Gold Coast: Bringing Books to Film with David Paterson

Manhasset-Lakeville Firefighter and Playwright David Paterson, who his mother Katherine Paterson based the book Bridge to Terabithia on, took painstaking care to make a movie that would keep his mother's legacy in tact and produce a movie he could be proud of. Paterson explained how he went about making this book into a movie on Sunday afternoon at a event at the Great Neck Arts Center.

Paterson didn't want to talk much about the book for years because this was a book that helped take his family out of poverty.

"It's really not cool that my best friend had to die for me to have new shoes," Paterson said. 

In part out of respect for the young girl who Paterson thought was his "life mate" at seven-years-old, Paterson felt strongly that he needed to be involved in the movie-making process.

"It came from family, so it should be protected by family," he explained.

It took two years to option the property in 1990 and it took another 15 years to get the movie made, Paterson noted. This was because Paterson was offered money on many occasions, but not control. 

"In the end, I had enough control to have a movie I was proud of," he said of the deal he made with Disney to made the movie.

Paterson explained to the audience of about 15 people that there are two types of ways that a book can be made into a film.

"There's two ways Hollywood handles taking literature from other venues," Paterson said. "They either adapt it or interpret it. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time they interpret it and 99.9 percent of the time those films fail because Hollywood assumes you all are idiots and no matter how popular the book is, they know better than you what's real entertainment."