Dean and I saw Running With Scissors last night. What a weird and wacky movie! I had not read Augusten Burroughs's over-the-top memoir of the same name, but it didn't matter. Annette Bening is terrific as his narcissitic, therapy-addled, poet-wanna-be mom, who gives Augusten up to her nut-case therapist and his family to adopt and raise as their own. The scenes of her meeting with her poetry group, fantasizing about reading in Carnegie Hall, decopaging her rejections slips from the New Yorker, are hysterically funny. Joseph Fiennes as Augusten's 33 year old gay lover (Augusten is 13-17 years old in the timeline of the movie), with his Village People handlebar moustache, is just a revelation. Jill Clayburgh as the nutty psychiatrist's dogfood-eating wife is the surprise light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
Sounds like Augusten Burroughs turned out fine in the end, anyway. So is his "traumatic adolescence" all just a wash? Or is it what made him who he is, and he wouldn't change a thing? You can see the poetry of his real life mom, Margaret Robison, here.
The 70's' music soundtrack was a hit with this viewer. The movie had me at "Benny and the Jets."
1 comment:
Oh I want to see this! I didn't read RWS but I read "Dry" -- his memoir about going to rehab and being a drunk. I could relate. LOL. He's a hilarious writer. I've heard there's some dispute about how much of RWS is true. And in dry there was a disclaimer saying that some of the scenes were entirely fictionalized, characters composited, etc. There were a few places in that memoir where I was like, "Nah" but overall it was an entertaining book and well-written.
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