USA: From real life to page to screen, Augusten Burrough's "Running With Scissors" premieres in Los Angeles

Popular memoir "Running With Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs has been bought to the big screen. The film stars Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, Gwenyth Paltrow and newcomer Joseph Cross as a young Burroughs surviving in an unconventional upbringing. The memoir and film explore the early life of the New York Times Best-selling author, who was adopted by his unstable mother's therapist in his teens and was subject to a sometimes abusive but always eccentric upbringing. "It just was an incredible experience, really positive, and I was so happy in the end to see that the movie captured the spirit, the soul of the book. That's what I wanted, I didn't want word-for-word the book translated to the screen, I just wanted the soul there, and it has it," says Augusten Burroughs, author of "Running With Scissors." Raised by a bright but dysfunctional mother prone to psychotic episodes, and an alcoholic father who abandoned the family, the film tells the story of how young Augusten was able to pull himself through his formative years at the Finch family household, where electro-shock therapy was common, sedatives were taken like candy, and dog kibble was considered a snack for some. While the experience may prove unbearable to most adolescents, the real-life Burroughs was able to pull himself through using his sense of humour and optimism, realistically portrayed by a stellar ensemble of actors. "It's not a documentary, it's not trying to re-tell his life, it's really all of us trying to take those events and make fiction out of it and tell our own stories. I felt a real responsibility to make it as real as I could," says actress Annette Bening, who plays Dierdre Burroughs in "Running With Scissors." Working with the writer of the memoir proved to be an invaluable resource for the actors in the film, many of whom regularly consulted Burroughs with any questions regarding the story of his life. "Running With Scissors proved to be the ultimate coming-of-age story, and after 111 weeks it remains atop the New York Times Bestsellers list for paperback non-fiction. The book was published by St. Martin's Press in July of 2002. "I felt a real sense of responsibility playing Augusten because I wanted to do justice to him and his memoir, which is just this beautiful, powerful memoir -- I don't know if you've read it but it's so eloquent, and the people that like it love it, and people would come up to me before we even started shooting and say to me 'is this going to be in? Is this going to be in?' and really sort of looked at me like 'you better do a good job because we're not going to be happy if you don't!'," says actor Joseph Cross, who plays Augusten Burroughs in "Running With Scissors." Writer and Director Ryan Murphy, who also created television drama "Nip/Tuck," first approached Burroughs with the idea to bring "Running With Scissors" to the big screen. Burroughs at first decided that he was not going to even option the memoir's rights for film, however, he was swayed by Murphy's desire to bring the book's characters to life but not to portray any of them as villains, focusing instead on the tragic humanity of everyone involved in the story. "When he said 'I want you to play Agnes' I was like 'oh, are you sure?' I was thinking -- I didn't say that -- but I really was concerned, I wasn't quite sure who she was or what I was going to do with it, so I started with the mother in her, and that's what I identified with, that she really wanted to have a beautiful family, and it all sort of fell apart on her, and then she got a second chance with Augusten," says actress Jill Clayburgh, who plays Agnes Finch in Running With Scissors. In August of 2005 the memoir came under scrutiny when members of the Massachusetts family claiming to be the inspiration for the fictional Finch family sued the author and his publisher for defamation of character and emotional distress, also claiming that several portions of the book are fictional and were written to improve its marketability. Running With Scissors opens in the United States on October 20th.

ITN Source | October 13, 2006

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