With great precision, openly gay writer/director Ryan Murphy (of “Nip/Tuck” fame) has created a faithful adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’ popular memoir Running with Scissors. The exceptional cast, including Joseph Cross as Augusten, Annette Bening as his mother, Deirdre, Alec Baldwin as his father, Norman, Brian Cox as psychiatrist Dr. Finch, Jill Clayburgh as Finch’s wife, Agnes, Evan Rachel Wood and Gwyneth Paltrow as Finch’s daughters, Natalie and Hope, respectively, and Joseph Fiennes as Neil, the older man with whom Augusten becomes romantically linked, bring the story into sharp focus. Murphy and Cross graciously agreed to an interview at the Four Seasons while in Chicago on a promotional tour for the film.

Gay & Lesbian Times: Ryan, this interview is taking place a couple of days after the 17th annual National Coming Out Day. Did you do anything special to observe the occasion?

Ryan Murphy: I went back in the closet [sly laugh]. My sexuality was always just a given and I always accepted it, like Augusten. I never really had a coming out. I was out in utero, I think. I had a very strong sense of self, like Augusten. It was never an issue for me. I never struggled with it. I never did.

GLT: Joe, had you read Running with Scissors or any of Augusten’s other books before signing on to play him in Running with Scissors?

Joseph Cross: Prior to signing on, yes, but not prior to meeting with Ryan. I read the script, then I met with Ryan at the Mercer Hotel in New York. He asked me if I would come out to L.A. to read for Dede Gardner, who is one of the producers. Then I read it immediately after meeting with Ryan.

GLT: What was it about Running with Scissors that compelled you to adapt it for film?

RM: We had very similar childhoods, as shocking as that sounds, in that our mothers were very similar. I think our mothers were the same in that they were both seeking a sense of identity outside of the suburban housewife thing. When I read the book, I was shocked at how much we were alike. I had never met anybody else, other than me, who had polished their allowance and things like that. I was very attracted to the “shiny things” thing, movies and glamour and escape. We had that in common. I loved what it was about. I had been offered a lot of things to make my film debut on, and I turned them down. Then I read it and I thought, “I know how to tell that story.” It was a personal story to me. I wanted to protect it.

GLT: Are there other books of his that you would also consider adapting?

RM: No. I don’t think I would ever do that. I’m doing all these other things. I just loved this story. And I loved this story basically because of Augusten and the mother character. I really did.

GLT: Joe, what attracted you to the role of Augusten?

JC: When I read the script, the first thing that I thought was that I didn’t expect to have the opportunity to play this meaty and this important a role until I was in my 30s. Because you don’t get to do that as a 20-year-old, or I was 18 at the time. So that was tremendous. That was something that I was just blown away by. I didn’t have an upbringing anywhere near Augusten’s. I had a very, almost conventional, American upbringing. But the thing I was able to identify with was that confusion in those formative years because I think everybody goes through that. Those teenage years when very confusing and disturbing things are happening to your body and things are happening around you that you don’t understand. I was able to remember and identify with that. Also, the idea of isolation and loneliness because I had just gone to college and I didn’t know anybody, and I wasn’t sure if it was the right school for me and I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to be in school at that moment, and I was having a lot of doubt. It felt very isolating and very lonely. That’s the first thing that I said to Ryan when he asked me what I could identify with. That’s what I told him.

GLT: Your two big movies in 2006, Running with Scissors and Flags of our Fathers, are both period pieces. Is there something appealing to you about that?

JC: I think that there is. My little brother, who was 13 when he told me this, said, “The way to go is period pieces and movies based on books.” And I said, “Thank you, James” [laughs]. But, yeah, I think there is something that attracts me about it. It feels classic. It’s an additional challenge, and it’s helpful because the music is helpful and the clothing is helpful, and everything just sort of brings you back.

GLT: Do you have a favorite costume from Running with Scissors?

RM: He hated his costumes.

JC: [Laughs] I was watching shows like “The Sonny & Cher Show” and Johnny Carson before doing it, and I kept wondering: “Why did everybody walk that way in the ’70s? People don’t walk that way anymore.” At my costume fitting I put on the pants and shoes and realized why people walked like that.

GLT: The movie has a lot to say about mother/son relationships. And Ryan, you spoke a little about your relationship with your mother. Joe, do you or did you both have good relationships with your mother?

JC: I had a great relationship with my mother and I still do. She was at the premiere. My relationship with my mother was strained during my teenage years in the way that it is for everybody. You’re saying at 15, “Leave me alone,” and she’s saying, “I still need to guide you for a couple more years because you don’t understand yet.” For that time, it was strained in the natural way it should be. My parents have been married for 28 years, and I have four younger siblings and we’re all very close.

GLT: I bet a lot of mothers are going to be sitting in the movie [thinking]: “Whew! I look really good.”

JC and RM: Yeah!

GLT: Ryan, following last year’s spate of popular movies with prominent queer characters, including Brokeback Mountain, Capote and TransAmerica, 2006 is also holding its own, especially this season with Running with Scissors, Shortbus and Infamous. Do you think that says something about movie audiences, and if so, what does it say?

RM: I think it says that there is an audience for those movies. If you look at our movie, which is going up against really big muscular studio movies, I think it says that there’s a place for everybody. I think the fact that this is an independent movie that’s being released by a major studio, looking at the subject matter, shows that studios know they can make profits with them because there is such an audience. People want something to relate to. I don’t know what else we’re against, but we’re so unusual. I think we will get a lot of gay people who will go to the film just because of Augusten’s following, perhaps my following. I think that’s good.

GLT: Joe, did you have any hesitation about playing a gay character, such as Augusten?

JC: No, I didn’t, because it’s done in such a tasteful and smart way. A lot of films that you see, the fact that the character is gay is the defining aspect of the character. That’s very much not the case with Augusten. I think it’s one of the first films that’s like that. Somebody used the word heteronormative for the world we live in, and we expect a gay character to be shopping with his girlfriends [laughs] and that’s all we want to see him doing. I think that our movie is really great in breaking that stigma and making sexuality not that important; certainly not defining, because it shouldn’t be.

RM: That’s one of my favorite scenes in the film, where Joe [playing Augusten] is walking with Evan [playing Natalie] and he tells her he’s gay, and she says, “Big deal!” I think we never really bring it up again and it’s never addressed. I didn’t want to do a movie about a really feminized gay person. Augusten is not that, and I don’t think I’m that. I never think of this as a gay movie. I don’t even think of this character as gay. It’s just not what I was interested in doing. But I do think he’s a hero for the gay audience because so many gay people feel marginalized and feel stuck and victims of their choices. His life is a triumph. I think he shows a lot of people that you can beat overwhelming odds and make it. I like that idea of it.

GLT: Joe, what about the idea of playing a living person?

JC: That was a lot more daunting than playing a gay character. That was frightening for me because I wanted to do him justice and do his memoir justice. Also, Augusten’s fan base is so loyal and so dedicated to him. They’d step in front of a train for him. People would come up to me before we had even started shooting, ask me if this or that wasn’t going to be [in] it, and recite entire passages to me and give me looks like, “I hope you guys aren’t going to screw this up because [laughs] that would be very disappointing.” For me, that was scary. I also wasn’t sure of how close Ryan and Augusten had become. I didn’t know how involved Augusten was in the whole process. Before I met him, it was a scary thing. Then, when I met him, he was so encouraging. Not for a moment did he challenge anything that I said I was going to do. That was what set me free to do that part.

GLT: It was like getting his blessing.

JC: Yeah.

GLT: Running with Scissors, based on Burroughs’ memoir, is coming out near the end of a year that began with the Oprah/James Frey scandal involving his A Million Little Pieces memoir. Do you think people look at memoir-based work differently now because of that?

RM: Perhaps. I wasn’t making a documentary. I was doing my version of his life. None of us in the movie, although I had access to journals and photos, met the real people, because we were playing people seen through the eyes of a child. All I can tell you is that when I turned in the script and the Sony lawyers took over, I was not allowed to shoot a single scene unless it was validated. They had lawyers and private investigators research all that stuff. They came back to me with one or two things that I had put in there, taking a little dramatic license, and they said, “Let’s take that out,” and I said, “Great.” They wouldn’t have let me shoot a single scene unless they had gone through and talked to witnesses. They didn’t just trust the book. They hired people and went through it line by line. I really stand behind his story. More than anything it really proved to me – and I always thought it was true – now I know it’s true.

JC: Also, Augusten was telling me that since the James Frey thing, people have been so into the idea of exposing these memoirs that they just want to invalidate everything. People have gone after Augusten, and there’s nothing in it that they can pin him down with because it’s all true and it’s on public record with what Finch had said.

RM: People in Augusten’s life are always going to say this never happened. His mother recently gave an interview to NPR in which she said it never happened and then read her beautiful poetry [rolls his eyes]. My response to that was, “If I was a mother and my son wrote that story about me I would, of course, want to deny it because it’s too painful to admit any culpability.” I think you’re always going to get that with this book. The people, his mother, the [Finch’s] daughters. His father stood by the memoir. His brother, who observed it, stood by it. His father’s wife, who had access to all that stuff and met those people, said his childhood was much worse than that book. I think it’s a he said/she said thing. My favorite thing about the daughters is that they don’t dispute the Christmas tree [being] up for two years or Hope talking telepathically to the cat or things like that. But they insist that their mother was a brilliant housekeeper.