She writes from reality
JEANNETTE Walls’ 2005 best-selling memoir “The Glass Castle” — living in a basement, a bucket for a toilet, scrounging through garbage, eating cat food, then becoming a journalist I knew well — became a movie in 2017 starring Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts.
“Now it’s ‘Hang the Moon.’ Fiction. Rip-roaring. About a tough girl in tough times becoming a Prohibition rumrunner. My grandmother and my raging alcoholic dad ran moonshine. A research nerd, I read court transcripts where lawmen were involved directly. Everybody broke the law. Everyone ignored Prohibition. ‘Hang the Moon’ is based on Virginia, then the world’s wettest county.
“I spent eight years writing this. Even learned that day’s curse words. And to get reality, my writer husband would act out parts with me as I was writing it. He’d read lines then say, ‘React.’ And we’d act out the parts. Look, I’m qualified to write about someone who lived 100 years ago because I grew up without electricity or indoor plumbing.”
OK, so what’s life like for you today?
“I live on a farm in Virginia and love it. My husband wanted to be near his father in his golden years so he dragged me there kicking and screaming. Now I love it. First thing in the morning I feed the chickens. I’ve got trees, horses, dogs, deer, goats, our neighbor is the sheriff.”
Leaving the grass, mules and whatever creeps and crawls, she is now off on a six-week book tour.
It begins Tuesday 7 p.m. with her appearance at downtown’s Barnes & Noble.
B’way prince passes aside king
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Bad Cinderella” musical just opened on Broadway.
Despite Stephen Schwarzman’s producer wife Christine wearing pink top, pink skirt, pink shoes, pink bag, the show was not in the pink.
Andrew, who did not attend B’way’s Imperial Theatre opening, stayed at the bedside of his adored son, who was in a London hospice. After “Phantom of the Opera,” “Cats,” “Evita,” “School of Rock,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” this time ALW had little spirit left to lead Cinderella to any glass slipper or golden box office.
“Cinderella” opened Thursday. Son Nicholas passed away Saturday.
Comings & goings
WHAT they’re doing: The Jonas Brothers hit Brooklyn Diner Times Square for comfort food. Not hungry for matzo ball soup, fans snapped photos through the windows . . . IN ’74 Yoko Ono took EST, the Human Rage course, then drove co-takers home in her chauffeured limo. Now calm, she’s age 90 . . . JAMES Cameron on Mandarin Oriental’s 35th floor inhaling a 35-story plate of pasta. He should’ve taken the elevator down to Trattoria Dell’Arte.
Just an idea
A NOTE about CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” anchor Margaret Brennan. Hair simple not screamingly blond stringing down to her navel. Properly dressed. Shoes proper not boots. Professionally, she does an A-1 job.
APRIL Fools’ Day is coming which is actually when voting for politicians should be held. Per polls taken — only a small number of career criminals will get nailed this year. The rest could be re-elected.
Only in the USA, kids, only in the USA.
