Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
HEART OF "GLASS"
Woody Harrelson feels, what he calls, “knackered.” Phoning from late, late night London, where he’s been working on the long, troubled Han Solo “Star Wars” prequel for seemingly eons, the actor sounds like he totally understands the meaning of the Brit slang term for exhausted.
If you look at Harrelson’s recent and upcoming filmography, you’ll see even more justification for weariness. The man’s made a dozen movies in the past two years, and those on the heels of a long stint in “The Hunger Games” franchise and the acclaimed first season of HBO’s “True Detective.”
It’s not just been about quantity for Harrelson, though. Recent releases such as “The Edge of Seventeen” and “War for the Planet of the Apes” have been critically lauded, and there’s Oscar-season buzz a generatin’ for upcoming projects “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “LBJ,” in which he portrays the complicated and colorful 36th president.
And then there’s this week’s opening, “The Glass Castle,” which on its own represents a Herculean act of character depth and dysfunction on the actor’s part. He does several movies’ worth of work in what is a genuine ensemble piece, but which his pater tyrannosaurus Rex Walls dominates magnetically when he’s on screen and psychically when not.
“I think he’s a fascinating character,” Harrelson says of the brilliant, charismatic, irresponsible, often despicable, inspiring and pathetic dad from Jeannette Walls’ 2005, best-selling family memoir. “And in a lot of ways, there’s a lot to recommend him as a person. He loves his kids, he wants them to be educated in a way that is more experiential as opposed to sitting at a desk. He wants them to be free and not to be indoctrinated into the way that society normally thinks. He’s wary of Western medicine . ... A lot of those things, I kind of applaud.
“Unfortunately, though, his got a propensity to drink,” the actor acknowledges. “I think that is his downfall in terms of being someone who can earn enough money to take care of his family, as well as be emotionally available.”
To say the least. As it sprawls back-and-forth through time periods and three different sets of actors playing the four Walls children, we see how the ever broke Rex and his loyal, artist wife Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) dragged their kids all over the country, teaching them many fine, boho lessons about life, love and individuality while driving them nuts with longing for more normal, stable lives. Finally brought to the screen by “Short Term 12” director Destin Daniel Cretton, “Glass Castle” also stars his previous film’s breakout player Brie Larson as the adult Jeannette, a successful New York gossip writer who must come to terms with the dysfunctional past she’s sought to put behind her after spotting Rex and Rose Mary dumpster diving in Manhattan.
Harrelson brings an unnerving sense of unpredictability to every scene he’s in. He also makes Rex’s wayward genius and bone-deep, hillbilly rebelliousness endearing. The man, an engineering whiz, always wants to build his family the fantastic solar-powered home of the title, but of course never gets beyond designing it. Perhaps even harder to live with than his drunken breakdowns and rages, though, are Rex’s know-it-all certainty and overbearing ego, which threaten his children’s futures more than anything else.
“I mean, I do think about that with my kids,” says Harrelson, the father of three. “I really try not to force my views on ‘em — although, in some cases, that’s very difficult [chuckles]! But I like that they’re independent thinkers and that they disagree with me all the time. Rex is more of a ‘this is the way it is, this is how it should be’ kind of guy. Some parts of that, I really like. Some of those things work. But it’s hard to live with.”
Harrelson, 56, rather famously had his own father issues. His dad, Charles, died in prison for killing a federal judge. Although he wasn’t around for much of Woody’s youth, the actor does remember Charles as a smart, untrustworthy charmer. But he says that’s where the similarity with Rex ends.
“No,” Harrelson says succinctly about a personal influence on the role. “No, I didn’t draw on that.”
He did have Walls, her books, a brief video of the late Rex and one of the man’s journals to help inform the job, however. Some of that was invaluable, some useless, and not enough of it confidence-building.
“The video is, like, a minute long,” Harrelson laments. “And the journal, I was really psyched thinking it was going to be a treasure-trove, but it was mostly him writing a math book. It was all kinds of math stuff that was too much for me to really relate to.
“Brie met with Jeannette and Jeannette told her not to worry about impersonating her, just to do her thing and go for the truth,” he continues. “That was very liberating for Brie; meanwhile, I hadn’t had that kind of liberation, y’know? I was really trying to sound like Rex Walls and feeling like I just couldn’t get his voice right, and trying to do his mannerisms and such. I was feeling very insecure about
it, as I usually do get before projects.
“But I was going over to see Brie every day for, like, a month,” says Harrelson, who’s been friends with the Oscar-winning actress since they worked together in the 2011 cop drama “Rampart.” “She’d make me lunch, then have to talk me off the ledge. She was really great at that; she’s that kind of friend, so supportive and says the things you need to hear. I still had deep insecurity about it, and then I realized, hell man, it does not have to be an exact copy of what he did. Just don’t let that interfere
with the truth of it.”
Harrelson applied the same approach to portraying the very well-documented Lyndon Johnson for Rob Reiner’s upcoming biopic. As for his roguish character in next year’s young Han Solo flick, the actor wants to maintain a sense of mystery as to just what the nature of the relationship is between his older Beckett and Alden Ehrenreich’s space cowboy-intraining.
He also tries to be tightlipped about Lucasfilm’s firing of the project’s original directors, “The LEGO Movie’s”
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, well into production. The pair were replaced with old Hollywood hand Ron Howard.
“I don’t know that I can comment as a comparison,” Harrelson says when asked what new perspective Howard has brought to the endeavor. “I wouldn’t be allowed to do that. But I’ll just say he is doing a great job, Ron. He’s a hell of a director, and I feel like we all got real lucky that he’s come on board.”
Whatever production politics they may entail, Harrelson likes working in big franchises such as “Star Wars,” “Hunger Games” and “Now You See Me” for one simple reason.
“It’s nice to be in a movie you know people are going to watch,” says the actor, who got his start as a lovably lunkheaded barback on TV’s “Cheers” before establishing himself as a movie star in the likes of “White Men Can’t Jump,” “Indecent Proposal” and “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” “You know people will see the Han Solo film, and it’s cool. I do a lot of indie films that maybe nobody will see. I had a movie, ‘Wilson,’ that came out earlier this year, and it just came and went. But I liked the movie.”
Indeed, despite all of the ups and downs of both the big and small movie businesses, Harrelson is in a very happy — if knackered — place about where his career is at now.
“It’s a bizarre thing to have so many movies come out in a year or so,” he acknowledges. “What’s even more bizarre is that they’re good! You never know when that’s gonna happen. It’s really up to the luck of the draw and having a director who puts it together right.”