Recently, I was at Skybar doing shots of Patrón with J.D. Salinger when bulletproof vest enthusiast 50 Cent approached our table and tried to strike up a conversation with the 88- year-old author. After stammering through an introduction, 50 brings up the possibility of remixing "Candy Shop" over a spoken-word performance of "The Laughing Man." Salinger is noncommittal but expresses interest, and 50 proceeds to ask if he'd like to meet up at Hyde later in the evening and hammer out the details. Salinger smiles, says he'd love to, but unfortunately, he's going to be leaving on his private jet for Australia within the hour to see Damien Rice and Rhymefest cover Johnny Cash songs on a beach in Perth. The wizened author smiles, apologizes, flawlessly executes a three-step handshake, and waves 50 away from our table.
Salinger was lying, of course. Not 15 minutes after our encounter with America's favorite survivor of novtuple gunshot wounds, the author had made plans to go to Element with Bijou Phillips. While Salinger's preference for West Coast rap has been well-documented by literary scholars, people in the entertainment industry claim Salinger's relationship with 50 Cent is a good one. 50 is said to be a fan of Salinger's as-yet-unpublished 1999 hip-hop novella "The Ramparts' Rebellion and the Citrus Kiss Goodnight."
Impressed by Salinger's story about a member of the Glass Family being called in to investigate Biggie's murder, 50 hired the reclusive author to work as a script-doctor on "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" — an endeavor that ended up netting the author $2 million and an executive producer's credit. As we stood in the parking lot, waiting for the valet to bring around Salinger's gold-plated Maybach '57, I asked him why he felt the need to lie to his former colleague. Salinger looked at me, smirked and said, "Everybody knows J.D. rolls with The Game."
As the entertainment media focus their collective attention on Britney's trip to rehab, Lindsay's lack of professionalism, and Brangelina's attempts to put together a barn-storming 12-and-under basketball team made up entirely of third-world orphans, the most overlooked story of recent years has, without a doubt, been J.D. Salinger embracing Hollywood, the town he once hated with such a passion, after a 50-year exile in New Hampshire. After years of hiding from photographers, refusing to allow his stories to be adapted for the screen and storing his new novels in a safe deposit box, it seems like the man who created Holden Caulfield has returned with a bang. The only question, it seems, is why.
"I understand the concerns," he says as we speed along Wilshire Boulevard listening to the new Bloc Party CD on $38,000 speakers — a gift received at last month's NBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas from Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas, who recently confirmed his friendship with Salinger is the reason he now screams "Phony!" after every jump shot — "but I'm having the time of my life out here. Finally, I'm getting the opportunity to do what I want. Nobody ever gave me that opportunity before."
What Salinger wants to do, it seems, is everything. Along with adapting all of his stories for the movies (Clint Eastwood's Japanese-language version of "Just Before the War With the Eskimos" is due out in June, and Michael Mann's adaptation of "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" is currently filming in the slums of Santo Domingo), Salinger has also jump-started his own career as a character-actor. He has a three-episode arc on the upcoming season of "Entourage" ("I play myself, and I end up having an affair with Mrs. Ari") and recently wrapped a supporting turn in "Ocean's Thirteen" as wise-cracking mob boss Jimmy Nails, a performance that is already attracting Oscar buzz for 2007. He's also been called in to work as a script doctor on various films, and has developed a reputation as a go-to guy for action sequences, reportedly rewriting much of Tony Scott's 2006 thriller "Déjà Vu."
Still, the question remains: Why?
Salinger won't consider this question until we are back in the comfort of his suite at Chateau Marmot, the place he has called home for the last 18 months. For a writer, the room is uncharacteristically bare. Indeed, the only sign that somebody famous lives in this room are the empty Grey Goose bottles in the corner and the presence of a woman who may or may not be Chloe Sevigny asleep on the couch. He explains that all of his belongings are packed and that he will be moving into David Spade's old house in Pacific Palisades early next month. "I've been so busy over the last three years, I'm just now getting a place."
Indeed, along with his acting jobs and overseeing his adaptations (he recently formed a production company called "Bananafish Pictures" with Jennifer Todd), Salinger has been hard at work on new novels and stories. He recently signed a three-book deal at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the first of which is rumored to be a sequel to "The Catcher in the Rye," tentatively titled "Phoebe's Revenge."
Perhaps Salinger's most important project is the adaptation of "The Catcher in the Rye," scheduled for release Christmas Day. He personally signed off on Brett Ratner to helm the project, much to the objection of literary and cinematic scholars, many of whom are of the opinion that, as a director, Ratner sucks.
For almost five decades, various Hollywood power brokers — including Billy Wilder, Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein — tried to acquire the rights to "The Catcher in the Rye." Salinger wasn't biting. "I just didn't feel like they had the sensibilities to do my material justice," he says.
If the popular wisdom is to be believed, all of this changed one day in early 2002, when producer Robert Evans arrived at Salinger's New Hampshire compound leading what L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke described as "a fleet of ten U-Hauls filled with $100 bills," in order to entice Salinger to sell his most treasured literary property. It worked.
Evans vehemently denies the claim made by Finke and others that the only reason Salinger sold him the rights to "Catcher" was because of the reported $17 million payout, "Spielberg, Wilder, Weinstein — those guys are great. There's some solid work there. 'Amistad' — great picture. So is 'Avanti!' for that matter. I'm telling you that little German could make movies, … but I gave Salinger two things those guys couldn't, namely Brett Ratner behind the camera and a knockout script by Bobby Towne."
Along with his controversial new projects, Salinger's personal life during his Hollywood renaissance has raised more than a few eyebrows. He categorically denies Roger Friedman's report that he lost more than $721,000 playing craps at the Hard Rock Casino while filming "Ocean's Thirteen" in Vegas last summer.
He does not, however, dispute a particularly ugly incident involving alt-country pugilist Ryan Adams that allegedly took place at Black Cat in Washington, D.C., last summer. Adams was halfway through his set when Salinger and his entourage rolled in, allegedly prompting Adams to leap from the stage and try and start a fight with the 88-year-old Salinger. According to former Washington Post gossip columnist Lloyd Grove, "[Salinger] decked Adams" with a single punch and left the club, forcing the Cardinals to finish the set without a vocalist.
While Salinger concedes the incident took place ("It was a stupid, stupid mistake") he refuses to acknowledge the rumor that the fight took place because of Adams' displeasure over a rumored liaison between the author and Winona Ryder after the 2005 Academy Awards. "I'm not telling you anything [about the rumored relationship]," Salinger says, "Because whenever you tell anybody anything, you just end up missing everybody." He takes a drink of his bottled water, and then quietly asks, "Who said that?"
Ray Gustini is a sophomore majoring in English and journalism. Email any questions, comments or literary musings to [email protected].
