invisible as the tooth fairy until his death in 2010. but a new book and film are putting the author back where he loathed to be, in the public eye. the landscape is littered with those famous for being famous. photographed almost out of habit. so it s easy to forget about the era when well-known names could be legendarily private. he turned his back on celebrity before celebrity was celebrity. now even the secrets of j.d. salinger, one of the most solitary figures in recent history have oddly enough been made into a feature film. salinger was a national story, a shooting star. at the height of that success, he disappears. the documentary salinger was written, directed and produced by shane solerno, who dedicated a decade to the project. i conducted over 200 interviews personally. we were on five continents. we went through diaries, journals, government records, so this was an archeological dig. this was a detective story.
for those who say the catcher in the rye author would not want to be captured this way. he maintained lifelong friendships, he would call the press and grant spontaneous interviews. he really was a recluse who liked to come out of hiding to remind the world he was a recluse. he wants audiences to know that beyond the rarely seen images and imagined solitude was a man full of life and stories untold. j.d. salinger lived an extraordinary life. when i found out that he landed on d-day, that he fought in some of the bloodiest battles of world war ii, he was in a mental institution, he entered a concentration camp, there were so many aspects of his life that the public didn t know that i had to make the film. and the director says without his film, salinger s life stories may have been lost forever. there were a number of people who were never going to speak about j.d. salinger on the record while he was alive.
many of the people that i interviewed were in their 80s and 90s. a number of people we interviewed have since passed away. among the most intriguing discoveries pertained of course to love. people hurt him. people he trusted. the late author s romantic relationships were among his best and worst-kept secrets. he said you have ruined my life. salinger s affair with joyce maynard is well known but his later loves are practical top secret. many people didn t know she really existed for years. we found her, we found the records of how salinger actually brought her into the united states. including salinger s forbidden love whom he understandably kept private. he was a counterintelligence agent in world war ii and in the process of being part of the de-nazification of germany, he fell in love with a gestapo