10 Unfilmable Books That Would Make Great Films

5. The Catcher In The Rye; J.D Salinger

For years there have been attempts to acquire the film rights to this classic novel of teenage angst and frustration and these have been buoyed to some extent by Salinger€™s recent death. Salinger was so strongly against an adaptation of his seminal novel he successfully rebuffed the attempts of Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Leo DiCaprio to turn it into a film. Salinger even allegedly refused Sam Goldwyn€™s offer that he play Holden Caulfield (the novel€™s protagonist) himself. Apparently, Salinger was not, however, against an adaptation upon his own death. The Catcher in the Rye is far from unfilmable in terms of its difficulty of adaptation. Holden Caulfield€™s yarn about adolescence is perhaps the easiest to adapt on this list. The protagonist is clear and there is a sequence of events; the fight at Pencey Prep, the dancing with the tourist girls, the visitation from the prostitute and pimp to a conclusion of sorts with his sister in the zoo. The novel is also filled with lovely little first-person, bon mots to posterity offered by the rebellious narrator. There is perhaps the issue that Caulfield is a protagonist without a desire( very un-Hollywood) , without external conflict even, and the novel is unclear as to what he has learnt by the end of its telling. But no, the real reason The Catcher in the Rye is truly unfilmable lies in the question of who would play Holden Caulfield? Who could pull it off? Who is young enough and has that kind of composure in front of camera? The weight of expectation would break so many actors. Unlike the brave ambition of turning something like Austerlitz into a film, The Catcher in the Rye, once described as €˜the holy grail€™ of movie scripts, would be a bankable winner. This one will likely see the light of day.