“Running With Scissors”: Stranger than fiction

I saw the film “Running With Scissors” before ever reading anything written by Augusten Burroughs, whose memoir the film is based upon. After watching the film, I was so intrigued by Burroughs’ wacky childhood experiences that I immediately went to the Fayette County Public Library to check it out and read it. After all, books are always superior to the film versions that try to duplicate them.

So, I will tell you what I thought of the film prior to and after having read Burroughs’ original work.

I initially began seeing previews for this film several months ago before movies like “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Last Kiss.” It makes sense, these were lower budget films that inevitably would garner a slow-building cult following with odd and imaginative characters, and “Running With Scissors” finds itself in good company alongside such films.

The key difference between a film like “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Running With Scissors,” however, is that Burroughs’ story is true, and we all know that truth is often stranger than fiction.

Authors of fiction will tell you that writing a work of fantasy can be more difficult that writing fact. If the facts don’t line up the real world, well, that’s the way it happened, what can you do about it? In the fictional world, however, consumers expect everything to align perfectly, there can’t be any loose ends, or you feel the writer has cheated you out of something, right?

Burroughs’ memoir tells the story of his childhood experiences with an alcoholic father who distanced himself from his family and a mentally ill mother who spent his childhood in and out of hospitals and her therapist’s office. The memoir also reveals that Burroughs has an older brother who was diagnosed with Asperger's, a form of autism, who stepped away from the family as a teenager.

The film omits Burroughs’ brother, whether for time or simplification I don’t know.

Simply put, the film chronicles Augusten Burroughs as a flamboyant child with a flair for dramatics and a desire to be famous.

When his parents split up, his mother finds single parenthood too much to handle and signs custody of Burroughs over to her shrink Dr. Finch. “You’re giving me to your shrink?!” young Augusten exclaims in the film.

And that, my friends, is just the start of the wild antics and cooky behavior (not all of which is limited to Dr. Finch’s patients).

Burroughs' resilient and chameleon-like qualities helped him navigate the oft shaky grounds of his childhood, and provided him with a wealth of material for his books, of which he has now written five, and made him a bestselling author.

Not too bad for a kid who once lived in a ramshackle Victorian house half of the week and in an apartment with his mentally unstable poet mother the other half. Of course, after seeing and reading about his childhood, the tradeoff was a pricey one, and not one I envy.

Before reading Burroughs’ memoir I felt that the film was really well done, with a stellar cast and great pace. After reading it, I still believe that director Ryan Murphy, who also adapted the memoir for the screen, did an excellent job of bringing Burroughs’ childhood associates to life.

As with any book-to-film project, the film is limited in its ability to portray everything the book has accomplished. Internal monologues and time constraints often knock the wind out of otherwise well done adaptations.

In the case of “Running With Scissors,” Murphy did compress some of Burroughs’ tales to keep the film from running 5 hours or more. The all star cast includes Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alec Baldwin and is highlighted by Annette Bening, whose portrayal of Augusten’s mother Deirdre steals the show.

Brian Cox nails the role of creepy Dr. Finch, who, it is later revealed, lost his license to practice before dying in 2000, and Joseph Cross seems born to play Burroughs.

My only real complaint about the film adaptation was Murphy’s seemingly flippant attitude toward the ending of the film. All throughout the film, Murphy manages to align himself fairly closely with Burroughs' work. With a few notable changes (i.e. the omission of Burroughs’ brother, dialogue attributed to different characters than those in the book and the use of the thin and attractive Rachel Evan Woods to portray frumpy and chubby Natalie), Murphy does Burroughs’ memoir justice. However, the ending of the film sharply veers from that of the book for no apparent reason. In the end, both film and memoir leave Augusten headed to New York to try his hand at becoming famous, but the path that leads them there contrast.

“Running With Scissors” is rated R for strong language and elements of sexuality, violence and substance abuse, which are all prevalent in the film. Burroughs’ relationship with a 30 year old patient (Fiennes) of Dr. Finch while just 13 years old may be hard to stomach for many unfamiliar with Burroughs’ childhood.

For readers, I recommend picking up a copy of Burroughs’ book for the expanded life story. The film serves as a well done, funny Cliff’s Notes version of Burroughs’ memoir, however, for those who are interested in checking it out but don’t want to devote more than a couple hours to it.

Whichever you choose, brace yourself for an usual story with stories so strange they could only be true.

***1/2