Rebuilding the Glass castle
memoirist Jeanette walls reveals what its like to see her life play out on a movie
I N2005, Jeannette Walls had to confess a secret.
The journalist — who for several years had written the “Intelligencer” column for New York Magazine — was then a columnist at MSNBC.com and the news of her soon-to-be-published memoir, “The Glass Castle,” had been leaked to a gossip column. Walls went to her boss, convinced she would be fired once the truth came out: that her polished New York existence, her life of covering A-list parties and going to the hottest restaurants, was based on a lie.
“I said, ‘Listen, I’ve got this shameful past,’ ” Walls recalls to The Post. “‘My parents were homeless and then they were squatters,’ and she was like, ‘That’s really interesting. Do you mind if we review the book when it comes out?’ Later, she confessed that she was really worried I was going to say I was a hooker.”
Still, the book was a shocker, a big confession in a time before big confessions were the norm on social media and reality shows.
It revealed the story of Walls’ povertystricken childhood and life spent moving around the country, sometimes rooting through trash cans for food with her siblings. Her parents moved 27 times during the first five years of their marriage. Most of the time, they were skipping out on rent, but Walls’ father, Rex, was also convinced the FBI was after them. Rex was an alcoholic; his wife, Rose Mary, a self-proclaimed “excitement addict” who frequently put the needs of art and writing above caring for her four children.
The family eventually settled in Welch, W.Va., when Walls was 10, living in a three-room house with sporadic electricity. As soon as she was able, a year before graduating from high school — she left Welch and hightailed it to New York to make it as a journalist. But she couldn’t really escape: Her parents followed suit in the mid-’80s and were homeless in the city before becoming squatters in a derelict East Village building. A pivotal scene in “The Glass Castle” — both the book and the new movie — is when Walls is in a taxi after leaving a glamorous event and sees her mother on the sidewalk, digging through trash.
The book would go on to spend more than seven years on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s now been made into a movie starring Oscar winner Brie Larson as adult Jeannette, with Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts playing her parents.
“I was on the set and started shaking and crying the first time I saw Woody [in character],” says Walls. Her father died in 1994. “I adored that shiftless drunk, and to see him reincarnated into Woody’s body was amazing.”
Naomi Watts, who played Jean- nette’s mother, was determined to get the part right. “She talked to my mother, e-mailed with her,” says Walls. “She was fearless and compassionate about getting my mother right. People read the book and think she’s a villain. She’s not.”
Walls left New York in 2006 and moved with her husband to a horse farm in Virginia; her mother lives on a cottage on the farm. Since “The Glass Castle,” she has published two novels,“The Silver Star” and “Half Broke Horses,” and is currently working on a novel set in the 1920s. She returns to the city frequently for visits but doesn’t regret the move.
“I love [Manhattan], it’s a gorgeous city,” she says. “But once you get used to having a parking space and doing laundry, you realize everything doesn’t have to be a fight. New York brings out the scrapper in me. That’s not the better me. It got me somewhere, and it was a useful tool, but it’s time for me to put it away.”
And the experience of having her life story turned into a movie?
“Honestly, it was kind of magical. I expected it to be weirder and creepier, but I felt that the director and everyone who touched this film had such a sensitivity and a reverence,” says Walls, who still hears from readers wanting to confess their own secrets.
“So many of us are walking around with shame and secrets that we think make us less of a person. But the thing that you think is your greatest curse is your greatest blessing. You put it to work for you and realize you’re not alone. That’s the magic of storytelling.”