Have Adam Sandler and Kevin James fallen on such hard times they’re having to scrape together a living parking cars? If you didn’t enjoy Grown Ups, you might consider that fair punishment for their cine-crimes, but it’s actually the basic concept for Valet Guys, a new pitch that Sony has bought with an eye to getting them to star in it.
Nick Bakay won them over with his idea, something that sounds like **Sister Act **crossed with, well, blokes parking cars: two valet types at a posh hotel witness a murder and end up on the run for their lives.
Bakay has had a varied career that has seen him as a writer and actor, but he’s possibly best known (depending on your age and TV viewing habits) as the voice of Salem, the sarcastic cat on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. No, really. And his worries that he’s not half the man his dad was are also fuelling a new TV project he’s set up, with Deadline tracking down the text of his original pitch for that…
“I have always struggled living in my father’s shadow,” says Bakay. “I’m first generation. My grandfather was essentially the father of neurosurgery in Hungary. My father was a brilliant neurosurgeon and researcher who escaped communism on a motorcycle with nothing but the diamond from his mother’s wedding ring sewn into his underpants, and went on to become a Nobel candidate. And, as you may or may not know, I am best known…for being a talking cat.”
Nobel candidate neurosurgeon vs. chatty cat? We’re still sort of leaning towards the cat, dude.
Bakay should have plenty of work to keep him from worrying about his daddy issues, though – he’s got the pilot script to write and he’ll also collaborate with James on the Valet Guys script.