Bananafish originally and quite famously The Catcher in the Ryewhich they were offered to publish excerpts from it.  Not only did they pass on it but said they didn’t believe it.  Then a year later wrote a great review and it was a successful book.”

“There is no book in history that has been associated to the degree that Salinger’s has with some horrible crimes,” states Shane Salerno when discussing the notorious publicity associated with The Catcher in the Rye.  “What’s unique about it is that the killers brought the book with them when they did the crime like some sort of evil talisman.  In the case of Mark David Chapman he brought the book to court, read it and said, ‘This is my statement.’  When he shot John Lennon he sat down the curb and started reading The Catcher in the Rye.  He had gotten, as it is said in the film, totally immersed in the character.  Obviously, Salinger has no responsibility whatsoever in these horrible crimes which the film makes clear.  You couldn’t make a film about J.D. Salinger and ignore that his most famous book was involved in the shooting of the President of the United States and John Lennon.”  Salerno adds, “It was something he never spoke about publicly.  We did talk to people both on and off the record who told us that he was deeply traumatized but it.” 

“Salinger was aware of this legend which was around him,” remarks Shane Salerno.  “There were a number of situations when he fanned that mystique. We show that throughout the film where he specifically did things.  For instance, if you’re a recluse you do not pursue an 18 year old girl who is on the cover of The New York Times Magazine.  If you’re a recluse you do not pursue Hollywood actresses.  If you’re recluse you do not call The New York Times in November of 1974 and conduct a 30 minute interview.  Howard Hughes was a recluse.  There was nothing reclusive about J.D. Salinger.”  A trust fund was established in 2008 to ensure that all of works of the author would remain under his control even after his death which occurred in 2010.  “Salinger knew that he was in failing health.  Salinger wanted to preserve his legacy.  He was aware of his position in the literary world and it’s a position he wanted to maintain.  Salinger did not work for 45 years to not have anyone see that work.  There are numerous people who saw it and were specifically told by him that the work would see publication, including his daughter.  We released an audio clip and it’s on YouTube but it is also on at the end of the film where she says he showed her work which was marked for publication after his death.”  Unfortunately none of the stories by J.D. Salinger were allowed to be quoted in the documentary.  “There is a wonderful PBS documentary that Ric Burns did on Eugene O’Neill where they had Al Pacino [Dog Day Afternoon] and Christopher Plummer [The Insider] and others reading O’Neill’s work.  We weren’t allowed to do that.  People don’t understand how that copyright law work and so the frustrating part for us was that they imagined a movie in their head that was not legally producible.”

“We wanted to make a film which was a record of his extraordinary life,” states Shane Salerno.  “Many of the people who I interviewed are no longer alive.  If I had not interviewed them when I did those stories would have been lost forever.  Because we made this film we have photos of J.D. Salinger at war.  There was a never a photo of him writing The Catcher in the Rye which I found.  There were never any photos in 50 years of his first wife and the full story of that first marriage.  There were all of these things that we uncovered that are now apart of understanding him.”  Salerno reveals, “Convincing Jean Miller to share her story for the first time was a big deal; her name is not in a single book or magazine article or newspaper article.  All we had to go on was there was this girl who was 16 or 17 who had a relationship with Salinger in the 1940s and her first initial is J.  Finding Jean Miller was incredibly difficult and convincing her to speak was more difficult.  This was a young girl who was 14 years old when she met Salinger, had a five year relationship with him and over a hundred letters from him.  It was a completely documented story and Jean Miller had a privilege view point because she knew him before the fame of The Catcher in the Rye and after it.  The World War II photographs from the Fitzgerald family which they had never shared before were another critical turning point.  Those photos help you to understand the brotherhood that existed between those men.  Salinger maintained a relationship with each of those men until theirs and his death. Those were the most important friendships of his life.”

Accompanying the documentary Salinger is a companion book sharing the same title which Shane Salerno co-wrote with David Shields; the publication was No. 1 on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list and debuted at No. 6 on The New York Times bestseller list.  “The film is two hours long, the director’s cut is slightly longer but in no way can it compare with a 700 page book.  There are certain things that are friendlier to a book than a film like documents and letters.  If you sat on a letter in a film you would be bored.  If you have the pleasure of sitting and reading the letter in a book it’s a different experience.  The book is a more in-depth story of everything that is in the film. It also contains a wealth of information that we couldn’t fit into the film including some incredible exclusives, for example, Salinger’s first Hollywood experience with Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut [1948] caused him to swear that none of his works would be adapted again.  In reality he did collaboration with someone on an adaptation of For Esmé [1950] so that story is in the book but not in the film.  There are many letters, documents, and military records which are in the book but not in the film.  There are longer stories and in the book we are allowed to quote from the work in a limited way.”  Salerno concludes, “I know it’s not a big movie but it’s a big deal for us and everyone who worked on the movie for a decade.  It was a truly incredible experience, and has been wonderful to get letters and notes from people all over the world who loved the film; that’s been very rewarding.”