Finding Forrester (2000) on Netflix
Jamal Wallace hides a gift for writing behind basketball games in the Bronx. A dare sends him into the apartment of a recluse, William Forrester, who never leaves home.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.3/1095,747 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes74%
Trailer
Plot summary
Jamal Wallace is a sixteen-year-old in the Bronx with a gift for writing that he keeps to himself, spending his free time playing basketball with his friends. His test scores attract the attention of Mailor-Callow, a private school in Manhattan, which offers him a scholarship and expects him to join its basketball team. Jamal also gets inside the apartment of William Forrester, a recluse in his neighborhood who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Avalon Landing and has published nothing since. Forrester agrees to work on Jamal's writing if Jamal never asks about his life and never tells anyone about him. At his new school, Jamal befriends a classmate, Claire.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Finding Forrester (2000)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Rob Brown auditioned for the film hoping to make enough money to pay his $300 cell phone bill. Van Sant had him read a second time and then cast him as one of the leads.
- The meme website YTMND grew in 2003 out of creator Max Goldberg's earlier site "yourethemannowdog.com", which he registered after seeing a trailer for Finding Forrester in which Connery says the line.
- Before Connery was cast as William Forrester, Bill Murray was considered for the role. Connery drew inspiration for his portrayal from the biographies of J. D. Salinger and William S. Burroughs.
- Connery became interested in the film through his friend John Calley, an executive at Sony Pictures, and in turn invited Gus Van Sant to direct. He also brought a few of his personal habits to the role, like wearing his socks inside out.
- Although the film is not based on a true story, critics have compared the character portrayed by Connery with the real-life writer J. D. Salinger, and Connery later acknowledged that Salinger was indeed the inspiration for his role.
- The film opened in limited release on December 20, 2000 in 200 theaters and took $701,207, then opened at number one on its commercial release in 2001 with $11,112,139 in its first weekend.
