John Cleese will play Haze in this 19-episode (so far!) comedy series about an inept American gigolo. Peter Bogdanovich, whose daughter was in my last film, was originally to play Haze. I wanted him to direct. "Yeah yeah yeah," he said, but what he wanted was to play Haze. On 5 January 22 he wrote me:
Hi, Robert --
I'm doing well. Thank you for checking in. How are you doing?? I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year.
Thanks again for your kind words.
All the best,
Peter
That night he died. I miss him. Sorry for the sad note.
When Maurice Chevalier
died, Lawrence Durrell spoke of his “tender insolence.” That’s Toby.
The series, based on the books, is inspired by PG Wodehouse: Toby’s keeper has a 9-year-old daughter who’s smarter than he is—his Jeeves.
Haze is the other thing.
To quote Dan Reardon,
Packaging this with talent could be a
snap - the
material is that good.
Just check out the deck.
I am not officially
attached to this project but I am close with the writer and know his
counterpart well. Bernie and Robert have asked me to come on board and get
this done.
Hope you like it as much as I do.
And to quote Bernie Stampfer,
“Don't be shocked. Toby is not exactly politically correct. Think Californication
and you get the idea.”
Henning Tewes, CEO of Antenna Group, a vast empire, “loves” the Toby series. So does owner
and chairman Theo
Kyriakou. Can you blame them?
The Many Loves of Toby Tucker
Toby travels with rich blonde
bubble-head
He's got it made, except
that her 9-year-old
daughter Andrea
is smarter than
he is.
European pleasure zones
+ lazy useless American gigolo
= Toby, a lovable cad
Toby is irrepressible and irredeemable, a delightful comic creation whose most exasperating quality is also his most endearing: the more we get to know him the less we expect from him.
—The Montreal Gazette
It starts in New York, where he slides from Park Avenue kept man to escort service to vagrant—
—and escapes to Greece to teach English (“Dog, cat, cow, what's to know?”), where he is talked into co-hosting a Fat Girls Contest, falls for one of the contestants, and is thrown in jail.
Danish tour guide Swan, one of his students, springs him so he can take the English-speakers off her hands. What's to know? But he and his group are marooned on a deserted beach—
—and he forms an attachment with a client, who might be able to support him, but decides against going back to America with her when one of his New York ladies shows up and takes him to Geneva.
Tired of walking her dogs, he returns to Athens and guides another tour. This time he’s sure he’s going back with a professor—so cultured, so sensitive.
“You will do no such thing,” says an old baroness from his New York days. “Do you know how much a professor makes? I hope you like fast food.”
“Whew! I hate decisions. They compromise my passivity.”
The owner of their hotel, long in mourning herself, despises him for his frivolity, but when a developer threatens to foreclose on her mortgage Toby, who gives nary a poopoo, slides him a stack of cash. “And here’s a little something for yourself. Get something decent to wear or something.”
She weeps. So much for mourning. But when the developer dies “accidentally” his widow, who holds mortgages on the hotel and on several island properties, buys Toby from her. It's a sad moment but—life is life.
As they’re boarding the ferry, however, Marcie Harding, Park Avenue widow cum dumb blonde who has loved him since ever, gets off and has a knock-down-drag-out with the new owner, while he boards and watches, till Marcie downs her and makes the boat. “I was rooting for you,” he says.
She kidnaps him into a life of fun and luxury—except for “the child,” her nine-year-old daughter, an evil genius and smarter than both of them put together.
Toby accidentally sits on, or rather into, a painting Haze is bidding on and bursts it. It's not his fault!
Haze manages to separate him from Marcie and arrange her marriage to an English lord, and Toby is groped by the gay family ghost. But Andrea, reluctantly—“What a poop-head!”—sorts things out.
As charming as Cary,
as seductive as Marcello,
as cheeky as Hamlet,
as klutzy as Lucy,
as wimpy as Woody,
as gullible as Goofy
and outrageously funny,
impossibly funny!
as seductive as Marcello,
as cheeky as Hamlet,
as klutzy as Lucy,
as wimpy as Woody,
as gullible as Goofy
and outrageously funny,
impossibly funny!
THE BOOKS:
Toby Moments on YouTube:
Jaws
Shoot the Baby
In bed with the Girls
Trying It On
Toby Gets Un-Stupid
The Tipping Point
Champagne and Ice Cream
On the blog:
Toby's Marriage Tips for Men
The Child in Its Swiss Classroom
The Child Annoys Me, and I Annoy It Back
On Amazon:
Robert MacLean is a bad poet and an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a screamingly funny novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a reviewer of films, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. Committed to making movies that don't matter. No brains, but an intellectual snob.
“The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity.”—Oscar Wilde
The Light Touch on Amazon Prime
No comments:
Post a Comment