running with scissors Tagged Articles at Cinematical

"Good eeevening." The last we heard about writer/director Ryan Murphy's Alfred Hitchcock biopic was back in February. At the time it was just speculation, but today MTV Movies Blog has confirmation -- Anthony Hopkins will play Hitch. They've even got a clip of him doing the voice over there. I think it's pretty solid casting, but Hopkins better start eating! The February report mentioned Helen Mirren possibly stepping into the role of Hitchcock's wife and lifelong creative collaborator, Alma Reville, but that casting is not confirmed yet. The film is expected to be called Alfred Hitchcock Presents and will detail Hitchcock's experiences making the 1960 classic Psycho. At the time, the screenplay was seen as far too dark for mass audiences, and Hitch faced quite a few hurdles to bring the project to the big screen.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents will be written and directed by Ryan Murphy. I am a fan of Murphy's FX series Nip/Tuck, particularly the first few seasons. But any faith I had in his filmmaking went out the window with the absolutely dreadful Running with Scissors, one of my least favorite movies of 2006. Hopefully, he can redeem himself here. I can't say for certain when we'll see Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as Murphy is currently very busy in both the television and film worlds. On TV, he's overseeing Nip/Tuck and an upcoming F/X drama about a transsexual father called 4 oz. On the big screen, he's working on the Tricky Dick flick Dirty Tricks, starring Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep, with Jim Broadbent as Nixon, and Need with Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts. So it's conceivable that we won't get to see AFP for a few years. Hey, now that the wheels are in motion on the story of how Hitchcock's Psycho came to be, is it too much to ask to get a making-of biopic for Gus Van Sant's critically acclaimed remake? I kid, I kid.

I never understood why the Golden Globes are such prestigious awards. I mean, what really makes them any different from any other critics awards? How did the Hollywood Foreign Press Association become so popular that millions of viewers tune in every year to witness the group's choices for best this and best that? I mean, they shouldn't be any more important than the International Press Academy, right?

Who? The IPA, that group that hands out the Satellite Awards. Never heard of them? Well, they just celebrated their 11th annual event on Sunday, and they're about as useless as the HFPA, only more so because they don't even get a broadcast. The IPA has more to do with the HFPA, too. The group is actually a spin-off of the more familiar awards-givers, having separated in 1996 as a broader organization (HFPA is very exclusive, IPA claims to admit any interested journalists), which explains their spin-off-sounding award name.

Bestselling author Augusten Burroughs has seen his memoir, Running with Scissors, ride the New York Times bestseller list for over two years; now, the book has been adapted to a film, starring Annette Bening as Burroughs' mentally ill mother. Burroughs was in Seattle recently to promote the film, and graciously sat down with Cinematical to chat about the book, the movie, and what's up next for him. Burroughs was impeccably dressed, soft-spoken at first but more animated once we broke the ice. He was by turns thoughtful, funny, and introspective, elegant and articulate -- as you might expect from a man who boiled and polished his coins to make them shiny when he was a child. The one giveaway to the inner nervous energy hovering beneath the calm surface was his nonstop nicotine gum habit ("Quitting smoking?" I asked upon seeing the skeletons of several packs of nicotine gum in the trash. "Oh, no, I quit years ago," he replied casually, as he popped a piece of gum in his mouth.)

Cinematical: Talk to me about the process of making the book into a movie. I know you were very creatively involved throughout, can you talk a little about how that all came about?

Augusten Burroughs: I first met Ryan in a restaurant in a hotel in Soho . I was meeting him, actually, to tell him that I wasn't optioning Running with Scissors. I just didn't have any confidence that Hollywood was going to get it right. I was kind of worried that the humor I'd used as a coping mechanism to survive my childhood would end up being the focal point of the movie, that it would end up being very campy or kooky.

If you didn't know better, you might find it hard to believe that the things that happen to young Augusten Burroughs in the film Running with Scissors actually happened -- and yet, they did. The film opens at a pivotal point in Augusten's life: His mother's decline into madness. When your mother is mentally unstable, your father is an emotionally walled-off alcoholic, and the two of them spend most of their time together embroiled in violent fights that end in threats of murder or suicide, it doesn't make for the most stable of childhoods. Augusten, who worships his mother and tries patiently to get the attention of his father, compensates by being a painfully neat child.

He obsesses over his hair being perfectly conditioned and styled, he dresses nattily in jackets and sweater vests, he decorates his mother's dog, Cream, with aluminum foil, and he boils his allowance and then polishes it with silver polish. When you're a kid whose adult support system is out of control, you take your stability where you can find it, and so Augusten carefully controls those things that are within his limited power.

Over at The Hollywood Reporter on her Risky Business Blog, Anne Thompson informs us that all the buzz after the LA premiere of The Queen was about Helen Mirren and an inevitable Oscar win, and notes that the Miramax folks on hand looked like "deer in headlights" at the chatter. No one wants to be the early front-runner for the Oscars, then you have to try to sustain momentum over a long while.

Thompson gives the film a detailed, positive write-up, which might just be enough to compel me to see it. When first I heard "movie about the Queen after Diana died," I thought "Lifetime Movie." I'm glad to hear that the end result sounds pretty good, because I do like Helen Mirren a lot. However, of the actresses that seem most likely to garner a Best Actress Oscar nod, my chips are still on either Kate Winslet for Little Children or Annette Bening for Running With Scissors -- both powerful performances. I'm still holding out hope that Maggie Gyllenhaal might get some love for her performance in Sherrybaby, too. And don't discount the possibility of Penelope Cruz for Volver, which will surely be a front-runner for Best Foreign Pic and might just get a Best Director nod to boot.

Yeah, I know, it's early to be talking about Oscar buzz, and really, who cares, anyhow? And yet, Cinematical and every other film industry site out there will relentlessly cover the Oscars, won't we? Who's in front? Who's going to get a nom? Who will have the best cleavage? The hottest date? Okay, so those of you who care (and heck, even those of you who don't): Who's your early pick for Best Actress? Will it be Mirren as the dowdy Queen? Kate Winslet as the depressed stay-at-home-mom/adultress? Bening as the tragical nutcase of a mother? Cruz as the woman whose dead mother comes back? Or will someone else come from behind and leap into a nomination and maybe even a win?

Todd Field's adaptation of the novel Little Children by Tom Perrotta posed a lot of problems as he tried to cram the entire novel into a feature film ... so he rewrote it, literally. He hated the ending, and made some major changes, collaborating with Perrotta, who also shares a screenwriting credit on the film. They both worked together to make significant changes in order to adapt the book for into a film.

This isn't the first adaptation for either. Field wrote and directed Oscar-nominated In The Bedroom , which was based on an Andre Dubus short story. However, Dubus died two years before the film came out, which made it impossible for Field to colloborate with him. Perrotta's novel Election was adapted into a movie written by director Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. Perrotta didn't work on that script, however, since it was the first one of his novels to be optioned, and the movie development went into high gear and was in theaters only a few months after the book came out.

Best-selling author Augusten Burroughs, whose memoir Running With Scissors has been adapted into a film starring Annette Bening and Jill Clayburgh, already has another film deal in the works -- for a book he hasn't even finished writing yet. Burroughs notes on his website that he is writing a memoir about his father, which -- although not even written yet -- has been optioned by Universal. Red Wagon, the prodco behind Jarhead and Memoirs of a Geisha, will produce. Universal bought the rights to a book that doesn't yet exist, says Burroughs, all because they heard him talk about his father and believed in his passion. Burroughs says of the deal, "People complain - endlessly, it seems - about "Hollywood" and the quality of "Hollywood" pictures. But here we have some of the biggest names in the business, going forward with a project only because of the passion of the author. Is it a risk? Technically, yes. To buy something before you've even seen it? Yes, that's a risk. But it's only by taking risks that we get to the really, really good stuff in life."

I just saw Running with Scissors this week (review to come at the end of the month), and if Burroughs' book about his father is anywhere near as good as Running with Scissors and his other work, I could get pumped about it. I suppose it's a little naively hopeful to feel excited about a film adaptation of a book that's not yet been written, but what can I say? I'm a lit geek and a film dork; you put those two things together, and my heart goes all a-flutter. Burroughs was closely involved creatively with the film adaptation of Running With Scissors. I wonder if he'll get Ryan Murphy to direct again, and whether Joe Cross will reprise his role (assuming Burroughs will be a character in the yet-to-be-written source material). Burroughs' fans will also be glad to know that in addition to all this writing of books and creating of films, he's also developing a new weekly, hour-long series for Showtime.

Every year, the magazines arrive and (I'm assuming) the cheesy network TV entertainment shows start rolling out the mega-promo pieces for Upcoming Fall Movies. Inevitably, I read it all (and actually watch some of the cheesy TV) and get all hyped up on which movies will be good, and which will likely be mediocre. Then I tell everyone I know which movies will be awesome and mediocre, while they, in turn, listen to me, and I somehow neglect to see anything. More often than not, I wind up renting them a half year later when they pop up again in the queue. The three movies I am most likely (but not necessarily guaranteed) to watch in theaters this fall are:

Renaissance - Not only is this movie French (originally), but it takes place in Paris and one of the English-language voices is dubbed by (the incomparable) Daniel Craig! (To be fair, the English version is also voiced by Catherine McCormack, Jonathan Pryce, and Ian Holm, among others.) The plot sounds like a Paris version of 1984: a dark future where all human activity is monitored and recorded by shadowy corporate behemoths in order to sell a duped populace youth and beauty. The high quality of animation featured in the film has been discussed here before, but in case you missed it we're looking at some kind of hybrid between Sin City and Waking Life (or other Linklater movies involving animation and rotoscoping). I feel this could be a movie about absolutely nothing and the gorgeous imagery and composition alone would sustain me for however long.

Running With Scissors - This movie is the one I'm most likely to watch because I read the book in one laugh-filled sitting last year (right before Frey-gate tore a gaping hole in recovery-biography, though, technically, this whole genre got its start in the picaresque novels of 16/17th Century Spain. Yes, I am that good with background). Furthermore, it's star, Joseph Cross has one of the most earnest and engaging faces of any newcomer I've seen since, maybe, Brad Renfro (before the drugs and vandalism charges in my hometown). As if that weren't enough, it has the spectacular, yet often overlooked Annette Bening (who is high up in my list of all time great actresses to emulate) in an Anne Sexton-type eccentric poetess role. I'm so excited about this movie coming out, I've actually tried to endure an episode of Ryan Murphy's Nip/Tuck, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Nevertheless, I hold out high expectations, and not just because of the foregoing, but also because Lemon Jelly's "The Staunton Lick" is used to soundtrack the trailer.

Two weeks ago, I told you about my distaste for many of today's young starlets. Well, I've realized that there is one actress who has been effective throughout her short career: Evan Rachel Wood. Now I'm counting on the 18-year-old to continue going strong in adulthood, and I think she's more than capable of succeeding. In fact, I'm so certain of her ability, that I'd like to make this prediction: Wood will win an Oscar in her lifetime, if not in the next decade. She just needs to be better recognized by the industry so that she can get the roles she's worthy of playing. Coming up for her are two films that might get her more notice: the Augusten Burroughs adaptation Running With Scissors and Julie Taymor's Beatles-inspired love story, Across the Universe.

Wood might face one problem in her career, though: She isn't into the mingling and partying that keeps most of Hollywood's young stars in the industry eye, as well as in the public consciousness. Already she's (in my opinion, anyhow) the most beautiful and most talented actress under the age of 20, and yet few people know her name. Personally I think that her wanting a private, quiet life will benefit her in concentrating on her acting -- though I don't believe that partying is necessarily bad for stars, and could point out many who are good enough to be a part of the wild life. Lifestyle shouldn't be an issue. Hollywood and moviegoers should just notice a standout like Wood automatically. Not only has she not put in a bad performance, yet, she has already carried bad movies like Pretty Persuasion, making them worthwhile viewing for her work alone. I also think she would be effective in any of the bigger roles out there going to the likes of Dunst, Lohan, Bosworth, Howard and the rest.

So what is it going to take for her to become the most appreciated actress of her generation?

Ah, and here we are at the end of 2005. If there's one thing I'm not looking forward to in the next couple days, it's that obligatory "see ya next year!" guy. You know who I'm talking about, right? You're in the office or out at a bar and its right before New Years Eve. Some guy you know or kinda know or maybe wish you didn't know, comes up to you as you're leaving, pats you on the back, and (with a huge "check out what I'm about to say grin") goes, "Hey man, see ya next year!"

He then searches the eyes of the people you're standing with for some kind of glorious approval - as if that was the coolest thing anyone has ever said. There's this weird kind of awkward "okay, so should we just leave now?" pause, followed by some long drawn out description of the phrase. "See, technically, when I see you next it'll be 2006. So, in theory, when I say "see ya next year, " it's, um, really next year." Get it? I'm cool, right? You people like me now, right?

There's still a few trailers left in 2005, so while you anxiously text-message every one of your friends, searching for those perfect New Years Eve plans (because everyone knows it's the most important night of the year), feel free to stop by Cinematical and check out the last of 2005 on this week's Trailer Park...

Oh, and don't be that guy.