Tom Slick and the Search for Nicolas Cage

If you live in San Antonio, Texas, you may know there is a new Tom Slick book out. If you live in San Antonio, you might also know there have been two other books published about Tom Slick in 1989 and 2002, and supposedly some movie rumors. What you might not know is there is a back story to the movies linked to these books.

Catherine Nixon Cooke’s new Tom Slick biography is entitled Tom Slick, Mystery Hunter. The name of the book is tied to the film that was supposedly going to be made by Nicolas Cage’s Saturn Films in the 1990s, Tom Slick: Monster Hunter. That movie is allegedly in "development hell" (as the "forthcoming movie folks" like to term it). Nicolas Cage and Saturn Films, despite various Nicolas Cage websites mentioning there is going to be a Nicolas Cage Tom Slick Yeti movie, has not delivered a Nicolas Cage Tom Slick movie.

The Cooke book, which I expect is good but I haven’t seen yet, has appeared only in hardback ($26.00), and is published not from Paraview Press as mentioned in some articles, but by Paraview, Inc. It was scheduled to be published by Johnson Books a few years ago, but Johnson went belly up and the book was otherwise delayed with some re-writes.

Funny thing about the motion picture business, when the Nicolas Cage movie was announced in Variety in 1996, Variety ended their article noting that Tom Slick and the Search for Yeti (Faber and Faber) was the only book on Tom Slick that existed. That was true then. What was not true was that the movie was being based on my Tom Slick book. Nor was it being based on Cooke’s book, which had not been written yet. While I was told by the alleged scriptwriter of the Nicolas Cage movie that the Nicolas Cage people were allegedly reading photocopies of my book around the studio, no one approached me about a Tom Slick book option from the Nicolas Cage camp.

In 2002, the revised version of my 1989 book, Tom Slick and the Search for Yeti was republished as Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology. Maybe someday, Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology will be made into a major motion picture, for today the Hollywood gods are watching what is happening with cryptozoology. Besides, Slick was a friend of Howard Hughes, and there is some movie magic there. But that’s another story to be told someday in another blog.

Cooke’s new book is getting San Antonio media attention in local articles in November and December. Let’s hope the rest of the nation is ready to rediscover the total impact that this adventurous but down-to-earth cryptozoologist Tom Slick, who searched for Yeti, Bigfoot, and beautiful women up until he died in a mysterious plane explosion in 1962, had on the world.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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