Thank God Disney Never Made Their ‘Catcher in the Rye’ Movie

Michael Eisner was Disney’s CEO during the late 1980s. Eisner was a big fan of J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, so much so that he wanted Disney to adapt the novel into a movie. However, film producer Don Hahn told Eisner the cold hard truth that Salinger was never going to sell the rights of his book to anybody. But Eisner was persistent, proposing to do an animated film that dealt with similar themes from Catcher in the Rye but replace the original book characters with German Shepherds instead. It was to be an animated movie titled Dufus, but evidently, the film never made it out of the production studio.

Curiously, Eisner is not the first person to envision a film adaptation of Catcher in the Rye, considering the book possesses ready-made settings, identifiable characters, and resonating themes that appeal strongly to filmmakers. But Salinger’s adamant refusal to sell the rights to any filmmaker kept his fabled novel completely untouched. Catcher in the Rye is a coming-of-age classic about a peculiar sixteen-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield, who is poised on the precipice between childhood and adulthood. But that just sounds like your average coming-of-age story… So what’s so special about Catcher in the Rye? And why do film directors – including Steven Spielberg – want to adapt this book into a film?

What’s Special About ‘Catcher in the Rye’?

Firstly, the vast majority of Catcher in the Rye is set in Manhattan, which is already a green flag for a filmmaker as the story is heavy on detail and visuals. Holden Caulfield wanders through the city, battling his loneliness by striking up conversations with strangers but then hating them upon realizing that they’re all (as he would describe) phonies. Through Caulfield’s eyes, everything is a contradiction, including Manhattan. The city is both glamorous and seedy, wealthy and poverty-stricken, full of people and yet equally isolating, and this is shown through the various destinations that Caulfield visits: bars, hotels, a theater, Central Park, and the Natural History Museum, all of which are ready-made film sets that can be rendered through the camera to portray any mood from melancholy to excitement. The long history of films set in Manhattan reveals that the city can be both alluring and frightening depending on the tone that the director is going for. For Caulfield, he desires the allure of the city, but he mostly ends up frightened upon frequently battling his anxiety on various sidewalks.

Dropped among these ready-made sets is Catcher in the Rye’s vast array of characters that are diverse, eccentric, and flawed. It would be interesting to fan-cast this motley collection of characters, but the most fascinating of all would be to see Caulfield adapted to the screen. In all his cynicism, immaturity, sensibility, and hypocrisy, Caulfield is simply an archetype of human nature that has resonated with readers for seven decades. Because inevitably, everyone grows up, and the complexities of growth are fleshed out in Catcher in the Rye, it is sort of comforting to see Caulfield grapple with his insecurities like any average sixteen-year-old would.

Like many coming-of-age stories, the underlying theme of Catcher in the Rye deals with Caulfield’s fear of growing up. How Caulfield pinballs around Manhattan is a representation of the limbo state that he is stuck in, going back and forth between a desire for maturity and a longing for his childhood innocence. He struggles to navigate the chasm between adolescence and adulthood and this causes him to rebel. In Caulfield’s eyes, adulthood means being defined by your career accomplishments, so he is reckless with his intelligence because he’d rather define himself through real connections with others as opposed to his academic abilities. The story is just as much of an examination of humanity as it is an insight into Caulfield’s mind because, despite Caulfield’s cynical irritation with the phoniness of others, he also comes to admit that he is just as phony and superficial as the people he despises. But truthfully, Caulfield just wants people to admit to their weaknesses as he admits to his own because his worldly sensitivity begs for connection and understanding, which could be achieved if only people were willing to open up.

J.D Salinger Believed That Holden Caulfield Can Only Exist on the Page

Thus far, Caulfield remains solely a book character, but there’s no denying that he would be an amazing character to see on screen. His internal monologs create an intimate relationship between him and the reader/listener. It is hard not to empathize with him especially when he is plagued by intrusive thoughts, or else distracted by something as meaningless as gasoline rainbows – but it is his peculiarity and sensitivity to the world around him that makes him endearing and relatable. However, the element of the narrative voice in Catcher in the Rye is the central reason why Salinger refused to sell the rights of his book to any filmmaker.

In a letter J.D. Salinger wrote in 1957, he explains: “For me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons – in a word, his thoughts. He can’t legitimately be separated from his first-person technique. True, if the separation is forcibly made, there is enough material left over for something called an Exciting (or maybe just Interesting) Evening in the Theater. But I find that idea if not odious, at least odious enough to keep me from selling the rights.”

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

Michael Eisner’s Dufus adaptation of Catcher in the Rye probably would not have done the novel justice. Animated German Shepards may not have hit the mark in terms of portraying Caulfield’s troubling anxiety disorder and his crude and controversial sense of humor. As Salinger argues, it is Caulfield’s idiosyncrasies, his intrusive thoughts that are spilled almost incoherently onto the page, and his contradicting actions that are induced by a competing desire to be young and old – that make him extremely human. And even though Catcher in the Rye is a coming-of-age novel, the ending does not follow traditional coming-of-age tropes where the protagonist experiences enlightenment and is set on the right path. Caulfield is perhaps less high-strung by the end of the book, but his life does not take a dramatic turn, he merely accepts that he has no idea what he’s going to do with his life. It’s not a typical Disney fairytale ending.