Echoing in the Footsteps of J.D. Salinger

When J.D. Salinger passed away on January 27th, 2010, he left behind a son, Matt. Together with the writer's third wife Colleen O'Neill Zakrzeski Salinger, Matt became the executor of his father's estate.

This past fall, when the documentary Salinger screened at the Telluride Film Festival, there was some big, belated estate news. Salinger left behind a number of unpublished works, which will begin to be shared in 2015.

Indie drama Meniscus, premiering this afternoon at the Cameo Art House Theatre in Fayetteville, North Carolina, follows a similar narrative. The title is the name of an unpublished work left behind by a reclusive, Salinger-type writer. Following the writer's death, his estranged son starts filling in the blanks and discovers who his father really was.



Writer-director Jorge Rubiera, born in Fayetteville and raised in Miami, told local newspaper the Observer that he got the idea for the film several years before Salinger's death, during an Amtrak train trip from Miami to Fayetteville in 2008. He made the movie over the span of four years, for a little less than $10,000.

There's another intriguing strand connecting Meniscus and Fayetteville. Rubiera's father Raul, a producer on the movie, is a staff photographer for the aforementioned Observer. Son Jorge studied film at the Kansas City Art Institute.

[Meniscus]