Riding the Bus - Making the Movie: A Writer's Diary - by Rachel Simon

One day, author and professor Rachel Simon was invited by her sister Beth, who has an intellectual disability, to join her on the buses for a year. Rachel said yes, and so began a journey that changed both their lives. The product of this adventure is the acclaimed Riding the Bus with My Sister, a book chronicling the daily life of Beth, who spends her days seeking out one bus after another, creating powerful connections with the drivers and passengers. The following are excerpts from Rachel’s diary as her own journey takes her from bus to book to Hallmark Hall of Fame movie.

March 7, 2002—I was driving to work today and, as authors do, entertaining extravagant fantasies about the upcoming publication of my book, Riding The Bus With My Sister, when zing! a realization seized me. If a movie gets made, I thought in a trace of inspiration, Rosie O’Donnell should play my sister. Like Beth, Rosie has dark hair, a plus-size physique and a fun-and-feisty disposition. And though Beth possesses a passion for riding buses all day, every day, and though she also happens to have a developmental disability, I can easily see Rosie befriending bus drivers.
The realization made me giddy, although casting a movie was the last thing I’d dwelled upon as I’d chronicled the year I joined Beth on her buses. I considered it unlikely I would be called upon to contend with such dilemmas, as my previous books had barely attracted readers, much less Hollywood agents. Thus, I harbored no secret dreams that anyone, actress or not, might be the Cathy to my Patty, the princess to my pauper.

Besides, how would I, an obscure, curly-haired, Payless-wearing, newly married, Delaware-residing professor and writer, contact Rosie to let her know that I had cast her in a non-existent movie for a not-yet-published book. If only I were a semi-famous, Vanity-Haired, Manolo-wearing, single-in-the-city, bi-coastal, Guild-and-gilded schmoozer. But I know no one even six degrees away from Hollywood. None of my buses goes there.

March 11, 2002—I am speechless, reeling. Today, five days after my Rosie revelation, I checked my voicemail and heard: “Hi, Rachel Simon. This is Rosie O’Donnell. I read your book. I love your book. I want to make a movie of your book and play your sister.” Exclamation marks would not do justice to my shaking, teary reaction. Confused and excited, my agent Anne Edelstein figured it out. In January, she had submitted my book in manuscript form to Rosie Magazine so the editors might run an excerpt. Unbeknownst to Anne, the editors sent their selection to Rosie for approval. Rosie was so taken by the chapter that she asked to read the whole book, which she devoured in short order. Then she called. Could it be that we’re not six degrees apart, but only a transfer away?

March 12, 2002—I have met Rosie O’Donnell. I shook hands with a tall (to my five-foot height), smiling, bike-shorts-and-stage-make-up-wearing force of nature who immediately said in her distinctive voice, “You know what I like about your sister? She follows her own mind. She is not a stereotype. I totally relate to her.”


March 14, 2002—I drove the few hours to see my sister and took Beth and her boyfriend Jesse to dinner. While we waited to place our orders, I asked if Beth knew who Rosie O’Donnell is.

“Yeah.”

“Well, she wants to make a movie of the book. And she wants to play you.”

“She does?”

“I won’t say yes if you don’t feel okay about it.”

“Iz okay.”

“Really? What do you think of this?”

She looked into the distance. Then she looked back. “Fine,” she shrugged. “So, can I get the grilled cheese?” I laughed. The stomach, or stardom?

September 2002—The book has pulled out of the garage and headed into the world. Beth is so thrilled and, to no one’s surprise, is more impressed by the book itself. A new favored object, as highly esteemed as her cherished yellow radio and Pooh backpack—she’s kept a copy in her possession every minute since it came out. She’s also read it (to the best of her ability), read it again to Jesse, drawn on the pages and memorized her favorite sections: the ones about her romance with Jesse and the ones about her love of Donny Osmond.

November 2003—What a year! I’ve heard from thousands of people with disabilities and their families, thousands of public transit workers. I’ve traveled the country, where I’ve heard whole libraries of stories and have learned that for millions of people with disabilities, seniors and folks who can’t afford or drive cars, public transportation is the key to a full life. It’s the difference between the job programs or educational opportunities or Tuesday-night bingo games that fail and the ones that succeed. Sure, transit is also important for the environment and congestion, but I now get angry when someone says, “We don’t support transit around here because everyone drives.” No, not everyone. Not the people who can’t drive. A Special Olympics athlete said to me recently, with tears in her eyes, “The day I learned to ride the buses was the day my life began.”

In this year I’ve also watched Rosie O’Donnell from a distance as she’s made her way through quite a journey herself: folding her show and magazine, revealing her personal life to the public. I cringe when late-night talk show hosts crack jokes at her expense. One of my goals with my book was to emphasize that everyone—the person carrying a Class C operator’s license, the one with the yellow radio, the one with the college lesson plans—is complex, unique and worthy of dignity. Such sentiments are far from trendy, yet I feel more convinced than ever that each of us warrants respect and compassion. Even the housekeeper who tidies my hotel rooms. Even celebrities.

January 14, 2004—Faces are now attached to this vague idea of a film. We have met the producer, Larry Sanitsky, and screenwriter, Joyce Eliason, a well-known pair who’ve adapted numerous books for television. It remains tentative, however, until they write a script. Then CBS and Rosie must still say yes.

I wasn’t sure what to expect before I met Larry and Joyce. They greeted Beth warmly when they met her at dinner, complimented her colorful sense of fashion, engaged her in conversation and treated her in a relaxed, everyday way, seeing her not as a child or an oddity, but an adult. Then the next day, despite the snow and ice on the ground, the darkness and the wind, they met Beth at the bus terminal well before dawn, ran with her for early buses, laughed at themselves when they messed up, pressed on through serial-bus-rider fatigue to keep going, chatted with passengers of all ages and dispositions, marveled at the drivers’ stories, and in an effort to understand the concerns of Beth’s foes, marched up to the door of a bus operated by a driver who doesn’t like her. (He shut the door in their face and drove off.) We like them. I feel they are likely to write a respectful script, one that communicates Beth’s independent spirit and friendships and the arc of my learning to accept her.

May 5, 2004—We got the green light! Through the winter and spring, as our chilly adventures with Larry and Joyce have receded into memory, I have wondered if the idea of a movie had simply drifted away. Writers receive far more no’s than yes’s in this world, as do people with disabilities and their families, so one simply grows accustomed to quietly vanishing hopes.

Then this past Friday, Larry phoned to say that CBS had picked up the movie. Really? Yes, he said breathlessly, and the news will hit the trades early next week, and he will FedEx me the script for tomorrow, and they would like my thoughts as soon as possible, and he will be leaving for Toronto in a few days to scout out locations, and they start shooting in mid-June, and Rosie will try to meet Beth in a few weeks, and someone will get me dates soon so I can visit the set.

Happy, relieved and disoriented from this avalanche of news, as well as the prospect of so much work in too few days, I called Beth right away. “They’re going to make...


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Other articles in the Christopher Meloni issue include Letter From The Editor, Gillian Friedman, MD; Humor: My Year; Headlines: Project Hope, Blind Justice & Down Syndrome; Senator Grassley: The American Dream for All; USA Freedom Corps: Director Desiree Sayle; Employment: Latinos with Disabilities; Book Section: Too Late to Die Young; Multiple Sclerosis: New Development; Geoffrey Erb: SUV’s Director of Photography; Comedian Spotlight: Tanyalee Davis; World Ability Federation; Events and Conferences... subscribe!