Hollywood Copy Cats

By James Enright

A film I recently saw “Remember Me” directed by Allen Coulter and featuring Robert Paterson (best known from Twilight) reminded me instantly of a book I had just finished reading – an old literature classic entitled “A Catcher in the Rye” by J D Salinger. Coincidence?  With Hollywood’s notoriety I believe not.

Both the film and book have similar characters, plots and even settings.  In the movie the main character Tyler (Patterson) is a twenty one year old university student who lacks motivation and is depressed by the state of society around him. The only things that he lives for are his little twelve year old sister Olivia, a love of books, which he learnt from his late older brother and his addiction to nicotine. This is taken directly from Salinger’s book, where the sixteen year old student Holden Caulfield is kicked out of his school (Pency) also due to his total lack of motivation which resulted in his total failure in all school subjects except English. Holden is also depressed by the current state of society and lives for his twelve year old sister Phoebe, his books and poems (written by his late eldest brother and other still living older brother) and a nicotine habit which sees him smoking packs in excess of three a day.

The plots of the two works are fairly similar in the respect of following their main characters daily questioning lives. However, “Remember Me’s” plot and many sub plots are more detailed and complex. They involve a girlfriend (Carolyn Round), the police and increased family scenes and larger overall displays of emotion. This complexity is probably a result of huge differences in length between the pieces. The movie is over two and a half hours long while the book at only one hundred and ninety pages, would struggle to make something as long without extra cobbled on, clichéd bits of very little substance.

Finally the settings of both works are fairly similar to each other. Both are set in America in New York and the daily scenes are hugely similar as Holden and Tyler both reside in grungy, miniscule student residences while their upper class families live in classy apartments.  In fact the only point of difference seems to be the date and the quality of the work. The inferior ‘cobbled together’ movie is set around the summer prior to September the eleventh 2001 while Salinger’s vivid, emotive book is set around the mid 1900’s.

The reason, dear reader, why I draw your attention to this “coincidence” of sorts is to press the main point of this article; the sad lack of originality in today’s society. Everything done today seems to copy something done previously. What are the possibilities? That this occurrence of plagiarism (as no reference to Salinger was mentioned in the credits) was mere chance? One in a trillion I believe. Shame on you Hollywood, for stealing this beautiful classic and turning it into a mass produced block busting teen fiesta, especially with the addition of teen girl heart throb Robert Patterson. This movie will forever be an example of Hollywood copying at its lowest. For shame, Mr Allen Coulter, for shame.

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