It all lined up for Bill Horberg: treatment for his son, a pizza place, a film project

You know how sometimes things come together in the unlikeliest of ways?

Well, Bill Horberg has been on that type of roll the past few years, and part of that centers on Providence.

It's not that things have been easy. In fact, the exact opposite has been true.

Horberg was dealing with a particularly challenging stretch that involved being the father of a teenage boy with autism.

Horberg, a movie company executive living on the West Coast, is known for his work on movies "Ghost," "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold Mountain," and the streaming TV series "The Queen's Gambit."

After a move, Horberg's son, Diego, began having difficulty in school

Diego had been mainstreamed through eighth grade, but he couldn't keep up with New York state's academic requirements and was transferred to a program for children whose medical issues hinder their academic performance. When that didn't work out, he was home-schooled.

Then came the fall of 2021. "We were hoping he would be able to return," his father said. But, "we just started to see some uncharacteristic aggressive behavior that was coming out of his frustrations."

Diego was hospitalized, and his parents realized he needed more care than was readily available to them. So they tried to find a place for their son. "We were kind of searching far and wide," said Bill Horberg.

That's when a remarkable connection came into play

Through word of mouth, Horberg connected with Rick Granoff, who serves on the board at Bradley Hospital, the nation's first psychiatric hospital devoted exclusively to children and adolescents.

With Granoff's help, Diego got into a program at the East Providence facility, but, it was a day program. Diego couldn't live there while getting treatment. So Horberg and son moved to Providence's East Side for four months in 2022.

That's when Granoff set them up with another key connection: He took them to Minerva's Pizza, on South Angell Street.

"Seventy percent of our dinners when we lived there were at Minerva," said Horberg.

He chose now to speak out in hopes of giving back to Bradley.

"Bradley played an important role in our lives at a critical moment in our lives," he said. "We didn't feel there was a robust group of alternatives. We need a whole lot more of them."

The story doesn't end there

Right after Diego left Bradley, two old Hollywood connections sent Horberg the script for a movie called "Ezra."

"The script really was an arrow to my heart," said Horberg. "It seems to be my life story."

It was sent to him by Tony Spiridakis – Horberg says he gave Spiridakis his first script-writing job at Paramount – and Tony Goldwyn, who played the bad guy in the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore-Whoopi Goldberg hit "Ghost," which Horberg oversaw in 1989 during his time at Paramount.

"Our busy lives never really reconnected us until 2022."

But Horberg couldn't say no to his old friends. Spiridakis had worked for a decade on the script for "Ezra," a fictionalized retelling of the screenwriter's experience raising a son with autism.

Horberg said that, until he got the script, he had had no idea he and Spiridakis had very similar experiences.

"Ezra" was filmed in New Jersey in 2022, premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival and is scheduled for theatrical release May 31. It stars Robert De Niro and Vera Farmiga, of "Conjuring" universe fame.

How is Diego doing?

"He's a wonderful artist, a very creative thinker," said Horberg, adding that it remains difficult finding help with housing and job- and life-skills training for people with autism.

"We're still in the process of trying to find the right supports for him ... the correct niche for him."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Caring for autistic child in ‘Ezra’ movie has local RI roots