`SPIDER' MAN UNMASKED JAMES PATTERSON IS A RARITY - AN AUTHOR WITH NO GRUDGE AGAINST HOLLYWOOD.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

In such novels as ``Kiss the Girls'' and ``Along Came a Spider,'' James Patterson has created, in Alex Cross, one of the standout fictional detectives of the past 25 years.

But the movie version of the erudite, Washington-based investigator-psychologist-author does not look a whole lot like the man on the page. In the film adaptations of these two best sellers, Cross, played by Morgan Freeman, is a considerably older man lacking the family and friends that lend the literary character much of his dimension and emotional texture.

Patterson certainly recognizes this. But unlike some writers (not to mention a substantial contingent of his avid readers), he claims not to be bothered by the discrepancies at all.

``I'll tell you what I love about this whole Hollywood thing: cashing the checks,'' cracks Patterson, a 52-year-old New Yorker with a writer's stooped posture, large glasses and a fondness for comfortable sweaters. ``I'm doing page-turners; it's not 'Madame Bovary,' it's not 'War and Peace.' All I want to have happen is have a page-turner show up on the screen. I'm delighted as long as that happens; otherwise, I don't care if they change things I may do.

``The two things that I hear over and over from people who come to the book signings is that they love the fast pace of the novels and they love the family,'' Patterson admits. ``Obviously, the family doesn't become part of the movies, but the trade-off is that you get Morgan. I'll make that trade.''

The widely admired, 63-year-old Freeman clearly returns the feelings. Cross is the first role he's ever reprised in a second film (``Kiss the Girls,'' co-starring Ashley Judd, was a moderate hit in 1997; ``Spider,'' which is based on the first book in the Cross series and teams Freeman with the young actress Monica Potter, opens today).

``I like the idea of a cop who's really a bright guy, well-trained and well-schooled,'' Freeman says. ``And he's not just a cop. He has a doctor's degree and is a pretty good writer.''

Indeed, those core Cross qualities transfer intact from page to screen. But in ``Along Came a Spider's'' case, that and the basic plot outline are about all that survived the transition.

When a senator's young daughter is kidnapped from a tony D.C. day school, police profiler Cross teams up with the Secret Service agent, Jezzie Flannigan (Potter), assigned to protect the girl. The kidnapper, mad genius Gary Soneji (Michael Wincott), is a fan of Cross' true-crime books and enthralled by the prospect of playing a high-tech cat-and-mouse game with the detective.

There are many twists, of course. Some, like the romantic affair between Flannigan and Cross - who in the books is a father of two in his 30s - have been excised from the film for reasons that could be questioned. Another example of Hollywood racism when it comes to the subject of sex? Not according to the filmmakers.

``Morgan is not 35,'' notes ``Spider'' director Lee Tamahori. ``That's a great part of the plot, by the way, and I wanted to try to put it in the movie. But you just couldn't. Monica-Morgan ... It's just not going to fly, it's going to be queasy and uncomfortable and look forced.''

The novel's convoluted, multiple-surprise ending was an even knottier problem, one that wasn't satisfactorily solved until after production and subsequent test screenings.

``Theoretically, a screenplay is supposed to be perfect when you start shooting, but I don't believe in perfection, and we certainly didn't have a perfect script going in,'' says director Tamahori, who went through three endings for the picture - all different from the book's - before finally going with a fourth conclusion. ``It was a very tortured and convoluted route to the finish on this movie. And we had to throw the book out because (part of the conclusion was set in) Colombia and it was (all) just so different, I didn't want to go there.''

Patterson views all of this with the detached amusement he applies to everything Hollywood.

``I don't think the ending of this book would have worked on the screen,'' the author admits. ``But I sold the character's movie rights to Paramount - sob! - and I pretty much stay out of the filmmaking process. This environment is not for me.

``In the book business, I will go and talk to my editor, who is great. He'll always say, real apologetically, 'Jim, here are some things you might want to think about, you don't have to change anything ...' And he's right on, he has great points and insights. That's a great situation for a writer. But the environment of, here are 30 opinions that you've somehow got to deal with in your work, I couldn't do that. I don't know how anybody does a great screenplay under those conditions.''

How Patterson comes up with what he does - which includes a half-dozen, nursery rhyme-titled Cross novels; ``1st to Die,'' the inaugural book in a new series featuring four female crime-solvers that's just hit the top of the best-sellers list; and other assorted fiction and nonfiction - is a different and very personal story.

Raised in the Hudson River town of Newburgh, N.Y., by a family of liberal restaurateurs, Patterson was exposed to African-American family life through a close friend of his grandparents. While working at a mental hospital, which involved considerable free time for reading, the young Patterson began to consider a writing career.

``It was all serious stuff,'' he says of his reading list, ``until, one day in my 20s, I read 'Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist.' And I said, 'Well, I don't have a ``Ulysses' in me, but maybe I could do these page-turners.' And I liked the what's-gonna-happen-next combined with some involvement with the character.''

Patterson wrote his first, award-winning novel at the age of 26. But then life came at him with other plans. He fell deeply in love with a woman who suddenly died, and, to keep from dwelling on the tragedy, Patterson threw himself into a job at the high-powered advertising firm J. Walter Thompson.

But as time went on, he realized he needed a refuge from the insanity of the ad business, too, and took to writing with pad and pencil (as he still does, every day of his life) behind his closed office door. Finally reassessing his life when he reached his 40s, Patterson quit his day job to write full time, married for the first time and, with his photographer wife Sue, now centers his life around their 3-year-old son, Jack.

All of which bodes well for the future adventures of Cross and his family. But the fundamental question of Patterson's work remains: How does a white, longtime bachelor so persuasively capture the worldviews and relationships of African-Americans and women?

``I have always felt that the similarities that we all have are so much more than the dissimilarities, whether it's gender or race or whatever,'' the novelist says. ``It bothers me sometimes that people don't get that. I guess it's just the way the world is, but whenever it comes up I feel like, why do people assume that I can write like a serial killer but think it's odd that I can write from a black man's perspective?''

A good point. But serial killers in these fictions are fantastic figures, and Cross and kin's credible humanity is their most compelling trait.

``Alex is larger than life, he's too good to be true, and I wanted him to be,'' Patterson counters. ``But I also wanted him to be true to this family that I knew so well. When I created him, what I saw, in terms of black characters, was a lot of street language, ghetto blasters and stuff that, to me, was not really representative of who a lot of black people are. And one thing that I get constantly is thank-yous for representing such a good family and man.''

And by focusing on a female team in his new Women's Murder Club series (which has been optioned as an NBC miniseries), Patterson hopes he's bringing a unique dimension to the entire mystery genre.

``When I was in business, I noticed that when men would come into a room, everybody had the answer already,'' he recalls. ``But women would come in and ask, 'What do you think?' I thought that was an interesting notion in terms of a mystery. We have not one, but four, in the new series, so we get away from this whole American thing of the solo hero. This notion of team- as opposed to ego-driven problem-solving fascinated me. And it was a good challenge; I didn't know if I could do this.''

The numbers say he did. But that last statement is indicative of the other key creative element that makes Patterson's novels so can't-put-'em- down popular.

``I try to structure each book,'' he says. ``I try to write a good outline, where I really feel the bones of the narrative.

``But I never know the endings, which is why they always have these crazy conclusions.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) WEB of INTRIGUE

Mogan Freeman keeps the suspense going in the screen adaptation of James Patterson's gripping novel `Along Came a Spider'

(2) no caption (James Patterson) (3) Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross in ``Along Came a Spider.''