Esquire interview

Slattery discusses the making of the film God’s Pocket:

So I read the book about ten years ago and I tried to get the rights but was told they were owned by someone else. And I was told in the beginning that Peter had written a screenplay of the book back in the ’80s. Over the years I kept basically downloading the book into screenplay form and rearranging things and showing it to people and a couple of years later near the end of that process I showed it to Alex [Metcalf] and we wrote a draft together. And as I tried to get the rights again, I though what would have Peter Dexter added to the screenplay that isn’t in the book? So I realized all I need was the book, so I didn’t really look at his screenplay.