COURSE 01 - 02a - “Finding Forrester”

Although I was familiar with Gus Van Sant’s 2000 film, Finding Forrester, it wasn’t until writer-spiritualist Sufani Weisman-Garza recommended it in her short Udemy course, The Divine Impulse to Write, that I finally decided to sit down to watch it. My expectations for the film were high, as I was curious to see how the student-mentor relationship between the characters played by Rob Brown and Sean Connery would play out and I suspect that the element of race, and growing up in the inner-city would also play a part in the film, as these themes are touched upon by the film’s trailer. I’ve always enjoyed films that explore the coming-of-age story, as it’s something that’s universally experienced by every human being. Growing up, films such as Dead Poets Society (1989), Good Will Hunting (1997), and The Karate Kid (1984) presented me with young protagonists who on different levels served as a mirror for my own life, with kids who were trying to find their place in the world as they meet incredible, larger than life mentors who helped guide them. And just last year, I was pleasantly surprised to find the theme once again explored in director Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers (2023), one of the year’s best films.

In terms of what I already know about the film, in Weisman-Garza’s short course, she explained how the quote, “…we write first from our heart, and then from our head,” was a key idea from the film which explores the ideas behind learning how to write.

From Mike Fleming Jr’s 2010 article for Deadline called Secret JD Salinger Documentary & Book Now Revealed, I knew that actor Sean Connery was inspired by Salinger’s own life story when looking for inspiration for the character of William Forrester. And I know from having studied Salinger in university, that Salinger himself was famous for writing The Catcher in the Rye (1951), which is largely considered as one of the best novels ever written, as well as Nine Stories (1953), a collection of short stories, which are also considered as being some of the best short stories ever written. But following the success of these works, Salinger became reclusive, and eventually stopped publishing new work altogether, although he did continue to write. In a 1974 interview with Lacey Fosburgh of The New York Times, titled JD Salinger Speaks About His Silence, Salinger described how, "There is a marvellous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.” But I also know from a 2021 article for Vanity Fair, titled In Hindsight: ‘Predatory Men With a Taste for Teenagers’ Joyce Maynar on the Chilling Parallels Between Woody Allen and JD Salinger, written by Joyce Maynard, that there was a predatory side to Salinger’s personality. In it, Maynard writes how:

“I name two events that caused the greatest emotional damage in my life. I’m not speaking here of personal losses—the deaths of my parents, the death of my husband. I’m speaking of times when I felt unsafe, diminished, and under attack almost to the point of questioning the worth of my own life. One happened when I was a teenager, with Salinger—an experience that ended my college education, isolated me from my family, my friends, and the world, and left me in a state of profound shame that endured for decades. The second, and arguably the more painful one, occurred 25 years later when, halfway into my 40s, I chose at long last to speak of what had happened to me when I was young.

It took me that long to recognize the truth: that I was groomed to be the sexual partner of a narcissist who nearly derailed my life. When I published a memoir telling my story, I was accused of trying to sell books, to make money from my brief and inconsequential connection to a great man. Adjectives applied to me by well-respected critics included the words “icky, masturbatory” (in Mirabella), “indescribably stupid” (in The Washington Post), and (from Maureen Dowd in The New York Times) “predator.” One writer, Cynthia Ozick—hardly alone among celebrated authors, weighing in with her condemnation—portrayed me as a person who, in possession of no talent of my own, had attached myself to Salinger to “suck out” his celebrity. In the eyes of many, I was a literary vampire. For some, simply a cunt.”

Ultimately, I don’t know how closely the inspiration for Forrester resides in Salinger’s story and the accusations that have been made against him by Maynard, and later, other women. In the end, I somehow don’t believe that the relationship between Connery’s Forrester and Brown’s Wallace will be predatory, or end with Forrester cutting off all ties with Wallace.

Finding Forrester was released in theaters on December 22, 2000. In 2000, the world’s economy was strong. American President Bill Clinton was nearing the end of his second term in office and had one of the highest job approval ratings in history. In spite of this, Clinton’s personal ratings were impacted by Republican investigations of sexual misconduct allegations involving Clinton. The American Presidential election had concluded on December 12, when the United States Supreme Court had halted recounts that were taking place in Florida, citing that no uniform statewide standard could be developed to fairly count the ballots, thereby allowing Republican Presidential Candidate George W. Bush to narrowly win the electoral college, and therefore the Presidency, even though Democratic Presidential Candidate Al Gore had won the popular vote. In terms of the world of writing, influential cartoonist Charles M Schulz, the creator and writer of the Peanuts comic strip, passed away in February 2000.

Although I had not seen Finding Forrester, I was familiar with the work of American independent film director Gus Van Sant, whose first features included Drugstore Cowboy (1989), and My Own Private Idaho (1991). Perhaps his most well-known work was 1997’s Good Will Hunting, which was also the first film of Van Sant’s that I saw in theaters. Good Will Hunting was written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who also starred in the film alongside Minnie Driver, Stellan Skarsgård, and Robin Williams. The film focuses on the character of Will Hunting (Damon), a young, blue-collar worker in Boston, who is discovered to be a genius with particularly strong gifts in mathematics. Hunting is a troubled youth however and is taken under the wing of a university mathematics professor (Skarsgård) and a psychologist (Williams) who serve as mentors for the twenty-year-old who is conflicted about leaving his roots for a more stable and successful life based on the development of his mathematical gifts. Following the success of Good Will Hunting [in which Van Sant received Academy Award nominations for best director and best picture, as well as best actor (Damon), supporting actress (Driver), score (Danny Elfman), song (Elliot Smith), and wins for best supporting actor (Williams) as well as for best original screenplay (Damon and Affleck)], Van Sant went on to film a shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film, Psycho. The remake starred Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, and Anne Heche. This would be the second Van Sant film I saw on the big screen, and I remember being skeptical about whether or not a remake was necessary, especially if it was not going to do anything new with the material. Ultimately, I think the experiment of Van Sant’s to remake the Hitchcock classic wasn’t a success. Although I enjoyed watching Vaughn take on the role of Norman Bates, I found Heche’s performance as Marion Crane to be somewhat flat, and other decisions such as the inclusion of surreal imagery intercut with the murder scenes to be distracting. Finally, I was also familiar with Van Sant’s 2008 film, Milk, about San Francisco gay rights advocate and politician Harvey Milk, who was portrayed in an Academy Award winning performance by actor Sean Penn.

Overall, the most important feature of Finding Forrester I was looking for was how the portrayal of the mentor-student relationship would play out between Sean Connery’s character, William Forrester, and Rob Brown’s character, Jamal Wallace would play out.

Works Cited