Love amidst chaos
Journalist and author Jeannette wall’s life Journey in movie glass castle
DIRECTED by Destin Daniel Cretton and co-written by Cretton, Andrew Lanham and Marti Noxon, The Glass
Castle brings US author Jeannette Walls’ life journey with her dysfunctional family from novel to screen.
Staying true to Walls’ 2005 memoir of the same name, the film depicts her real-life childhood spent squatting in homes and living in poverty, as well as her relationship with her siblings and deeply problematic parents.
Brie Larson plays Walls with Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson as her parents Rose Mary and Rex Walls. The film also stars Max Greenfield, Sarah Snook, Bridgette LundyPaine, Josh Caras, Ella Anderson, Sadie Sink, Chandler Head and Olivia Rice.
Below, Larson and Harrelson give their thoughts on the new film.
ON JEANNETTE WALLS’ STORY.
Brie Larson: It is fascinating because it’s obviously a very specific story but there’s so much in it that feels so universal to people. She asks these bigger questions about parent and child relationships that are really complicated.
I think ultimately what I love about it is that it’s about humans being survivors. No matter what, we get through it. It’s the idea that everything is kind of mashed together. All of life is tangled up in one little knotted chain, and you can either throw all of it away or you embrace all of it. You can’t pick and choose what parts of life you want to have.
You watch this family, and yes, there’s complete chaos but there’s also so much love and humour and all of these great things too.
Jeannette (in the film) has been moving away from that, but over the course of the film, you realise that no matter what, no matter how hard she wants to run away or change her hair, at the end of the day, this is who she is and you’ve got to own it.
JEANNETTE’S FAMILY IS COMPLICATED IN THAT THEY CAN BE SELFISH AND CRUEL YET KIND AND LOVING. HOW DID YOU APPROACH THAT COMPLICATED TONE IN THE FILM?
Brie Larson: Well, that’s my favourite tone ever. Because I really question the idea that we put films in these categories just because it makes life easier, right?
Like, “This is a drama!” or “This is a comedy!” Would you say that about your life, if someone was like, “What genre is your life?” It’s like, “Oh God, it’s everything!” It’s comedy, and it’s suspense, and that’s what life is.
That’s a huge part of what Destin likes as well. Life can go from being the most painful moment to someone cracking a joke, and it becomes this palpably hilarious moment in the face of something terrible. So, riding that line is always what I enjoy doing, and we had such a great cast that it made it very easy to finagle that tone.
HOW MUCH TIME DID YOU SPEND TALKING TO JEANNETTE?
Brie Larson: I think it was over the course of many months. We sort of had an ongoing email chain that went back and forth. Like very long emails, back and forth. And then we’d jump on the phone and do a Skype call.
Sometimes I’d do a Skype call with Ella, who was playing one of the younger Jeannettes, because a huge part of this is connecting the dots as you watch this family grow, and we all had to be the same Jeannette. Yes, she’s growing up, but there has to be something in our hearts that links us together. So there was a lot of hanging out together and me observing the kids and figuring out what their mannerisms were so I could mimic them for when I played Jeannette.
IT SEEMS LIKE VERY FEW PEOPLE
CAN RELATE TO THE SPECIFICS OF JEANNETTE’S STORY, BUT EVERYONE CAN RELATE TO HAVING SPECIFIC EXPERIENCES WITH THEIR FAMILY AND RECOGNISING HOW IT SHAPED THEM.
Brie Larson: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that’s the thing about film in general that I’ve found so reassuring and so exciting. It was a similar experience with Room. I had never met anyone who had gone through the exact experience that was depicted in Room, but a lot of people could pull certain things from it that really struck them and made them rethink their relationships or their childhood. And I think that’s such a powerful tool.
This movie really deals with reflection and memory and how in our childhood, we have a very simplistic way of looking at things. As we get older, we’re able to see more of the complexity of it and how wonderful and important it is to embrace where we’ve been instead of feeling shame or embarrassment. WHEN YOU WERE TALKING TO JEANNETTE AND LEARNING ABOUT HER STORY, WAS THERE ANYTHING
YOU LEARNT FROM HER THAT REALLY SURPRISED YOU?
Brie Larson: You know, I don’t know if this necessarily surprises me, but the thing that I think about all the time is that she has no anger or bitterness towards her family at all. She just loves them. She loves them simply and completely and has completely forgiven them. And I think that that is such a beautiful quality to have and one that we could all work on. We could all use more forgiveness.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO REUNITE WITH ALL THESE PEOPLE FROM SHORT TERM
12 ON A TOTALLY DIFFERENT STORY?
Brie Larson: It made me emotional very quickly because I was able to see very clearly how far we’ve come! I mean, Short
Term was a very small film with a very limited budget, where I was wearing my own clothes, and we were packing up the lunch from craft services to eat for dinner because we were all so broke. We were really down in it together.
And a couple years later, for us to all be united again, and to really see how much all of us have grown creatively and how much more understanding and control we have over our craft and that we have more time and more money and more space to explore our creativity together, it’s just a really wonderful, inspiring thing.
WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO PLAY THIS CHARACTER? WAS IT THE FACT THAT YOU HAVEN’T SPOKEN TO YOUR FATHER FOR OVER 10 YEARS?
Brie Larson: I think it has to do with family being complicated and having lots of negatives and positives. I feel that life is like that, you don’t get to pick and choose what parts of life you get, you just get all of it.
I think a lot of us feel like we’re not allowed to be who we are, least not allowed to be at the completeness of who we are. And I want to encourage more people to feel like they can be all things, you know, you can be complicated.
WERE THERE ANY STORIES FROM REX AND JEANNETTE’S POINT OF VIEW THAT MAY HAVE NOT BEEN TOLD?
Brie Larson: I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, there is so much more in the book. I mean, there is so much more in her life that we can fit into a two-hour movie. But I don’t know. We watched the movie last night and I feel really proud of it.
I feel like it really takes you on this really incredible journey that has a beautiful path in the end, so I feel satisfied with the movie. There’s nothing that I wish was in it personally.
ON TRYING TO GET REX RIGHT.
Woody Harrelson: I couldn’t do an impersonation of him — he had a very distinctive way of talking. But I tried to approximate it and I definitely had the vibe of who he was, so I thought that’s what I was working with.
I used to go over to see Brie on a daily basis before we started, and she was staying at an apartment and I’d come over for lunch and she’d fix me lunch — she’s actually a pretty good chef — and she would also, you know, talk me down off the ledge because I was just concerned that I was just not getting it right.
She’d tell me, “Don’t worry that much about the accent.” She said, you know, “You got him. You got him. You don’t need to worry about all these extraneous things.” Which is true, you know? Obviously Jeanette and others who knew him would know that this is how he talked, but other people wouldn’t. So I tried to just get the vibe right.
ON HOW THE FILM TACKLES THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF JEANNETTE WALLS’ LIFE.
Woody Harrelson: The way this movie works, it jumps back and forth over different time frames. So we got, you know, all these kids from three different age groups that cover this whole span. It was incredible the way Destin could make it all work and where it was just completely seamless.
And also, I do feel like when you do these movies where you have kids and then the kids grow up, you are either attached to the older or the younger version — well, typically the younger — so fascinating. But in this, they’re all great and you never doubt that they’re the same person.
You know, it always feels like the same person even when it’s a different actor. So there’s a lot Destin did about that that’s kind of seamless, that was really magical. But I just think he told a story. According to Jeannette, he really nailed it.
ON THE PERSONAL TOLL OF APPEARING IN SO MANY FILMS.
Woody Harrelson: I feel like I’ve probably just spent too much time running around doing these movies. I’m proud of all of them — I’m much psyched about these movies — but I just need, I think, to chill out and spend some time at home. Because by the time I leave here, I will have been home one week in a year, in the past year. So, yeah, it’s just not fair to my family. I’m not feeling very pleased with myself over all this.
Nobody wants to listen to movie star blues in D minor, you know what I mean? I don’t know, I guess I’m just a little knackered from the whole process, to borrow one of the great English words here, and just ready to go home.
HOW SIMILAR ARE YOU TO THE CHARACTER YOU PLAY IN THIS FILM?
Woody Harrelson: I think that is an important thing with any character. You must find out what is in the character that is just like you, and make up for the rest with imagination.
But certainly like, he’s wanting to be free, his belief that education is, you know, (that it’s) better when it’s experiential, better to get out in nature and just actually experience what it is you’re talking about, as opposed to sitting in a classroom.
Some of his views on the medical system I tend to agree with.
ANY BITS OF ADVICE FOR THE CHILDREN?
Woody Harrelson: Well, I thought they were all pretty accomplished. All I did was try to make them feel comfortable and there was no way you could do wrong. Just to try whatever and not feel self-conscious about it.
HOW INVOLVED WAS JEANNETTE IN THE PROCESS?
Brie Larson: She came to set a couple of times, but mostly she was just available to answer all of the many questions that we had.
Woody Harrelson: Yeah. She made herself available. She’s super helpful.
HOW WAS THE PROCESS OF PERFORMING SOME OF THESE SCENES THAT SHE LIVED OUT? IT MUST BE A SURREAL EXPERIENCE.
Brie Larson: Yes, it was. We were crying in one scene and she was crying in real life. There was a lot of crying.
Woody Harrelson: I think the first time she came to set, we were doing quite an emotional scene and it was wild to be doing that knowing that she was sitting by the monitor watching. She was crying. People think there’s a lot of tears. There is also quite a bit of laughter. Courtesy of TGVP