 Davidson Bikini Team (from left): Cynthia Lewis, Nancy Gardner, Lina Soares (back) and Ann Haley |
Members of the Davidson Bikini Team – Nancy Gardner, Ann Haley, Cynthia Lewis and Lina Soares – have caught the attention of a Hollywood television director, though not necessarily for their summer wardrobes. The group said this week that Robert Roy Thomas has obtained an option on their 2006 book “Bikini Is a State of Mind” for consideration as a potential TV sitcom.
The 50-something Bikini Team members came together at The Swimming Hole, a private swimming pool on Lorimer Road, for friendship, fun and to celebrate aging with a positive attitude.
The quartet made headlines two years ago with “Bikini Is a State of Mind,”
Ms. Lewis, who when not sunning herself poolside is a Davidson College English professor, said the group and its ideas may be a sort of “Sex and the City” for her generation – which she joked might be called “No Sex in a Small Town.”
The Bikini Team’s contract gives Mr. Thomas a year to shop around the idea of a TV comedy series based on the book. It’s renewable for up to two more years, Ms. Lewis said.
Mr. Thomas, whose Hollywood credits include the short-lived series “Significant Others” on NBC/Bravo and “Free Ride” on Fox, sees potential in the Davidson women, their story and their attitude.
“The Davidson Bikini Team offers a sharp-witted, fascinating point-of-departure for development of characters and themes every woman over 40 will recognize,” Mr. Thomas said in a press release prepared by the Bikini Team. “The comedy here is infectious with insight into the different ways men and women mature, bond with each other and relate to the opposite sex.”
“Sex and the City” is a chronicle of the lives and attitudes of four young New York women, who are empowered and confident. Ms. Lewis says Bikini Team members represent a generation of women whose confidence and power has not come so naturally, but been derived through experience.
These are “women who didn’t start out in charge, but figured it out,” Ms. Lewis said.
A possible story line based on Bikini Team members could focus on a crisis in each woman’s life that “leads her to … thinking about how she’s going to spend the rest of her life, and how that precipitates self-awareness and a change in outlook and attitude,” Ms. Lewis said.
Hollywood would like to tap into the ideas in “Bikini Is a State of Mind,” Ms. Lewis said. She said Mr. Thomas “is aware that various stations like HBO and Bravo are looking for shows about women and about older women – women the same age as those who are watching TV. They’re interested in positive … inspiration is a bit much, but kid of go get ‘em women’s shows.”
Mr. Thomas will bring a TV crew to Davidson in August to film a short “proof of concept” video. There’s no guarantee that a TV series will come of the option, or that an eventual series will bear any resemblance to the book.
But, said Ms. Lewis, “Our feeling is that if he comes to Davidson and he hangs out with us, that he’s going to love the original idea.”
Didn’t read the book two years ago? At last check, it was still available at Main Street Books, and through online booksellers such as Amazon.com.
“Bikini Is a State of Mind,”
(AuthorHouse, paperback, 2006)
New, $14.99
On Wednesday, August 6, at 6:30 p.m., director Rob Thomas will be at the Swimming Hole with the four authors of “Bikini Is A State of Mind,” which Thomas has recently optioned for television.
Thomas is in town to make a documentary that he will use in marketing
the book’s concept to television producers.