Philippe Falardeau and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his touching and thoughtful new film My Salinger Year, context and culture, risk taking, monsters and creativity and artists that move you.

Trailer

The film is available to rent or buy on the Apple TV app/iTunes and other VOD platforms.

Synopsis:

New York in the 90s: After leaving graduate school to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, Joanna gets hired as an assistant to Margaret, the stoic and old-fashioned literary agent of J. D. Salinger. Fluctuating between poverty and glamour, she spends her days in a plush, wood-panelled office - where dictaphones and typewriters still reign and agents doze off after three-martini lunches - and her nights in a sink-less Brooklyn apartment with her socialist boyfriend.

Joanna’s main task is processing Salinger’s voluminous fan mail, but as she reads the heart- wrenching letters from around the world, she becomes reluctant to send the agency’s impersonal standard letter and impulsively begins personalizing the responses. The results are both humorous and moving, as Joanna, while using the great writer’s voice, begins to discover her own.

About Philippe:

Falardeau was born and raised in Hull, Quebec and later studied political science at the University of Ottawa, before travelling around the world for the Quebec competitive television series Course Destination Monde, on which he emerged as the Grand Prize winner.

His first feature film, The Left-Hand Side of the Fridge (La Moitié gauche du frigo) which won Best Canadian First Feature at the 2000

Toronto International Film Festival and received a Best Screenplay nomination at the Quebec-based Jutra Awards.

Falardeau received much press attention following the release of his 2011 film Monsieur Lazhar. The film premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and the Variety Piazza Grande Award. The film was nominated for Best Foreign language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, and also won six Canadian Screen Awards. At Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a rating of 97%, based on 110 reviews and an average rating of 8.1/10.

In 2014 he directed the film The Good Lie, which stars Reese Witherspoon and premiered at the 2014 Toronto Internaiotnl Film festival to positive reviews.

My Salinger Year starring opened the 70th Berlin International Film Festival and stars Sigourney Weaver, Margaret Qualley and Colm Feore and is adapted from Joanna Rakoff’s memoirs about working in New York’s literary world during the late 1990s.

Image Copyright and Credit: Microscope and Mongrel Media.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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