While Salinger refused to sell the movie rights to his work, his stories and characters have inspired generations of filmmakers
The Graduate, 1967
In this dramedy directed by Mike Nichols, Dustin Hoffman plays Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate disillusioned by the people around him and seeking a world different from that of his materialistic family. Like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, Benjamin's goal is to avoid the phonies he sees all around him. (With an exception, of course, for Anne Bancroft's sultry Mrs. Robinson.)Everett
Igby Goes Down, 2002
Igby Goes Down, starring Kieran Culkin, is a story about a 17-year-old misfit boy who happily flunks out of prep school and military school, rejects his old-money parents, pursues relationships with older women and escapes into the bohemian underworld of Manhattan. Sound familiar? Screenwriter and director Burr Steers maintains Igby is more of an autobiography than a nod to Salinger. "I wasn't consciously influenced by Catcher in the Rye," Steers, who was kicked out of a prep school and a military school, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2002. "I liken it to being a musician and being influenced by the music ingrained in you, like the Beatles."United Artists / Everett
Taxi Driver, 1976
Holden Caulfield and Travis Bickle rank as two of the most memorable antiheroes of 20th century American culture. In Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver, Robert DeNiro played Bickle as an older and more confrontational Caulfield, with a dangerously higher level of adolescent frustration. Both characters mope around and hate New York City, pick up prostitutes without actually having sex with them and obsess over women and protecting the innocence of children.Everett
Less Than Zero, 1987
USA Today called the 1985 Bret Easton Ellis novel upon which this movie was based "the Catcher in the Rye for the MTV generation." MTV generation, don't take that as a compliment. The 1987 film stars Robert Downey Jr. as college freshman Clay, who returns home to reunite with his drug-addicted friend Julian (Andrew McCarthy) and ex-girlfriend Blair (Jami Gertz). Like Holden, Clay mindlessly indulges in the hedonism of the city he occupies (For Clay, it's Los Angeles; Holden, New York) but never seems to find what he's after.20th Century-Fox / Everett
Dead Poets Society, 1989
An homage to Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield, Dead Poets Society explores Salinger's themes of discovering oneself through writing and literature and the challenge of escaping conformism, set at a familiarly snooty 1950s prep school.Everett
Ordinary People, 1980
The film Ordinary People, adapted from a 1976 book of the same name, follows teenager Conrad Jarrett through depression and therapy as he attempts to cope with the death of his older brother. While Ordinary People — Robert Redford's directorial debut — primarily focuses on the dysfunctional Jarretts and how they deal with each other, there are some comparisons to The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield's brother also dies young, and the impetus for his drunken wandering in New York City may lie largely in his inability to deal with death much in the same way as Conrad.Paramount / Everett
Conspiracy Theory, 1997
Mel Gibson's paranoid taxi driver, Jerry Fletcher, sees evil plots all around him — one or two of which might actually be true — and is in love with a government lawyer played by Julia Roberts. Another thing he's obsessed with: Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, a book he feels compelled to buy every time he sees one — but has never read. Catcher is a touchstone of sorts among conspiracy buffs: Mark David Chapman was carrying a copy of the book when he fatally shot John Lennon in 1980.Warner Bros. / Everett
Finding Forrester, 2000
This fish-out-of-water tale of a gifted inner city kid at odds with his posh private school teachers carries schmaltzy, less wrathful overtones of The Catcher in the Rye even without William Forrester — the prickly, reclusive writer who mentors the main character. Sure, there are some differences between Sean Connery's Forrester and Salinger, the most famous hermit in American letters. Forrester lives in a Bronx tenement, while Salinger hid away on a farm in Cornish, N.H. Salinger didn't have a Scottish accent, that we know of. And he definitely never said, "You're the man now, dog."Columbia / Everett
The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001
Anderson's tale of a trio of former child prodigies andtheir disappointing adult lives borrows pretty blatantly from Salinger'stales of the Glass family, a septet of former child radio-quiz-show starswho unsuccessfully transition into ... disappointing adult lives. While HoldenCaulfield is rightfully Salinger's most memorable creation, the author spentmuch of his productive years writing about the Glasses in books such asNine Stories, Franny and Zooey and Seymour: An Introduction.Buena Vista / Everett
Tadpole, 2002
One gets the sense that director Gary Winick would love to have helmed the movie version of The Catcher in the Rye if J.D. Salinger hadn’t banned it from ever reaching theaters. But where Salinger casts a skeptical eye on the lives of preppy, upper-class Manhattanites, Winick’s film about a 15-year-old student on break from his fancy boarding school looks at the same milieu through an adoring lens (helped in part by the use of early digital cameras, which make every shot seem like looking through soft gauze). Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) is basically a more affected Holden Caulfied — he quotes Voltaire constantly, and in French, no less. Like Holden, he roams New York City, entering bars and falling in love with sophisticated older women like the privileged child he is. All shades of Catcher, except for the not-going-crazy-at-the-end thing.J.D. Salinger ObitThe Movies' Most Evil Computer VillainsMiramax / Everett
