Between Time and Timbuktu is a television film directed by Fred Barzyk and based on a number of works by Kurt Vonnegut. Produced by National Educational Television and WGBH-TV in Boston, Massachusetts, it was telecast March 13, 1972 as a NET Playhouse special. The television script was also published in book form in 1972, illustrated with photographs by Jill Krementz and stills from the production.

Plot

Stony Stevenson, a young poet living with his mother, receives notice on nation-wide TV that he has won the grand prize in the Blast-Off Space Food jingle contest. The prize is a trip on the Prometheus-5 rocket into the Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum. TV reporter Walter Gesundheit and ex-astronaut Bud Williams, Jr. explain that Stevenson was chosen for this mission because it is believed that only a poet could find the words to describe the Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum, a type of time warp, which may hold the answer to all creation. Bud Williams, Jr. recalls that he had trouble describing Mars, comparing it to his driveway back home.