From day one, Ryan Murphy has kept me involved.  People had warned me, "Once you option your book, it's out of your hands."  I was like, "Good.  Go, take it away, make it pretty.  Call me when I have to buy a tux." 
I've never felt like somebody has taken my life story and run away with it.  I always felt that Ryan deeply cared not only about making a great movie, but making a movie that I, in the end, would feel was an honest reflection of my experience.  I never knew what to expect in my life, from one moment to the next.
I know there will be people who watch this film and think, "Oh, it's so depressing.  What a horrible life.  How could you have survived?"  But I did survive.  And I went on to write a book that was a big bestseller.  And now, a movie.
So when you step back, you realize that my story has the happiest ending of all. Yes, it was a rough childhood.  And yes, I experienced a lot of things that are outside the norm.  But, I never lost my hope.  I never lost my belief that tomorrow could be better than today.  I never, for one moment, stopped believing that things could turn out OKAY in the end.
All of this shines through in the film, all of this hope and optimism.  In the end, "Running with Scissors" isn't really the story about a boy with a horrible childhood.  It's the story about a boy who loved life more than anything.  And would never, no matter what, give up that love of being alive.
Augusten Burroughs
July, 2006

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
At once a blistering comedy and a deeply moving human drama, it is the mesmerizing tale of how a young man survived a nightmare childhood  - while keeping his sense of humor and his sense of forgiveness intact.  The film is writer/director Ryan Murphy's interpretation of Augusten Burrough's personal memoir.  In the film, Murphy not only tells the story of a warped, out-of-control, 70s-era coming of age,  he has also crafted a strikingly universal story about the strange power of families, the wonderment of childhood, the madness of adulthood and the revelation of finding your way in spite of it all. 

TURNING PERSONAL MEMORIES INTO A MOVIE 
The film depicts Burroughs' unsettling, humor-filled and highly personal recollections of growing up under the most berserk and often shocking circumstances.   
Raised by a bright but barely functional mother given to psychotic episodes, and an alcoholic father who left when the going got rough, the film tells the story of how Augusten was ultimately sent at 12 years old to live with his mother's shrink and the doctor's family of outrageous eccentrics. Seen through the eyes of a child's vivid mix of curiosity, compassion and dismay,  the film depicts a flurry of alternately bracing and hilarious encounters with mental illness, sex, prescription drugs and counter-culture therapy that left Augusten's boyhood innocence in smithereens - and illustrates the way in which Augusten eventually broke free of it all to become a lauded writer. 
Burroughs says now of his childhood:  "It was definitely crazy and kind of awful and scary but it was also thrilling because I knew it was a once in a life time experience.  And I paid very close attention when I was living that experience.  I knew that I was going through something that if it didn't kill me would make me better in the end." 
Audiences will fall in love not only with the film's raucous, unflinching humor but with the inspirational idea that a person can move beyond, and even come to laugh about, the most twisted and seemingly incomprehensible of pasts.
Writer/director Ryan Murphy found himself instantly drawn to this project.  Best known as the creator of the provocative television drama "Nip/Tuck," Murphy was struck with a vision for how to create a screenplay that would tell an entertaining but also transcendent cinematic experience right from the start. "What I love about this project is that even though it was a very specific story about childhood, it's also very much about the universal quest for family and identity," says Murphy.  "I always thought the most important thing is that this is a survival story.  It says that, ultimately, if you believe in yourself and in the idea that everybody has something to say, you can endure dire circumstances. It's also a story of forgiveness.  Forgiving others is often really about forgiving yourself -- and when Augusten decides to forgive his mother for giving him away and for her mental illness, it allows him to go forward with hope."
Murphy found that, despite the bizarre circumstances, many elements of Burroughs' reminiscences of growing up in the 70s resonated deeply with his own. "Augusten and I are the same age so we have the same reference points," Murphy explains.  "All the movies and television shows, record albums, books and magazines that he loved, I loved.  It's interesting when you find somebody like that who is a real soul mate on a creative level."
When Murphy first met with Burroughs, he made it clear that he intended to focus on the larger spirit and themes of the film.  The bottom line was that Murphy wanted to make absolutely sure that none of the film's characters, no matter their failings or foibles, would come off on screen as villains.  Instead, he hoped to emphasize the stark and sometimes tragic humanity of everyone involved in the story - from the eternally vulnerable Deirdre to Dr. Finch, who in the film can be as charmingly affectionate as he is disconcerting.  Burroughs was intrigued by this approach, especially because Murphy wasn't willing to stop until he had fully probed Augusten's life and mind. 
"When people see the movie, they will see some things that came through the personal discussions Ryan and I had," says Burroughs.  "There's a lot of additional richness in the screenplay that came from our talking together. At the same time, Ryan was also very protective.  He was never thinking about wild, funny ideas he could use simply for the sake of the film, or saying 'this would be cool.'  There was none of that.  He wanted the film to be very emotionally honest, and it is." 
Some decisions, including leaving out Augusten's older brother and down-sizing the Finch household, were made in order to condense the film into a tighter, more cinematic structure. Burroughs allowed Murphy total freedom because he saw that the means were focused on the end of bringing out the story's emotional resonance for a film audience. 
Burroughs comments: "What Ryan did is to focus the film on the search for family and the yearning to find your own place in the world.  He took a lot of my internal dialogue - my deepest feelings and anxieties - and somehow turned it all into something wonderfully visual.  I was really impressed with what he did." 
"This is an epic tale, in so many ways," Murphy explains.  It begins in 1972 and ends in 1980; and I felt I needed to know the in-between parts, so that as a writer and an artist I could figure out what tale I was telling.  Ultimately, I spent nearly a year interviewing Augusten about his mother and his life.  I practically wrote my own book based on things Augusten and I discussed." 
Another thing Murphy and Burroughs agreed upon was that the lynchpin of the film had to be humor.  "Humor is a kind of life raft," notes Burroughs.  "When life is terrible or scary, you can sort of float on it until you reach higher ground.  There's a lot of absurdity in life, even in the darkest parts, and that's an important part of how I see the world." 
As development got under way, producer Dede Gardner of Plan B also collaborated closely with Murphy in mounting the film. "From the first, I honestly never thought about this project without Ryan Murphy in mind," comments Gardner.  "It needed someone up to the challenge of material that is both very funny and completely heartbreaking.  It's not an easy task to lift people off the ground, get them laughing and just when they think they're soaring, they hit the ground because something has made them cry.  I knew that Ryan could weave together that tapestry in a way that would leave the audience stunned and thrilled at the end of the movie."
Murphy was acutely aware that the writing task that lay ahead would push him into many of modern culture's most dangerous realms.  "This is a movie that touches upon pedophilia, drug addiction, homosexuality, mental health and creative impulses - it's about all kinds of things that are very difficult to translate in a responsible, artistic way," he notes.
But what continued to drive and inspire him throughout the process was a deep sense of what the story was truly about at its very center.  "I always had in my head that this would be the story of how a boy makes a family," summarizes the writer/director. "I wrote one word on a note card and posted it by my computer:  the word was 'family.'"

HOW TO CAST LIFE'S MOST ECCENTRIC CHARACTERS
As he was writing, Ryan Murphy tried to avoid the temptation of envisioning any particular actors in the roles he was creating.  "I wanted them to truly be their own people," he explains.  But once he finished the script, Murphy and Burroughs had fun sitting down together and coming up with a list of their ultimate "dream" cast.  Astonishingly, across the board, each and every actor from that list eventually said yes. 
Murphy knew there were no easy roles in the bunch.  Without exception, each character in the film is rife with roiling emotions, flagrant contradictions and deep-seated problems - so he would need highly accomplished actors capable of embodying both the weird and the wonderful simultaneously, with both a comic tinge and a nuanced realism. "Usually characters are either good guys or bad guys but in this story, they're very much both.  I think actors love to play that because it's so challenging. But I also knew I had to be prepared when I met with these actors," he says.  "I went to each of them and begged for a meeting.  Then I would tell them why they I thought they were perfect, why they couldn't turn me down and why I wouldn't take no. The fact that I was able to convince this incredibly talented group of people, whose work I have long idolized, to be in my very first movie was thrilling."
Producer Dede Gardner believes it was Murphy's passion and page-turning screenplay that led the ensemble to take a chance on a first-time director.  "Ryan's talent is undeniable but he had never directed a motion picture before," she says.  "His calling card had to be the script and the words on the page that defined the roles.  Every single character had so many dimensions - a beginning, a middle and an end.  The script opened the door to the actors and then Ryan ushered them in."

DEIRDRE BURROUGHS: ANNETTE BENING AS A MOTHER WITH DELUSIONS OF FAME AND FREEDOM
For Ryan Murphy, one of the most vital characters in the film was always Deirdre Burroughs, who not only drives the events of the story but emerges as a deeply complicated and fascinating woman of her times beneath her often painfully hilarious words and actions.  She begins the film as Augusten's co-conspirator and confidante but, buffeted by wild bipolar mood swings and an insatiable hunger for artistic success, will later abandon him in a betrayal it takes years of hard-won wisdom to forgive. 
In some ways, Murphy viewed Deirdre as typical of many 70s moms who were confused and torn between their roles as selfless matriarchs and society's feminist dreams of "self-actualization."  He also saw her as the most tragic kind of artist - the type whose work never quite reaches the starry heights of their ambitions.  Yet Deirdre was also very much a victim of her own messed-up chemistry, a woman desperately trying to survive an out-of-control inner landscape of delusions. 
Murphy understood that he would need an extraordinarily versatile actress in order to get at Deirdre's particular mix of humor, pathos, psychosis and heartbreak - which is why multiple Academy Award® nominee Annette Bening was one of the very first actors he approached for the film. 
"You must be able to empathize with Deirdre, a character who is not always empathetic," explains Murphy.  "Annette, who for some years has wanted to do a picture about mental illness, was able to do that.  That is a gift she has.  Hers is one of the most harrowing portraits of mental illness I've seen. She was very specific, very prepared.  She did an enormous amount of research and spoke to many authorities. She knew how someone would speak on a certain drug, how her speech should be slurred, where her focus should be slightly off. She made sure that it was always about the truth." 
Murphy especially admired Bening's willingness to take an enormous risk in playing a mother who ultimately neglects her child and puts him in danger's way.  "It was very important to Annette that although you don't agree with what Deirdre did, you understand why she did it," says the director. "We worked very hard to present both sides of the character because if it wasn't carefully modulated, she could be a modern day Medea.  Annette gave a truly daring performance, throwing herself into it full force.  Not many actresses would be willing to be this exposed, naked or raw." 
Bening was an immediate fan of the screenplay.  "What I loved about it is that it's the story of someone who not only lived through a harrowing ordeal but who lived to tell the tale with wit, intelligence and insight," she says.  "What really moved me is that Augusten was able to address his past and move on." 
Right away Bening saw Deirdre, despite her disastrous efforts at motherhood, through a kaleidoscopic view.  "I think she's a woman of great passion who loves her son but also struggles with being very ill," she observes. "She's a woman who is lost yet searching for something inside of herself.  She's also a great Diva, full of humor, energy and intelligence -- a very complex woman." 
But while Bening found Deirdre's inner life intriguing, she doesn't excuse Deirdre's actions, which brought so much tumult to her son's life.  "I'm sympathetic to her but that doesn't mean the story is sympathetic to her," she notes.  "She made a lot of choices that were very destructive to say the least. I think she loved her son dearly -- but she also began to see him as somebody hampering her from expressing herself, sexually and creatively, to the fullest extent." 
In her relentless desire for freedom and expression, Bening also saw Deirdre as being very much a product of 1970s America.  "The story takes place in the middle of the Women's Movement when there was a huge change going on and I think that has a lot to do with Deirdre's own quest for self discovery," the actress comments. "She very much wanted to be liberated from her domestic life, to break out and be free to write. I think for a lot of people who feel a creative calling, who feel as if there is something inside that you have to get out, the need to write or paint or sing, is like oxygen.  Deirdre felt that this was necessary for her survival."
To dig even deeper into Deirdre's fractured psyche, Bening not only consulted psychiatric experts but had many intensive conversations with Augusten Burroughs about life in the shadow of his mother's pendulum swings.  "He was very helpful to me and incredibly specific," she says.  "He has a great memory for details."
Burroughs was equally impressed with Bening.  "The questions she asked were not questions like 'how did your mother laugh?' She never asked questions like that.  She asked questions about history, about family relationships and dynamics, about hopes and dreams and even what a family means.  That's what she asked." 
Ultimately, Bening came to see her character as a problematic person who nevertheless passed along more than just the family's genes for eccentricity to Augusten.  "Deirdre made many mistakes in the raising of her son, but I also think she had a real knack for survival inside her," says Bening, "And that might be the one great quality she passed onto her son because he became an incredible survivor, Augusten." 

AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS:JOSEPH CROSS AS A WRY TRAVELER THROUGH A CHILDHOOD HELL
Casting a young actor to play Augusten Burroughs would become one of the first major cruxes of the production.  Ryan Murphy set out on a quest to find someone who could embody the contrasting dark wit and upbeat spirit of the narrator of the film - the naïve boy with hairdresser dreams who is thrust into sexual, emotional and familial chaos -- yet also an actor who could truly make the part his own.  "Most of all I needed someone who people would care deeply about because the audience has to follow Augusten without hesitation into these incredible events," notes Murphy. 
This was one role for which Murphy held auditions and it was during these that he came upon Joe Cross, an 18 year-old who made his feature film debut as a child in M. Night Shyamalan's "Wide Awake" and has gone on to a promising career. " Joe Cross was the only person who read for the role that made me cry," the director recalls. Adds Dede Gardner:  "Joe was so vulnerable and so real that you immediately cared about him. He enabled you to feel Augusten's emotions but at the same time he really made you laugh at the absurd situation this poor kid is in." 
Cross had just started his Freshman year at Trinity College in Connecticut when he received the script.  He stayed up until three in the morning finishing it and was completely riveted by the role of Augusten.  "I thought it was one of the best parts for someone my age I had ever seen," he says.  "But it was also quite daunting because I knew I would want to do justice to him and to the screenplay." 
Ryan Murphy posed the tough question to Cross of just how he would aim to do that. "When I first met Ryan, he asked me what I had in common with Augusten - how would I be able to understand him?" recalls Cross.  "It was such a valid question. First of all, I am not gay and I had a very normal upbringing with kind, loving, supportive parents.  But, I had just spent my first semester away at college and it had been hard being away from my family and my closest friends for the first time.  I made the comparison that college is also a chaotic place with lots of unusual people around - just like at the Finch house - but at the same time you're really completely alone."
Once cast, Cross faced the enormous task of taking his character through a 180 degree transformation from shocked, repressed child to humor-fueled survivor of a whole slew of life's most devastating problems.  "Augusten changes drastically," he notes.  "At the beginning of the film, he's just an innocent child but then he has to deal with all these very adult situations: his mother's psychosis, his father's alcoholism, his parents' separation, the involvement of the Finches in his life and then, his relationship with Neil Bookman.  What's so interesting is that Augusten is someone who so craves normalcy but he winds up in absolute bedlam and has to find his way through." 
Cross began by meeting at length with the grown up Augusten Burroughs, who openly shared his innermost perspective with the actor.  "I really tried to explain to Joe where I was coming from," recalls Burroughs, "that I was very shy and kind of uptight and concerned about my hair and my nice polyester clothes being lint free - and then I walked into the Finch's house and realized it was sink or swim.  If I was going to survive, I had to embrace my surroundings." 
To further get ready for the role, Cross also had to research the 1970's, an era that had passed before the young actor was even born.  "I watched videotapes of shows like 'Johnny Carson' and 'Sonny and Cher' and looked through books of 70s fashion just to get a better understanding of the feeling of the times," he says. 
In preparing psychologically for the role, Cross explored each of the intricate relationships his character has with both his biological and "adoptive" families.  At the heart of Augusten's life and unending traumas is his mother, Deirdre - and he can't seem to shake her profound influence no matter what she does to drive him away.  "Augusten's relationship with Deirdre is really interesting because she's constantly throwing him to the curb and dismissing him and not being the mother that he wants or needs -- yet he always goes back to her," says Cross.  "He has an unconditional love for her but in the end, he's forced to see that she's never going to be there for him and he has to move on. And as hard as it is imagine . . . I really do think he comes to forgive her." 
Meanwhile, desperately seeking someone to fill in the gaping hole left by his mom, Augusten finds it in the most unlikely of places:  in Agnes Finch, the kibble-eating, cleaning-averse wife of his mother's psychiatrist.  Despite her mysterious ways, it is Agnes who gives Augusten hope for the future, advising him that "dreams can get you through the hard times."  "I think surpisingly, Agnes ends up being the mother that Augusten doesn't have," allows Cross.  "She and Augusten form a bond, and when she gifts him with the treasured Handbook of Cosmetology, it's the most selfless thing that anyone has done for him in a very long time - if ever. The fact that someone is interested in helping him obtain his dreams is a very important moment for him."
In the freaky-deaky inner sanctum of the Finch household, Augusten also finds himself drawn to two of the family's most unusual members:  disco-loving, tough-talking teenaged daughter Natalie, who becomes his closest friend; and the disturbed but alluring Neil Bookman who seduces the teenaged Augusten.  For Cross, Augusten's under-age relationship with Bookman the pedophile is one of the most heartrending aspects of his coming of age.  As written for the screen by Ryan Murphy, their unsettling alliance isn't black and white, but filled with both clearly unethical behavior and legitimate emotional connection. 
"Bookman is such a tragic character," Joe Cross observes. "I think he's probably the loneliest person in the story.  Everybody has thrown Bookman away.  But in an incredibly twisted way, I think he becomes another father figure to Augusten, the one adult to whom he can relate.  Augusten can commiserate with Bookman about Finch and he can complain to him about his problems.  Bookman gives him the attention that nobody else is giving him. It's bittersweet because by the time Augusten realizes that he really does love Bookman, he has gone away and there is no way to find him.  Bookman never knows that one piece of information that would have made him so happy."
For all the madness and mayhem that young Augusten endures, and for all his run-ins with sex, drugs and insanity before he's even grown peach fuzz, Joe Cross wanted to make sure that the character is never seen from a "poor-me" perspective - something he believes is key to understanding the poignancy of both the real Augusten Burroughs and the on-screen character.  "I didn't want it to ever come across that Augusten feels likes a victim or is self pitying, because he's not," says Cross.  "He's a very strong person and I think his story is about the idea that if you are capable of forgiveness you are also able to survive and endure through the most unbelievable things."   

INTO THE FINCH FAMILY HOUSEHOLD: BRIAN COX, JOSEPH FIENNES, EVAN RACHEL WOOD, GWYNETH PALTROW AND JILL CLAYBURGH AS THE AMERICAN FAMILY TURNED UPSIDE DOWN 

AN AMERICAN GOTHIC, 1970's STYLE: ABOUT THE FILM'S DESIGN


RYAN MURPHY
AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS

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