With Jake looking at getting a producing credit on the Untitled Moon Project, (if you haven't seen the article about it check it out, its a good read about where the process is, and commentary about Jake and the role) this might be the first time we see the Nine Stories logo on the screen.
Nine Stories is Jake's long established production come, its name comes from a collection of J.D. Salinger's short stories aptly titled Nine Stories Production.
Jake has affinity and history with Salinger/Salingeresque stories. Of course the first thing you that comes to mind to many is his role in Good Girl, even taken the most famous of Salinger's characters as his own, and clutching to his copy of Catcher in the Rye throughout the film.
Jake has talked about his love of Salinger and his work throughout the years. How he read Catcher in the Rye at 12, on a family vacation to Hawaii after Maggie had given him the book as a gift. And after reading it he read everything Salinger wrote. How he goes back to reread Salinger as mileposts in his life.
What I find most interesting is that Teddy, is his favorite of the Nine Stories collection. To many critics this was the weakess of Salinger's works, he is almost dimissive of it . It is the story of 10 year boy who is a prodigy, who somewhat a mystic, it is cool and detached on the service. Some say that is example of Salinger's transition of spirtualitly to a zen like state. But like others when I read it I saw an unloved, frightened 10-year-old boy reacting defensively to adults and the world around him. Developing a different person, who was a mystic and clairvoyant to gain the love he " desperately needed while at the same time, to distance and protect himself from his uncaring family and the grown-up world."
Also find the comment he made about Salinger in an interview with friend Chelsea Clinton in 2002 (we know the actual interview took place before he went to work on TDAT) particulary intesting as he is rereading Catcher and more Salinger again at 21, as opposed to 12.
"I think now I have an appreciation of the specific more than the broad--the ideas, the sort of Buddhism that pervades all of Salinger's work.
You know, I think it's genius that J.D. Salinger doesn't want anybody to make a movie of his book, because there's no way anyone can play it. it is what it is to everybody. I've met many people who actually dislike it. Especially some women I know."
"Especially the women I know" Don't know about you but doesn't that seem like an odd ending to answer?
Salinger now pretty much a recluse in New Hampshire has unapologetically forbid that any of his work done by Hollywood, after one short story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” was adapted in 1948.
Isn't there a strange irony to the fact that Jake's production company takes its name in an homage to a man who guards so much to protect it.
