In order to write and produce the new film adaptation “Bridge to Terabithia,” hometown boy David Paterson only had to cross back over into his own Takoma Park childhood. His mother, the famous source novel’s author Katherine Paterson, had already memorialized his early years in her Newbury Award-winning children’s classic. Now he would put his stamp on a story based on the effect a special friend, youthful pluck and a random tragedy had on his life as a Takoma Park Elementary School third-grader in 1975.
“What happened to the character Josh in the book is what happened to me, but all of my mom’s characters come out of her own emotions,” Paterson explains. “Writing the book was self-therapy for her to make sense of a senseless act.”
That climactic act — the exact nature of which we won’t give away here — is what imparts dramatic power to a piece about an alienated kid transformed by the companionship of his free-spirited new classmate. In the locally written book, a consistent bestseller since it was first published in 1978, the 11-year-old outsider characters Josh and Leslie play in the woods together and invent the fantasy kingdom of Terabithia as a way to escape the school bullying and uncomfortable family dynamics they experience.
Leslie is based on David’s real-life friend Lisa Hill.
“We used to play together around Sligo Creek building forts and inventing games,” Paterson remembers. It helped him deal with the isolation that came from his family’s poverty.
“I was an awkward, inward-turned kid. And we always say that my Dad didn’t smile until the ’80s when some money started coming in from Mom’s books, because we were so dirt poor in the ’70s.”
David’s father was a preacher. The family moved to Norfolk, Va., when David was 12. But he returned to the area to attend Catholic University before commencing a showbiz career as a soap actor, playwright and independent filmmaker.
In order for him to mount “Terabithia” on screen, Hollywood’s budget constraints and need for spectacle had to be respected. That meant shooting in cost-effective New Zealand and using lesser-known actors in the economical $20 million project.
Dakota Fanning might have been a natural choice as Leslie.
“But we didn’t have the money for that. Plus, we didn’t want it to be a Dakota Fanning movie, to have a big name overshadow the story. … And though Terabithia’s not fully realized in the book, it is in the movie.”
Paterson says that the special effects renderings of the beautiful, adventurous dream realm consist of about 12 percent of the film.
The most important thing, however, was retaining the material’s meaning.
“My friend Lisa gave me the gift of friendship and imagination. That’s what I hope the book and movie deliver — the idea that these are the best things in people. And it’s all a tribute to her.”
