MOVIE BASED ON SIMON'S BOOK TO AIR ON CBS MAY 1

Rachel Simon poses with taller alter ego Andie MacDowell

"Who's gonna play you in the movie?" Pondering that hypothetical question is idle entertainment for most of us, but Rachel Simon '81 has a solid answer: actress Andie MacDowell will play the character of Rachel in Riding the Bus With My Sister, a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie based on Simon's memoir of the same name. The film, directed by Oscar winner Anjelica Huston, also stars Rosie O'Donnell as Simon's sister Beth, who has a cognitive disability. It will air on CBS on Sunday, May 1, at 9 p.m.

Simon, who teaches in Bryn Mawr's Creative Writing Program, wrote the book after a year during which she spent a few days each month with her sister, who has created an independent life that revolves around the public-transit system in the medium-sized city where she lives. Riding the Bus chronicles Simon's journey to self-discovery as she relinquishes her impulse to protect her sister by trying to control her behavior.

Rosie O'Donnell and Andie MacDowell in Riding the Bus With My Sister

According to Simon, she and her father engaged in some playful speculation about who would play Beth in a movie shortly before the book was published, never dreaming that a film was a real possibility. "Later, I was driving home, and I thought, 'Rosie O'Donnell! She would make a great Beth!' Then," Simon said, laughing, "I thought, 'How do we get in touch with Rosie O'Donnell to tell her that we've cast her in a nonexistent movie based on a book that hasn't even been published yet?'"

As it turned out, O'Donnell got in touch with her. Unbeknownst to Simon, her publisher had sent excerpts of Riding the Bus to several magazines, including Rosie, O'Donnell's short-lived publishing venture. "Three days after the conversation with my dad, I came home to find a message from Rosie on my answering machine," Simon reports. "She said, 'I read your book, I love your book, I want to make it into a movie and play Beth.'"

Rosie published an excerpt of the book, as did Reader's Digest, and aided by O'Donnell's imprimatur in the form of a film option and a book-jacket endorsement, Riding the Bus attracted considerable attention from the national media. Since its publication in 2002, Simon has become a much-sought-after speaker and advocate for both people with cognitive disabilities and public transportation.

"What has been most satisfying to me about the book's success and the publicity generated by the movie is that it has given me a much more visible platform for addressing these issues," she says.

In the film version of Riding the Bus, the character of Rachel will be a glamorous fashion photographer in New York rather than a writer who teaches at a college in Pennsylvania. Simon says that this and other changes that were made for the adaptation don't bother her.

"People expect me as a writer to be horrified at what the screenplay does to my book," she says, "but I think the producers have treated the text very respectfully. [Executive co-producer] Larry Sanitsky and Joyce Eliason, who wrote the screenplay, spent some time on the buses with Beth and me. We liked them; they were very respectful of us, too.

"Rosie said from the beginning that she wanted me to have a voice in the project. They showed me the scripts, listened to my comments and even let me on the set — I understand that writers whose work is adapted for the screen rarely have that kind of access.

"But there's a point at which you just have to realize that it's out of your hands," she adds. "After all, that's one of the lessons I learned from Beth: accepting that I can't control everything that's important to me."

Simon spent four days on the set and will appear as an extra in one scene. "I'd never been on a movie set," she says, "and it was fascinating on every level. I was an anthropology major at Bryn Mawr, and I found myself thinking that the world of a movie set would make a very interesting anthropological study. It's a whole parallel universe with its own language, its own culture and traditions, even its own circadian rhythms — the hours when people can work and sleep are dictated by pressing financial concerns and union rules."

Simon will be reunited with members of the cast and crew at a press screening hosted by Hallmark and CBS in Los Angeles on April 26. Two days later, she will appear at another screening in Washington, D.C., hosted by the American Public Transportation Association and The American Network of Community Options and Resources, an advocacy group for providers of services and support for Americans with disabilities. She hopes to appear at a screening of the film at Bryn Mawr sometime during the 2005-06 academic year.

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