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Director Screens Coming Through the Rye at Woodberry
Woodberry Forest School students, faculty, and family members got a chance to see themselves and the school on the big screen on March 21, 2016, during a special showing of Coming Through the Rye. The feature film, a semi-autobiographical tale of a boarding school student’s quest to find author J.D. Salinger, was filmed at Woodberry during the fall of 2014.
Woodberry’s campus stood in as Crampton Prep while the surrounding landscape of Orange and Madison counties provided backdrops for other scenes. The film tells the story of sixteen-year-old Jamie Schwartz as he struggles to connect with other students. He believes he is destined to play Holden Caulfield, the main character of The Catcher in the Rye, in a stage adaptation of the novel.
James Sadwith, the movie’s writer and director, told students in a question-and-answer session after they watched the film, “Ninety percent of the movie is true, and 99 percent of the dialogue between Jamie and J.D. Salinger actually occurred.”
Mr. Sadwith is a 1970 graduate of The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. His obsession with Salinger’s book earned him the nickname “Caulfield.” After a road trip to meet Salinger, he recorded all of the conversation that he could remember and then staged his play at Hotchkiss, playing the starring role.
Though the movie has been shown at several film festivals and received positive feedback from those audiences, James said showing the movie at Woodberry was a different experience. “It was interesting to see it with you guys because the film festival audiences are mostly baby boomers,” he said. “You all laughed at lots of different places than they did.”
Asked what Salinger, who died in 2010, would have thought about the movie, Mr. Sadwith didn’t hesitate. “He would probably be pretty ticked off,” the filmmaker said.
During his 1969 meeting with J.D. Salinger, James Sadwith also met Matt, the author’s son. He contacted Matt before filming and offered him a role in the movie, which Matt declined. As the movie continues to travel the film festival circuit, Mr. Sadwith is trying to find a distributor to bring the picture to theaters around the country.
While on the Woodberry campus, the director met with several of Woodberry’s English and drama classes. He spoke with John Amos’s sixth-form English class, Shakespeare for Groundlings. This fall John taught Catcher in the Rye and Hamlet at the same time, noting that while the books may seem to have little in common, both are ultimately about young men struggling to find their place in the world.
Hundreds of Woodberry students and faculty members served as extras for scenes shot on campus. Exterior scenes were shot in Armfield Courtyard and via aerial drones, while interior footage was shot in the Dick Gym, Bowman Gray Auditorium, St. Andrew's Chapel, the Walker Building, and Reynolds Family Dining Room.
Jared Thalwitz ’16 appears in several scenes, playing the role of Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet. He played the same part on Woodberry’s stage in the fall of 2014. Graduates Christian Magnani and Cole Lenfest, both from the Class of 2015, also had speaking roles.
Monday night's loudest cheers were reserved for the closing credits, when the names of each Woodberry extra scrolled down the screen.
Woodberry Forest School is an exceptional private school community for high school boys in grades nine through twelve. It is one of the top boarding schools in the United States and one of the only all-boys, all-boarding schools in the country.
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Woodberry Forest admits students of any race, color, sexual orientation, disability, religious belief, and national or ethnic origin to all of the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sexual orientation, disability, religious belief, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic or other school-administered programs. The school is authorized under federal law to enroll nonimmigrant students.