10 Promising & Big-Name Directors Who Turned To The Small Screen
7. Burr Steers
For years, filmmakers have long lamented the fact that they will never live to see a film adaptation of The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger's timeless novel of identity, rebellion, frustration, sex, loss, the desires to belong and the sudden, indescribable urge to kill a celebrity.
Salinger was explicit: that film would never see the light of day. Upon his death, you could hear a collective group of screenwriters with half-finished drafts of their adaptation on their word processor scream in frustration. Starbucks around the country shook.
So frustrated were some filmmakers that they tried to sneak around copyright laws, writing their own "Holden Caulfield-esque" characters that wound up clueless in New York. And most of them had this really great montage in their heads with Simon and Garfunkel's The Only Living Boy In New York playing over it and, trust me, bro, it'll be awesome and really deep. And we'll get, like, Timothee Chalamet or some s**t.
Of the filmmakers who managed to get their Rye-like product in the can, Burr Steers stood apart. Igby Goes Down was clearly inspired by Salinger (Steers planned it as a novella), but it managed to be it's own thing. Better still, it managed to corral a cast that included Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Jared Harris, Bill Pullman, Claire Danes and two Culkins. It didn't hurt that Steers is the nephew of writer Gore Vidal, lending his work some literary cred.
But Igby, while critically liked, only saw a limited theatrical release, and though he did manage to land a few mainstream films like 13 Going On 30 and the much-maligned How To Lose A Guy in Ten Days, all of his work since has been relegated to the box. He's helmed episodes of Weeds, The L Word, Big Love, The New Normal and produced a documentary about his uncle.
While his attempts to break back into film keep failing, with near-misses like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Until the Salinger family changes their minds or disregards his wishes, Steers is better off in TV land.