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"Basically, my career has lived in those two worlds," he said. By high school, he was serious enough about movies to make one himself, an anti-drug documentary, "Sundown," that attracted national attention after Larry King aired it on CNN and interviewed the baby-faced filmmaker. Salerno was in such a hurry to get to Hollywood that he didn't bother with college or even attend his high school graduation. Instead, he found work as an apprentice on the crew for "NYPD Blue" and by age 30 had worked on projects with Winslow, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg. The idea for the Salinger project came about a decade ago. Salerno was in a Burbank bookstore and picked up a copy of Paul Alexander's 1999 biography, "Salinger." Anxious to be his own boss, fascinated both by what he knew and didn't know about Salinger, Salerno acquired film rights to Alexander's book. His original plan: Make a narrative feature and get Daniel Day-Lewis to star. "I thought Daniel Day-Lewis not only perfectly encapsulated Salinger, but when Daniel Day-Lewis is made up for events he can look strikingly like Salinger at certain angles," Salerno said. "But I knew that ... he would want to know so much, there was so much research and diligence. So I really began preparing the research in order to prepare for a meeting that I hoped would happen with Daniel Day-Lewis. Then I did a couple of interviews (about Salinger) over the phone and interviews in person and it became clear to me that this was a documentary." The "Salinger" movie and book have a diverse, unpredictable cast. There are authors (Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe), biographers (Paul Alexander, A. Scott Berg), friends and former lovers, an unnamed man that former Salinger lover Joyce Maynard once dated and such film stars as John Cusack, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Edward Norton. Salerno says he wasn't trading in on Hollywood connections or simply trying to add brand names for box office appeal. The actors he chose were dedicated fans. "My belief is that there are people that have pieces of this story, or perspectives on this story, that are valid without them being Harvard or Princeton professors of literature," Salerno said. "Ed Norton's point of view on certain things can be looked at one or two ways. You can look at it as,
'Ugh, some actor's talking about J.D. Salinger.' Or you can say, 'You ever listen to that guy? He really has an extraordinary perspective on Salinger.'"
Salerno, like any top Hollywood writer, is an old hand at never asking for something just once. He was willing to work for years to get contributors. He remembers calling Berg so many times that the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, whose subjects have ranged from Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn to President Woodrow Wilson, lectured him on protocol: Be persistent, but don't nag. Call every few weeks, not a few times a week. "In my memory, I told him the story of a cat that once went under my house and how at first I kept trying to shout at it to get out," said Berg, whose comments are used in both the film and the book. "And then I realized that I should just pour a dish of milk and place that a few feet from the house and leave the cat alone. I recall telling him to
'Let the cats come to the dish, even if it takes days, months, or years.'" Salerno didn't get everyone he wanted. He wrote to director John Hughes, a Salinger obsessive whose "The Breakfast Club" was influenced by the author. But Hughes, a Salinger-like figure within Hollywood who left town in the 1990s, declined. John Updike also turned him down. The book and film feature the famous and the infamous, like old TV footage of John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, who has often cited "Catcher" and its condemning of "phonies" as a reason he shot the ex-Beatle. Salerno even considered speaking with Chapman, currently an inmate at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, N.Y. "We started to go down that road, and felt it was such a slippery slope," he said. Salerno doubts that the film and book will stand as final statements; the recent publicity has brought in a wave of new materials. Sorting through his papers, Salerno shows a Salinger letter from 1967 he just received in which the author disputes his image of being a man who dislikes movies. A tip Salerno learned of the other day could lead to "global news," he says with characteristic enthusiasm. "There are some surprises ahead," he adds. "This is not over."
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