When they came to me about Patch, Mike Farrell, Barry Kemp and Marvin Minoff had his life, but they didn't really have a movie.

So when I went home to think about it, it was really tricky until I just focused on:
'Where is the most conflict?'

And I centered in on that and that's how I drew the movie.

I chose five years out of his life.

That surprised me because when I heard his whole life story, I thought that it would have to encompass more than that. But it worked.

There was a beginning, middle and an ending with the highest points of conflict. I'm sure there's probably a different answer for every true story."

Tom Shadyac has previously directed Liar, Liar, The Nutty Professor and Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

Describing the director's visit to his home last May (1997), Patch commented, "I felt connected quickly.
He is vivacious and asks deep questions."

He, the producers (including Marsha Williams), Robin, all say they want the movie to be about joyful, relentless service in a humorous context.

Last summer Patch spent a week with Robin and his family at their home so that Robin could study him for his role.

Says Patch, "Robin is the actor I would have wanted."

During his visit, Patch and Robin did a two-hour clown around at U.C.S.F. hospital.

That would have been worth seeing!

Writer-producer Barry Kemp reports, "He's (Patch) an amazing personality, very much into healing through humor. I don't think anyone could play him but Robin Williams."

The real Patch Adams has been in Chapel Hill on and off through the filming.
The colorful character, a 52-year-old man with a gray pony-tail, who wears Hawaiian shirts and multi-colored balloon pants, works the crowd to talk about his dream - building a hospital where health care is free, insurance is no good and humor is a healer.

The real Patch Adams is hard to miss - the man in the colorful shirt & pants working the crowds behind the yellow tape.

The camera-toting spectators might be pushed up as close to the barrier as they can get on the off-chance they'll be able to snap a shot of Robin Williams, who's in town filming his latest movie.

But it won't be long before they find out who the real center of attention is - the colorful Patch Adams, the offbeat physician who wants very much to build a hospital that snubs its nose at insurance companies, offers free health care to those in need and incorporates humor into everyday living for the sick and healthy.

"I'm trying to raise $20 million," Adams said one day last week. "I want to build a hospital."

These days, Adams lives in Arlington, Va., where he says it's easier to try and raise funds for Gesundheit!, the dream hospital he hopes to build on 310 acres in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.

But for the last six months, he has spent a lot of time following Universal Pictures crews in San Francisco, Asheville and Chapel Hill, where his story, only somewhat altered from the real-life rendition, is being told by director Tom Shadyac.

"I'm a mascot here," Adams says. "I get to see America's love of fame, love of glitz, how star-conscious people really are."

On Wednesday, while Hollywood producers and film crews were turning all eyes toward Robin Williams and making sure the spaghetti-sauce stains on his clothes were just right, Patch Adams kneeled down beside a girl in a wheelchair.

For the next 30 minutes, he listened to her tell her story.

He explained his health care philosophies. The two seemed to become fast friends.

In 1993, Adams wrote a book about his philosophy of caring entitled, "Gesundheit! : Bring good Health to You, the Medical System, and Society Through Physician Service, Complementary Therapies, Humor and Joy."

National Public Radio reviewed the book so favorably that the author found himself on the cover of USA Today. Filmmakers wooed him for the rights to the book.

"[They put] me up in $500 per night hotels and Rolls Royces to try to seduce me," he says. "It was so sleazy."

But the 1,400 grant applications he submitted to various foundations were being rejected left and right, he said.