When Your Life Ends Up On the Silver Screen

Posted on September 19, 2005

Walter Kirn, author of the novel that is the basis for the new film Thumbsucker starring Keanu Reeves describes for Time magazine how awkward it is to watch his childhood being played out on movie theaters across the nation. The film's writer-director Mike Mills took him to Sundance and invited out to the set. Kirn's novel was largely autobiographical, but he hadn't realized how strange it would be to see his life's obsession bared to millions of moviegoers.

Kirn tells Time, "I had always dreamed of having one of my books made into a film, but I had never expected that it would be the one about my most tender adolescent secret: the oral fixation that I tried to hide from others until I was old enough to go to college and that, when I briefly managed to break it, was replaced by a host of more troubling obsessions (some of them involving illegal substances). Writing this often mortifying story had made me feel vulnerable enough, but when Hollywood called to show interest in filming it, I wondered whether my psyche would survive."

Kirn says his life story was improved and some characters he wrote about were merged into one: "He had shortened the time span of the narrative, combined several young female characters into one and focused on the protagonist's complex relationship with his unhappy mother. He had improved my work, in other words, and I knew from the moment I read his script that his movie might be better than my book."

On the set Kirn met the actor who plays the character he had modeled on himself: "Lou Taylor Pucci, who plays Justin (the character I had modeled on myself), is shorter and darker-haired than I am, but his aura and manner were so weirdly familiar that I shivered when I shook his hand. I shivered again when Pucci winked at me and popped his right thumb into his mouth, performing the act without any of the embarrassment that still haunted me as a fortyish adult."

On the bright side, the sale of the film rights were surely enough to pay for some excellent counseling. Kirn's next book is Mission to America (Doubleday), which will be released in October.