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Getting Into Character: Running with Scissors star Joseph Cross recalls, “When I was reading for Ryan and for [producer Dede Gardner] there was [feeling of], ‘He’s not getting the humor of it. He’s making it so dark.’ I couldn’t bring myself to give humor to it because I thought that they wanted to make it cheesier,” said Cross. “They want to make it cheap because it didn’t seem right to be funny, because it wasn’t funny to me. It was so dark, so sad. But when I met with Augusten, the way that Augusten tells stories from the time it’s with such a wonderful sense of humor and wit that I understood that that was the defense mechanism, that was his saving grace. It was to be able to step back and laugh at the absurdity of it. That was really it. Meeting with Augusten was where I understood that I needed that little hook, that comic edge for the character.”
Sharing the Screen with Veteran Actors: Joseph Cross said, “I was really happy to be able do that because you really get to see the way that people work. I worked with some of the best, just some of the top level people in this film, and so for me it was just a tremendous learning experience. [It was] better than any academy that you could attend or anything like that because you get to watch it all first hand and see the way that people work.”
Living to Tell the Tale: Asked how he made it through all these experiences, Burroughs confessed, “I was unrealistic in a lot of ways. I believed that tomorrow, literally tomorrow, could be completely different than today. I believed that I might meet someone who would change my life. I believed that just because it’s hideous now doesn’t mean that it’s going to have to be hideous always. I was very ambitious and I wanted to be - I don’t mean commercially – I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be happy and I just felt like I was determined to get that.
I never was a victim. My mother was a victim and that used to embarrass me when I was little to see her blame the world and blame others and blame, blame, blame, and it used to make me feel ashamed. I used to wear that shame. It was awful and I never wanted to be like that. Never, never, never. I was always determined to take responsibility for everything myself. You know, I’m sort of the opposite. I’m the other extreme.”
The Message of Running with Scissors: What does Burroughs want people to take away from his book and/or the film? “Well, the one thing I feel like it’s important for young people to know that even if you’ve got a lousy life and your parents are not raising you well and you know it that, believe it or not, it’s okay. You can come out the other end okay and happy.
It is better when you have all the support and you have loving parents but it’s much more… For you, in the long run, it’s better for you to face the truth of your parents early. If they’re terrible, you need to face it and realize it is possible that they’re not good parents and you can be happy later in life. You can have a fully successful, accomplished life by making it yourself and later on cobbling together the family that you need in order to do that. It’s very scary to be left alone in the world but it’s not life-threatening necessarily. And to know that there’s no perfectly normal family, that there are so many more people out there that had untraditional lives, that you’re not alone.”
