Indie Highlight: Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors is writer/director Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’s 2002 memoir of the same title. Murphy is the creator, producer, and also serves as a writer and director on the cable series “Nip/Tuck” – a show that is disturbing, graphic, lurid, and deserving of every word of critical acclaim it gets. He also served as a creator and producer on the WB series “Popular,” which only lasted two seasons, but in my opinion was the only WB series that did not involve vampires that was worth watching, and way ahead of it’s time.

As the film begins we see the precocious, effeminate Augusten at age six (Jack Kaeding), the son of a math professor (Alec Baldwin) and a housewife (Annette Bening). Extremely close to his mother at a young age, but the time Augusten reaches his teen years (where he is played by Joseph Cross, soon to be seen in Clint Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers), his parents’ marriage is crumbling and destroying them both in the process – his father is an alcoholic prone to violent outbursts, his mother, an aspiring poet, is having a complete mental breakdown while desperately clinging to delusions of grandeur. With neither parents fit to raise Augusten, he is sent to live with their therapist, the eccentric (and at one time brilliant) Dr. Finch. The Finch household is a complete madhouse: clutter (expensive furnishings from more lucrative times, papers, books, thrift store baubles, out-dated medical equipment) fills ever inch of space, the Christmas tree hasn’t been taken down in two years, the front lawn is practically a junkyard, and the house itself is bright pink. Anges Finch, wife to the doctor (Jill Clayburgh – “Nip/Tuck,” “Ally McBeal,” dozens of other television shows and movies) spends her afternoons eating Kibbles while watching Dark Shadows. The elder daughter Hope (Gywenth Paltrow) uses a Bible like a Magic 8 Ball and speaks to her cat telepathically. Natalie (Evan Rachael Wood – Thirteen) attempts electroshock therapy on Augusten upon their first meeting, though each finds a surrogate sibling in the other. What follows is Augusten’s coming-of-age as he learns about himself and the world he lives in under bizarre, and often dangerous, circumstances.

Adapting a book like Running with Scissors, which has spent nearly three years on the New York Times bestseller list, is a gutsy undertaking, especially for a filmmaker coming from television (the press notes do not mention a previous film, though IMDB lists a directorial credit for a film titled Need in 2005, though there is little information on the film, which leads me to believe it was not released or just played a limited festival circuit). There’s a few things to consider: On the one hand, the book has millions of fans who are (hopefully) going to go see it in theaters, which should generate millions and millions of dollars at the box office. Millions of dollars of revenue at the box office make Murphy’s bosses happy, but then there are the fans of the book who are going to expect a lot from the film adaptation (and there’s bound to be at least a few film critics in this lot), and the pressure is on to make the fans happy as well. Then throw in the fact that the film is a 1970s period piece with an ensemble cast (which means it has incredible potential or incredible potential to be disastrous).

These things considered, the fact that this is Murphy’s first feature film being released in theaters immediately tells us a few things about him: 1) he is passionate about this project, no one hands a fairly new director the rights to a bestselling novel and an ensemble cast, he had to work to get this film made; 2) he is extremely confident in his own talent and ability, a necessary quality to successfully make a film of any caliber.

Murphy’s confidence, talent, and passion shine through in Running with Scissors, as does his humbleness. Augusten Burroughs was kept involved throughout the entire filmmaking process, and Murphy backs up the information provided by the memoir with extensive research and interviews with Burroughs – he has stated that with the time he spent with Burroughs, he could have written his own version of Running with Scissors. He brings with him “Nip/Tuck” collaborators Christopher Baffa (Director of Photography), Byron Smith (Editor), Lou Eyrich (Costumer Designer), and James L. Levine (Composer), and seems to have assembled quite a talented filmmaking team. Running with Scissors has the feeling of a film made by a director who is both in total control over the filmmaking process, but who also understands that filmmaking is a collaborative process.

I have never read Running with Scissors, and as with any adaptation, I doubt that all fans of the book will be head-over-heels for the film, all fans of any book are ever head-over-heels for the film adaptation. Likewise, not all critics are going to sing its praises. I found it extremely funny and entertaining, and I will go see Murphy’s next film, Dirty Tricks, another adaptation, this time from a play by John Jeter, about the aftermath of the Nixon Watergate scandal, scheduled to be filmed and released in 2007.