Poets & Writers Theater

Danny Strong’s directorial debut, Rebel in the Rye, is a biopic portraying J. D. Salinger’s earlier years, focusing on his service during World War II and the 1951 publication of The Catcher in the Rye. The film is adapted from Kenneth Slawenski’s biography J. D. Salinger: A Life (Random House, 2011), and stars Zoey Deutch, Nicholas Hoult, and Kevin Spacey.

Written and directed by James Sadwith, and based on his own quest to find J. D. Salinger in his youth, Coming Through the Rye is a film about a teenager who writes a play adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye. Before staging the play, he seeks the approval of the reclusive author, played by Chris Cooper.

"Broadway was mobbed and messy. It was Sunday and only twelve o'clock, but it was mobbed anyway." In this short film from the Strand Book Store, directed by Rob Sichler, Gizmo the dog plays Holden Caulfield from the novel by J. D. Salinger.

"Having been much criticized for lots of things I've talked about actually is a very liberating thing," says Joyce Maynard in this clip from Open Road Media. Maynard is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including her bestselling memoir, At Home in the World, in which she revealed her relationship with J. D. Salinger when he was fifty-three and she was eighteen.