The flick opened last month in selected theaters in New York and Los Angeles and I've been waiting to see it ever since. Such writers from Truman Capote to Papa Hemingway to Rod Serling to Willa Cather have been spotlighted.Īnd tonight (sorry for the short notice), "When You're Strange: A Film About The Doors" premieres.
It is produced by WNET in New York City and debuted in 1983. The groundbreaking show produces biographies on American artists, actors and writers that have left a profound impact on the nation's popular culture.
#American masters when you re strange series
“We hoped that the photo, which was incredibly intimate and in his bedroom at the height of his reclusiveness, was an indication that we were over the wall.Hopefully, many 'Basement' dwellers know all about "American Masters." If you don't, hop on board and start watching the PBS series and put it in your Netflix que. We’re just not able to talk about them yet,” said Salerno. “I made the decision to give one photo to Newsweek, and the reason I did that was to say to people, this isn’t hype, we have been diligently working on this for years and we do have some incredible things. In 2010, he released a photo to Newsweek that shows Salinger in his Cornish, N.H., home in 1968, 15 years after he left New York for the solitude of New England. And only a handful of people have seen the film (Lacey, Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp). But what makes this film so special? Salerno contends he got “over the wall.” But he would not elaborate on exactly what that means. The public broadcaster has a four-year exclusive domestic broadcast window on Salinger and is still negotiating streaming rights for PBS.org.Ĭertainly, interest in Salinger has remained high, a result of his aversion to publicity and rumors (however unsubstantiated) that he continued to write after he retreated from the literary world. So when there is one that gets made and it’s great, I’m right there.” I’m out raising money for these films all the time. “We’re really out front getting rights, making these things happen, and it’s hard enough for us to do it, let alone independent filmmakers. “It’s not something we do a lot,” conceded Lacy. So was When You’re Strange: A Film About the Doors from Living in Oblivion writer-director Tom DeCillo. Cameron Crowe’s Pearl Jam Twenty was an American Masters acquisition. And I have been pursuing him for three years.”įor Lacy, acquiring a film rather than producing it on her own is unusual but not unheard of. I tried to get the rights after he died, and that led me to Shane’s film. I knew there was no way we could do it because there were such restrictions on the writing and what you could use. But, she said, “I didn’t even try when was alive. Lacy harbored desires to profile Salinger well before Salerno’s film came to light.
And I learned a great deal on those phone calls.” The resulting film, No Direction Home, was directed by Martin Scorsese and aired on American Masters in 2005.Īsked if Lacy called him once a month for two years, Salerno replied: “It was really more aggressive than that.” Once a week? “It was sometimes more aggressive than that. She called Jeff Rosen, Bob Dylan’s long-time manager, once a month for 10 years to persuade him to help her persuade Dylan to submit to the American Masters treatment. Rosen had amassed a treasure-trove of video interviews with Dylan. In fact, Lacy’s tenacity is legendary in industry circles. “She was so relentless and single-minded about it.” It was like I was Harrison Ford and she was Tommy Lee Jones,” said Salerno, referring to the cat-and-mouse feature The Fugitive. “I thought Salinger belonged among those artists. And in March, American Masters will bow Philip Roth: Unmasked. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Ellison and Eugene O’Neil. Salinger will air in January 2014 as American Masters’ 200 th installment, joining a long list of previously profiled literary giants, including F. PHOTOS: 11 Biggest Book-to-Big Screen Adaptations of the Last 25 Years And she really made an incredibly coherent and intelligent case for why this had to be on American Masters.” She started talking when I said ‘hello’ and I don’t think she stopped for 25 minutes. Days after news of Salerno’s project first surfaced in January 2010, “Susan called me out of the clear blue,” said Salerno.