Tom Pitching Story Ideas

Welcome to the time machine. These posts will skip around like Billy Pilgrim unstuck in time and with all the regularity of the Clockworks. But at least we'll mostly eliminate the future. We won't go there. You'll see pictures of Tom at all ages like some good-natured Dorian Grey.

Back in September of 2005 Tom Robbins was on book tour for Wild Ducks. In San Francisco, Edward Champion aka Bat Segundo of radio fame, was at Tom's reading. He wrote about that night.

One startling revelation was that Tom had some interesting ideas for TV shows and Movies. Here they are:

And Robbins said that he had experienced a sudden burst of artistic activity. He had started writing a script entitled Pyrex of the Caribbean, which involved maintaining an oven-ready backing condition on the high seas. His offering for reality television was Fungi for the Straight Guy, whereby the producers would take a conservative Republican and give him a syphillitic mushroom with a camera crew following him around. And he had devised a pitch for a dramatic television show, Helen Keller: Private Eye with the tagline: “She’s blind, she’s deaf, she’s mute, but she can smell a rat a mile away.”

Another item was one I think I knew but forgot. It's the fact that Switters from Fierce Invalids also appeared in Villa Incognito, not in person but in the conversations of others. He's the freelance spy that Thomas is trying to contact. In that bit you get the outcome of Fierce Invalids explained a little bit.

SPOILER!!!!
On page 204 the agent is described as having two wives, one European and one American. Sound like any two ladies you know?

The whole article is in The Return of the Reluctant