warning: moderate spoilers

Annette Bening (Being Julia, American Beauty) and Gabrielle Union (The Honeymooners, Bring it On) are slated to play lovers in the upcoming movie Running With Scissors (2006) —adapted from the hilarious yet harrowing memoir of the same name by Augusten Burroughs. The movie’s lesbian subplot will feature Bening as Deirdre, Augusten’s mother and Union as her tempestuous girlfriend, Dorothy, and Kristin Chenoweth (The West Wing) as Fern, a minister's wife who also ends up in bed with Deirdre.

In addition to featuring Bening, Union and Chenoweth, Running with Scissors will star Gwyneth Paltrow, Evan Rachel Wood, Brian Cox and Alec Baldwin as Burroughs’ adoptive family members. Joseph Cross will play Augusten himself and Joseph Fiennes will take the role of the pedophile who preyed on the young boy until he was 15.

The true story on which the movie and bestselling book are based is tragicomic. Burroughs’ pathologically narcissistic mother—a lesbian poet with delusions of Anne Sexton—gave him up at age 12, turning his care over to her longtime psychiatrist, Dr. Finch. Running With Scissors is an account of the bizarre, radically dysfunctional world the young Burroughs came to live in.

The Finch family lived in needless squalor and the children ate dog food, popped Valium and played with the electroshock machine—all with their father’s approval. The doctor foretold the future in the shape of his own stool, which he regularly displayed and interpreted for the rest of the family.

But these practices are merely quirky compared to other details of the Finch household. The “unorthodox” doctor looked favorably on all things sexual and had a room in his office called "the masturbatorium." He even condoned a sexual relationship between 13-year-old Augusten and the 30-something man who lived in the shed behind their house. (Dr. Finch was eventually stripped of his license for insurance fraud.)

When Augusten was just 13, Dr. Finch aided him in a suicide attempt in order to drop out of junior high. That was the boy’s first taste of liquor, and he eventually drank enough to give himself alcohol poisoning. Burroughs’ second memoir, Dry, recounts the now sober author’s struggles with drug and alcohol addiction.

In the movie, Bening will also share a love scene with Tony-award-winning singer/actor Kristin Chenoweth (who was recently cast as in another queer role, as the lead in the upcoming Dusty Springfield biopic). Chenoweth is reportedly “dying” to talk about her role but has chosen not to divulge any details in recent interviews. Bening herself hasn’t been talking to the press about the project.

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