1. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION At once a blistering comedy and a deeply moving human drama, RUNNING WITH SCISSORS 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. INTO THE FINCH FAMILY HOUSEHOLD: BRIAN COX, JOSEPH FIENNES, EVAN RACHEL WOOD, GWYNETH PALTROW AND JILL CLAYBURGH AS THE AMERICAN FAMILY TURNED UPSIDE DOWN This film tells the story of Augusten Burroughs who is just barely a teenager, when his mother abandons him to the care of her shrink, Dr. Finch. 7. NORMAN BURROUGHS: ALEC BALDWIN AS A MATHEMATICIAN WHOSE FAMILY JUST DOESN’T ADD UP For the role of Augusten’s father Norman, whose departure from the Burroughs family precipitates a devastating chain of events for his son, Ryan Murphy right away envisioned Alec Baldwin, with whom he had worked on an episode of “Nip/Tuck.” 8. AN AMERICAN GOTHIC, 1970’s STYLE: ABOUT THE FILM’S DESIGN The next challenge that lay in front of Ryan Murphy was creating a wholly unique visual world for the Burroughs and the Finches to inhabit.

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

This film tells the story of Augusten Burroughs who is just barely a teenager, when his mother abandons him to the care of her shrink, Dr. Finch. Packed off to live in the Finch’s teetering pink Victorian house, Augusten is thrust into a world where Christmas trees linger in summer, the dishes are dirty, Valium is the answer to most problems and playing with electroshock-therapy machines are a form of children’s entertainment.

And yet, no one in the Finch household is quite what they seem on the surface. This is especially true of Dr. Finch, the peculiar psychiatrist who first mysteriously appears in Augusten’s life in the middle of the night, summoned to solve one of his parents’ violent fights – and eventually becomes his surrogate father, much to Augusten’s dismay. Though Augusten fears that Dr. Finch might be even crazier than his mother, he also discovers there are many sides to this complicated man – from the weirdly scatological to the profoundly philosophical.

When writing the screenplay, Ryan Murphy collaborated with Augusten Burroughs, to bring additional dimensions to Dr. Finch. When it came time for casting Murphy felt there was just one man who could truly bring the multi-layered portrait to life: Brian Cox, the prolific, Emmy Award-winning, Scottish actor who has drawn acclaim for numerous memorable roles in film, television and theatre, most recently in such films as Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation” and Woody Allen’s “Match Point.”

Cox was instantly drawn to Murphy’s screenplay. “This was one of the best scripts that I’d read in a long, long time,” he says. “It’s so rich. I also think Augusten’s journey, though more extreme than most, is similar to what a lot of children go through – having to confront the craziness of adults, the craziness of society’s structures or lack of structures, and somehow survive.”

He began his preparations by having lengthy discussions with Augusten Burroughs about how he planned to approach Dr. Finch. “We talked about how the Finches were eccentric but not really malevolent in any way,” he says. “I found that Augusten has a very deep and lasting affection for these characters. He doesn’t judge them. Their actions were extreme but their intentions were something different – and that’s what makes them so touching.”

Cox also familiarized himself with Finch’s counter-cultural psychotherapeutic methods. He began to see that his character, like Deirdre Burroughs, was very much a product of his times. “This was the 70s when America was just coming out of the free love, hippie, Timothy Leary era and the whole human sensibility was being tested in every different kind of way,” he notes. “There were all kinds of strange and crazy therapy movements that happened then – primal therapy, screaming therapy – all in an attempt to see if there was a button you could push to release somebody. Finch was a part of that. He represents the idea that there are no taboos, that everyone should be free – he was the new wave of psychiatrist who believed in letting it all hang out. But of course once you say there are no taboos, people don’t know what to do or how far to go and things start to fall apart, as they do in Finch’s house.”

Especially intriguing to Cox is Finch’s philosophy towards Deirdre, whom he believes the doctor legitimately wants to help. “He sees women like Deirdre as going into a world that isn’t quite ready for them and therefore it makes them crazy,” the actor explains. “And they have to somehow be helped, led or given the means to get through it.”

On the set, Cox truly became the charismatic but deeply flawed leader who holds his entire family, as well as his patients, in a kind of strange enthrallment. All of the actors found themselves riveted by him. “It was such a privilege to watch him bring this character so fully to life,” says Dede Gardner. “It’s really impossible to imagine anyone else having played the role.”

While Dr. Finch becomes Burroughs’ stand-in father, it is Finch’s “adopted” son, Neil Bookman, who yanks him even further over the precipice into adulthood by starting a sexual relationship with the already confused teen. Bookman is one of the story’s key characters but the filmmakers knew that because of his controversial nature he would be incredibly hard to cast. Playing a desperately lonely man given to rages, depression and pedophilia would be an enormous gamble for any actor. Yet it was a risk that Joseph Fiennes – the British actor whose many acclaimed roles include Will Shakespeare in “Shakespeare In Love” and Bassanio in Michael Radford’s “The Merchant of Venice” -was willing to take. Fiennes wasn’t so much afraid of the character as he was thrilled to face the challenge of making Bookman utterly real.

“Neil Bookman is probably one of the most difficult parts I’ve ever come across -which to me was the inspiration to tackle it,” explains Fiennes. “I thought the script was the most arresting piece of writing -- original, very peculiar and difficult, but very funny as well.”

To really get into Bookman’s world, Fiennes would have to try to analyze him without judging his actions. “The key was really trying to understand Bookman, his illness and his sexuality. I needed to make him human and less of a cardboard monster,” he says. But it wasn’t easy. Fiennes continues: “I felt it was pretty abhorrent what Bookman put young Augusten through – and it became a huge challenge to me as an actor to really understand the nature and the reasons behind their relationship. The audience has to understand through the performance that there was also genuine love between the two of them.”

Fiennes came to see Bookman as being driven at heart by an urge to protect Augusten – even if his good intentions are cloaked in nefarious sexual attraction. “I think that Neil sees that Augusten is a kind of innocent who has been brought into the Finch family – and he already knows what Finch is about and what the family is like. He wants to help Augusten, but the irony is that he becomes one of the people who interrupts his childhood and takes his innocence away,” sums up Fiennes.

Also attempting to guide Augusten through the Finch family maelstrom is youngest daughter Natalie, who decked out in her hot pants and platform shoes, tries to turn meticulous, introverted Augusten into more of a free spirit. The filmmakers set out on a search for a very special young actress to take on the part. When they saw 17 year-old Evan Rachel Wood, who rocketed to attention with her searing role in the indie hit “Thirteen,” they knew she was a perfect match for Natalie’s unusual blend of vivaciousness, secretiveness and fears of truly breaking away.

“Evan had the fierceness that Natalie needs,” explains Gardner. “Augusten is not fierce in any way and at that time in his life, he needed someone who would be able to wrestle him to the ground. Evan’s Natalie does that without equivocation and without hesitancy. Evan has a huge reservoir of real emotion at her core and she permits it to surface in the role, which is amazing given how young she is. In the end, she and Joe Cross had a wonderful chemistry together.”

Wood initially responded to the raw, unfiltered emotions of Ryan Murphy’s screenplay. “I love brutally honest scripts and I love material that no one has ever seen before and I really don’t think that anybody has ever seen a story quite like this one,” she says.

She also felt an affinity with Natalie, who she sees as being trapped between devotion to her family, no matter how crazy they are, and a burning need to forge her own identity. “Surprisingly, Natalie is the most realistic of the Finches, which is saying a lot considering that family,” laughs Wood. “Natalie’s dream is to go to college but she thinks her family is too weird for that to ever come true. She’s extremely loyal to her father to an unhealthy degree. She feels obligated to stick by him even though he has taken her college money and given it to the IRS to save their house. Underneath it all, I think she is feeling completely helpless and hopeless.”

It is Augusten who brings a ray of hope to Natalie, and vice versa. “They really bond and become best friends because I think that when they’re together, they each feel like they’re going to be OK,” she observes. “I don’t think either of them has ever had somebody before who really supported them in who they are in their lives, so when they meet, it’s a powerful thing.”

For Wood, it was particularly thrilling to join with such an accomplished ensemble cast in creating the Finches – including Oscar® winner Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Natalie’s sister Hope, a deeply fatalistic young woman who makes key decisions in her life by pointing to random words in the Bible. “I really felt that you couldn’t have cast this movie any better,” says Wood. “Everybody is so perfect for each part. I think audiences will be really excited because there are just so many great performances in this movie.”

One of the most moving performances in the film is that of Agnes Finch, the seemingly listless matriarch who somehow manages to become a deeply loving parent to Augusten when he needs it most. The role is played by two-time Academy Award® nominee Jill Clayburgh, who reunited with Ryan Murphy after working with him on “Nip/Tuck.” “I hadn’t even read the script yet but Ryan kept saying ‘I want you to be Agnes,’” Clayburgh recalls. “And I was just thrilled when I finally saw the script because it’s such an amazing story and she is such an interesting, touching character.”

As portrayed in the film, down-trodden Agnes spends her days sitting on the couch, snacking on dog kibble and watching old black and white movies. But there is a whole other side to her story as well.

“Agnes has kind of lost her center, she’s lost control of things,” says Clayburgh. “Life has become just too much for her. Yet within her desperation and sadness, she forges a very tender relationship with Augusten, which helps her just as much as it does him. I do think she’s a kind of emotional center for the film – as askew as her world is, there is a gentleness and a kindness to her that is very moving.”

Key to Clayburgh’s portrait were her impromptu conversations with Augusten Burroughs. “When I spoke with Augusten, he started really talking about Agnes in an in depth way,” she recalls. “It was so interesting. He’d say: ‘I haven’t thought about this for years . . .’ and then he would suddenly think of details that really helped me to define her. Agnes goes through a metamorphosis in the film because, in the middle of this nightmare of mistreatment and being ignored, Augusten lets her love him, and he, in turn, loves her.”

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