Finding Forrester

The film Finding Forrester can serve two useful purposes. It can give us
images of the Bronx and New York City of the 90s and it can serve as a bridge
to enable us to compare the first two chapters of Austers Moon Palace to J.D.
Salingers classic The Catcher in the Rye.

Film Sequences

Sequence One: assignments for pupils.

1. Take notes on the neighborhood: What kind of buildings and

businesses do you see? How new or well-repaired are they?
What kind of people do you see? Describe their appearance,
clothes or activities.

2. What do you find out about Jamal?

3. What is meant by the window?

Sequence One (8 minutes)

titles
a young rapper
high-rise housing, the projects
Spanish language sign
street vendors
homeys
pigeons flying
church
barber shop

book titles: Ken Kesey, Chekhov, Kierkegaard

Voice: Jamal! Ive got to work late. Take care of yourself for dinner.

Basketball court, an isolated Victorian building, binoculars at the window, a

BMW parks

High school class, Poes The Raven, no one reacts, no one takes part in class
The football team, the cafeteria
Talk in the cafeteria. The window is a ghost. Sherita, this girl, she lived right
under his apartment and heard this tapping sound. It was the window right
outside her door with a knife.

The dare: Go up there and check.

The lockers at school. Jamal takes out a litle notebook and writes, puts the
notebook back in and locks it.

Shooting baskets: the window.

Sequence Two: assignments for pupils

1. What does the teacher, Miss Joyce, tell Jamals mother about
his test scores?

2. What advice does Jamals brother, played by Busta Rhymes,

give him at Yankee Stadium?

3. What exactly happens during the dare and how does it end?

Sequence Two (8 minutes)

Miss Joyce tells Jamals mother that the state education department requires all
students to take assessment tests. (See: the Regents Examination in New York
State schools) Jamals scores are excellent, but he doesnt stand out at school.
He just plays basketball.

Busta Rhymes is parking cars at Yankee Stadium and the boys want free tickets
from him. He had a dream once of playing some college ball and getting
ahead and encourages his little brother to take the opportunity offered by the
good test scores. Jamal wants his brother to keep quiet about the test scores.
The older brother urges Jamal to get home on time.

Jamal goes up the fire escape to the window. He is told he has got to bring
something out. He enters the apartment by a window, goes directly to the front
door and opens the deadbolts so he can escape quickly. He sees baseballs,
old-fashioned furniture and dcor, a knife, books. Something stands up and
Jamal flees, leaving his backpack behind him.

Jamal is bouncing a basketball at home in the kitchen. His mother asks him
where his backpack is.
Sequence Three: assignments for pupils

1. Where does Jamal see his backpack?

2. What do you learn about BMW and Jamal from the

conversation he has with a young white man?

3. What does Jamal find inside his backpack? What does he

decide to do about it?

4. What is the tone of the conversation he has with the older

white man?

Sequence Three (6 minutes)

Jamal is at the basketball court and sees his backpack hanging out of the
window.

The BMW parks again and Jamal goes over to it. The young white man is
obviously nervous, so Jamal say he wont hurt the car. Jamal feels slightly
insulted by the young man and tells him a lot about BMW that the young white
man didnt know. He also takes a dig at the young white man by asserting that
the BMW isnt owned by him but only leased.

As Jamal leaves, the backpack lands. He finds his red notebooks inside, with
corrections like constipated thinking, passage fantastic, specificity! and
unworthy of this reader.

Jamal returns to the apartment, stands in the pale green stairwell, knocks and
tries to explain himself. Write 5000 words on why the fuck you should stay out
of my home. That is rather rude, as is, Keep your goddamned hands off my
doors.
Sequence Four: assignments for pupils

1. Describe the offer that is made to Jamal by the Mailor-Callow

School.

2. Who does Jamal decide to discuss the offer with? What is the
upshot of the conversation?

3. Give your impression of Mailor-Callow School and of Claire

Spence.

4. What is the name of the novel which Jamal must read for
English class and who is its author?

5. What is a soup question?

Sequence Four (14 minutes)

Jamal is taken out of choir class to meet his mother and an unknown white
gentleman in the Principals office. The Principal is also white. The unknown
gentleman is from Mailor-Callow Academy in Manhattan, one of the citys finest
prep-schools.

Prep comes from college preparatory school, that is, an exclusive,

expensive and highly academic secondary school, which really only wishes to
get its graduates into Harvard, Yale, Princeton or some other Ivy League school.

Jamals mother immediately protests that, We could never pay, but the offer is
one of a full scholarship. In passing one learns that Mailor-Callow is also very
interested in Jamals basketball skills.

Jamal visits the window again and, after a rude exchange, may enter the
apartment. The old white man, played by Sean Connery, listens to Jamal and
then provokes him with some racist bullshit.

We see Jamal and his mother and brother Tyrrell at the dinner table saying
grace.

Jamal takes the crowded subway to what appears to be Park Avenue on the
Upper East Side, a very expensive neighborhood. The street is full of black
limousines. He is greeted by Claire Spence. Everyone wears a school uniform
with blazer and tie. In English class the book Avalon Landing by William
Forrester is distributed: his one novel is required reading, the great American
novel. Claire takes leave of Jamal remarking that you both might get what
you want.

Back at the windows Jamal remarks on how quiet everything is there. He asks
why he should stir the soup while the older man does some bird watching, a
Connecticut warbler. The object of a question is to obtain information that
matters to us and to no one else. And the older man knew Jamal would come
back and he knew that Jamal would go to the new school because Jamal is
asking himself the question of what he is going to do with his life.
Sequence Five: assignments for pupils

1. What happens to Jamal at basketball practice?

2. What does he discover later at the librarys computer

workstations?

3. Who does he confront with his new knowledge and what

agreement do they reach?

4. How does attending Meilor-Callow affect Jamals relationship

to his old friends like Fly?

5. Who is Mr. Crawford and what is his attitude towards Jamal?

Sequence Five (11 minutes)

By now the pupils should have a pretty good idea of what is going on in the film.
They should be able to discuss the differences between rich and poor in the
Bronx and the Upper East Side, they should be able to compare Jamals new
school to his previous school. It might be a good time to locate Yankee Stadium,
Madison Square Garden, Park Avenue, the New York Public Library and 301
East 156th Street. They might also want to discuss the choice of music used for
background music in the film.

It might be a good time to explain what the Pulitzer Prize is, what the New
Yorker magazine is, what newspapers like The New York Times or The National
Enquirer are, and then just let the movie run its course.

It is probably time to look at passages written by other authors about New York
City, especially J.D. Salinger, who wrote The Catcher in the Rye and then
became a complete recluse, publishing little or nothing, just like William
Forrester.

Other films might include Woody Allens Everybody Says I Love You for a
portrait of New York Citys fabulously rich people, or the opening of the film The
Bonfire of the Vanities.