RUNNING WITH SCISSORS CUTS OPEN FAMILY SECRETS

(VIDEO) Annette Bening stars as the mentally ill mother of author Augusten Burroughs bringing his dysfunctional life to the screen in Running With Scissors.

From the memoirs of author Augusten Burroughs comes the film Running With Scissors starring Annette Bening as Augusten’s mentally ill yet very colorful mother searching for answers at the cost of her own son’s personal welfare. Annette talks about what drew her to play Dierdre Burroughs.

To play a woman with mental illness Bening read up on the appropriate literature and came to sympathize with her character.

“What I loved about it was that it was a story about someone, Augusten who lives through a harrowing ordeal. And not only lived to tell the tale but told it with wit and humor and intelligence and insight. He is a true survivor and that’s what really made me love it.”

One of those judgments was sending her son Augusten to live with her therapist’s family. Augusten himself looks back on how his unique alternative family shaped him as an adult.

“But the story is not sympathetic to her. She made a lot of choices that were very destructive to say the least for her child. I think she loves him dearly and she’s very ill. She’s making judgments and making choices that she feels serve her.”

Running With Scissors opens Friday in theaters.rn

“When I look back on my childhood now I do often have to sort of pinch myself that I did survive it. I mean it’s something that stays with me and it’s shaped me in many ways. My threshold for eccentricity is probably a lot higher than the average person’s. But it was an incredibly enriching experience. It was definitely crazy and awful and kind of scary but it was wonderful and it was thrilling because it was an experience and I knew this at the time that was absolutely once in a lifetime.”rn