A message for Ethan Hawke:

Dear Ethan,
Peter Bogdanovich, whose daughter was in my last film, wanted you for Toby in this series about a lazy useless gigolo. He himself was to play Toby's nemesis Haze. Of course I wanted him to direct. “Yeah yeah yeah,” he said, but what he wanted was to play Haze.
(We now have John Cleese for Haze.)
 On 5 January 22 Peter 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 to be so serious.
When Maurice Chevalier died (ah, oui), Lawrence Durrell spoke of his “tender insolence.” That’s Toby.
The series is based on the books, which are inspired by PG Wodehouse: Toby’s keeper has a 9-year-old daughter who’s smarter than he is—his Jeeves.
As a struggling artist I can't send this project to your agents. But although I'm insolvent, look what Dan Reardon says:
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 Bernie Stampfer, the producer on this (who wrote a deck I can't attach here), said, “Don't be shocked. Toby is not exactly politically correct. Think Californication and you get the idea.”
Ethan, we have something dynamite here, 19 one-hour scripts for two seasons and infinitely extendable. Please have a glance:

Pretentious Pictures Presents
The Many Loves of Toby Tucker
A Series about a Lazy Useless Gigolo
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.

Based on the books and the videos, 

with a gorgeous review by one's favorite financier!

                   Bertie Wooster
                   Al Bundy
                   Bertie Wooster
                   Hank Moody
                   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.”
She takes him to an island—and dies in bed with him. What to do but cash in her cards, write himself a check and hang around waiting for it to clear?
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.
She disapproves of this “A-word.” “What's an A-word?” “You told me not to say asshole.” “Andrea!” And except for Marcie’s father-in-law and purse-holder, Hazelton Turnbull “Hard Turd” Harding IV, who loathes this freeloader, and considers having him killed.
Toby accidentally sits on, or rather into, a painting Haze is bidding on and bursts it. It's not his fault!
And when Haze tries to have himself adopted by an old count to acquire the title, Toby screws it up by sleeping with the countess.
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.
It never ends.
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!

THE BOOKS:

Toby Moments on YouTube:

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.

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