Game Change and Recount writer-director Danny Strong wrote and directed this 2017 drama, which is a biographical drama about reclusive author J.D. Salinger, famous for Catcher in the Rye and other stories. Nicholas Hoult plays Jerry Salinger – and Salinger’s early mentor, his college literary professor and early publisher Whit Burnett, is played by someone who has himself been somewhat reclusive of late: Kevin Spacey.