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Interview: 'Bridge to Terabithia' Screenwriter David Paterson

by Kim Voynar Feb 16th 2007 // 1:31PM

Filed under: Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Disney, Sony Classics, Family Films, Interviews, Cinematical Indie





It took screenwriter David Paterson long time -- 14 years from the time he first bought the film rights to his mother's book -- to see Bridge to Terabithia brought to life on the big screen. While on his recent PA tour for the film, Paterson sat down for a phone interview with Cinematical to talk about the book and the film.

I know the book was based in part on your own childhood. Can you talk about that?

Yes, but I have to be careful, we want to guard the ending -- not everyone's read the book, so I have to be careful how I talk about it. There are a lot of people who read the book when they were younger, but there's also this whole new generation that may not even be familiar with the book. And you know, if everyone who's read the book brought two friends to the movie, that still wouldn't be enough. We have to reach out to a whole new audience here.

The book itself was about an important part of your life, though, which is something not every screenwriter can say about a script they've adapated.

There are lot of similiarties yes -- the events that led to my mom writing the book happened when I was seven, eight years old. My best friend was Lisa Hill, and I met her on my first day at a new school. We became the best of friends, right from the start -- neither of us had any other friends. At that time, it was very unusual for a boy and girl to be friends, but we never even thought of it that way. My mom wrote the book as a way of trying to make sense of a senseless event. So she wrote the book, and then took the book to her publisher -- she didn't think it would be even be published but they recognized the importance of the subject matter. She asked my permission to have it published -- imagine that, being an adult who's written a book, and relying on the whim of an eight-year-old -- and I said okay, as long the book is dedicated to Lisa and to me, because it was really our story.

More after the jump ...
There was another film version of the book made back in the '80s -- a made-for-tv version, I think.

Yeah, er, we don't like to talk about that. That's like the unwanted relative you avoid bringing up at family dinners or something. At the time that was made 1985, I was 19, I wasn't a writer yet, so being involved wasn't an option. That was made without our (the Paterson family's) involvement at all.

How did you come to be involved with the script for this movie?

I optioned the book from my mom's publisher in 1990 partially in response to the other film being made so badly; I didn't want to see that happen, ever again. I just thought it was kind of demeaning. Her writing was so wonderful and to have it treated so slip-shod, made into a cheesy after-school-special type film, just didn't make sense to me. It took two years to get the rights to the book -- just because you're the author's son doesn't give you any special privilege when you're dealing with rights and publishers, let me tell you. I actually wrote the first version of the script while I was still working on the rights -- I knew the story so well, of course.

So I go through all that to option the film rights to my mother's book, and then nobody -- I mean nobody -- was remotely interested. Every studio turned me down. Disney, in fact, was one of the first studios to pass on it 14 years ago. Nobody at that time was interested in adapting a children's book -- studios kept saying there was no money in adapting kids books. I never saw Bridge to Terabithia as a kid's book, I saw it as a good story. Does it have kids in it? Yes. But that doesn't mean it's a story that only kids would have an interest in seeing. That's the problem with Hollywood, they want to be able to categorize everything in one-sentence, digestible chunks -- what is it, who's it targeted at? And if it defies that kind of categorization they don't know how to handle it.

Now all of a sudden, children's literature is is like the new oil field of Hollywood -- but even so, they don't usually do a straight translation of the book. They either interpret into a film or adapt it into a film. Ninety-nine percent of the time they take some of the very basic ideas of the book - some of the key characters and events, just to satisfy the reading base of the book -- then they move it to the moon to make it more interesting, add a bloody car chase to make it more thrilling, whatever -- just to make it appeal to everyone else who hasn't read the book already. Hollywood looks at source material as something to be improved upon.

What approach did you take, then, in adapting Bridge to Terabithia to the screen?

Well, I could never improve on my mother's book. It's such a good story, and so well-written, and hopefully a lot of people who see the film will actually go back and read the book. One of the reasons I had to wait so long was I had to wait for Walden Media to come into existence -- they respect the original source material. Their job, what they do, is just to protect the source material. And their objective also is to try to get the book read -- to get people not just seeing a film, but reading the book in addition to seeing the film. They go to teachers and say: what would you want from a movie made from this book? Most of the time they say, "Just don't change it, don't screw it up."

How did Walden Media get involved in Bridge to Terabithia?

About three or four years ago they approached me. I had gotten really tired of all the "no's" from the studios, so for a time I just sat on the rights, waiting for the right time. It seemed eventually, it would happen, that someone would realize you can make good films out of children's literature.

And then along came Harry Potter. When you started to see the success of the Harry Potter films, did a light go off that the timing might be getting better?

Yeah, and the idea that maybe you can take a book that a lot of people like and make a really good movie about it. The studios finally started to get that as well. The other thing that happened thanks to the Harry Potter films was that authors started to realize they actually had power. It used to be, a lot of authors were just so grateful to have their material made into a movie, to have that extra money. What JK Rowling did, was she said, "Sure you can make a movie out of my book, but I'll be joined at your hip, and you'll do it the way I want or you won't do it at all. "

So you really credit JK Rowling with making it easier for authors to get their books made into decent films.

Well of course, the Harry Potter books were so wildly successful that she had the leverage to do that, but nonetheless it really opened the door to adapting children's literature into good films. She was one of the first authors to really say, I'm going to be involved if you're going to adapt my book.

The trailers show a lot of the fantasy world of Terabithia brought to life. Can you talk about the decision to make Terabithia more real?

Clearly there are compromises when you take a book to screen -- about 50% of the book takes place in Jesse's thoughts. Film is a visual medium where you don't have the benefit of being able to tell what's going on inside the person's head the whole time -- you can't have this scrolling bar at the bottom of the screen telegraphing his thoughts and emotions.

Or an annoying voice-over telling you what he's thinking through the whole thing.

Exactly. No. So you have to find a way to show those things visually and that's what we've done with this film -- we've brought those aspects of the book to life, I think in a very good way.

Have you felt a lot of pressure from your mother to do this right?

Not from my mother so much, no, but holiday dinners with my siblings (laughs) -- now those would be a little uncomfortable if I really screwed this up. So I'm glad that it's come out so well.

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