Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester is a 2000 movie, written by Mike Rich and directed by Gus Van Sant, about a black teenager, Jamal Wallace, played by Rob Brown, who gets accepted into an prestigous private high school. He also befriends a reclusive writer, William Forrester, played by Sean Connery.

Connections to Salinger and Toole

• Both Forrester and Salinger are notoriously reclusive authors.
• In the movie Forrester has many unpublished works. Salinger is believed to have several novels and stories that are unpublished.
• In the movie Forrester blocked a biography of himself that the character Prof. Robert Crawford was going to have published. Salinger did the same thing through a lawsuit against Ian Hamilton.
• Toole wrote A Confederacy of Dunces, but despite his best efforts he couldn't find an interested publisher. Crushed by this, Toole committed suicide. When his Dunces manuscript was found, it was finally published, and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. In this film, Forrester keeps a veritable treasure trove of unpublished works in a locked filing cabinet because he can't bear the thought of being rejected for even a single work.