Running with Scissors
Ryan Murphy Talks Running with Scissors
“I read a review and I was like, ‘Wow,
this is kind of about my life,’” Murphy said. “And then
I read the book and I was like, ‘Wow, this really is my life.’
I had never met anybody else who polished their allowance. My mother was
very similar to his mother, although she keeps begging me to tell people
that she didn’t drop me off with her shrink. But I related to that
idea of women trapped in a time… My mother was a beauty queen turned
housewife and then she turned on the TV in 1972 and there’s Gloria
Steinem telling you to burn your bra and that there are more choices available
to you. Many women like my mother and Augusten’s mother were like,
‘Really? Okay.’ And that struggle to sort of get an identity
and find yourself, I grew up with that. I know what it’s like to be
four and be the confidante of my mother.”
Burroughs was reluctant to sell the rights to any film producer, until he
met Murphy. “When I met him, he didn’t want to sell the book
at all and those were the kind of stories that he was like, ‘Okay,
so you’re the one.’ And he gave me the rights and I spent nine
months interviewing him because I wanted the movie to really be sort of
Terms of Endearment-y mother-son tale. Anyway, that book
is so sprawling and episodic and wild, I could have done so many different
movies. That was the story I really wanted as the through line. But we always
saw it the same way, Augusten and I. I would say he’s kind of a creative
soul mate in some way to me. I feel that way.”
Memoirs have come under fire lately as certain authors admittedly fictionalized
their tales. Murphy was not worried about the validity of Burroughs’.
“I wasn’t making a documentary. I was making my version of the
story he told of his life. I will tell you that before I was able to shoot
that script, somebody went through that script line by line and really vetted
all that information and they would come back and say, ‘Well, we found
out this happened. This was true, that was true.’ I actually think
Augusten’s childhood was much worse than he has in that book. He told
me some stories about things that happened to him that weren’t in
the book that would make your hair curl much, much worse so I never cared
about that. I believed that it was a story about a memory and when you’re
looking up as a child, things seem bigger to you and more outrageous. But
the truth of the matter is, I don't think you can make up that toilet bowl
scene. I just don’t. I couldn’t come up with that. I couldn’t
come up with the Christmas tree up for two years. There have been people
who come out in his home town who said, ‘Yeah, that happened. We were
in that house. That’s what it looked like.’”
Others, of course, are contesting the story. “Now his mother is coming
out of the woodwork, who he’s estranged from, saying it’s not
true. And I understand the pain of that. I can’t imagine being a mother
and having your son write something about you that must be so painful for
you to digest. And I feel the same way about that Finch family, so I understand
people who come out and say, ‘It didn’t happen, it didn’t
happen.’ What are they going to say? How are they going to respond?
My favorite thing that they apparently say is that, ‘Well, we know
this happened and that happened but my mother was an immaculate housekeeper.’
They’re really upset about all the dirty dishes on the table I think.”
Running with Scissors opens this Friday, October
20th.
Stay tuned for updates.
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