Hitchhiker's Guide Film Reports

wakaranai writes "The BBC reports that the new "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" movie will star Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office) as Arthur Dent. According to the Internet Movie Database filming starts early 2004, and Marvin's voice will be Stephen Moore, reviving his role from the classic 1981 BBC TV version." If you haven't seen The Office, it takes the subject matter Dilbert has bored us with, and makes it utterly hysterical. This is a good bit of casting. I'm still available to play Zaphod.

Comments

So, Taco . . .

[GnrlFajita]

. . . are you saying that you're a two-headed alien, or just look like one?

Re:So, Taco . . .

[JediDan]

The hangovers would be terrible!
Or perhaps they wouldn't be so bad, alien physiology and all that, could be you get half of a hangover by getting only one head drunk :)

Re:So, Taco . . .

[beacher]

If cloning were as simple as posting, I'm sure there would be dupes of him floating around. It's just a matter of sewing on the other head.....
B

Re:So, Taco . . .

[blowdart]

No no, the second head is a dupe head, which appeared 3 days after the first head was posted.

Re:So, Taco . . .

[RevAaron]

Or, they could just use the really shitty cloth head puppet thing as in the last movie attempt at this film. *shudder>

Re:So, Taco . . .

[Wolfrider]

"I'm with stupid - and he's with me." == Scatterbrain

Reference

Word twisting

[andyrut]

A film version of Hitchhiker's may be interesting, but I think it's safe to say that a film simply cannot pick up on the wordplay of Douglas Adams. Adams is simply a master of twisting words that can make the reader laugh out loud.

Unless the director chooses to use lots of narration, which could ruin a film.

Re:Word twisting

[Threni]

> A film version of Hitchhiker's may be interesting, but I think it's safe to say > that a film simply cannot pick up on the wordplay of Douglas Adams.

Given that the original was a radio show, which contained one or two words....

Re:Word twisting

[Dan Crash]

It didn't ruin "A Christmas Story".

Re:Word twisting

[macheath]

As the original Hitchhiker's was a radio (!) series, the adaption to a movie could work, if done correctly. Although it would have to be shortened quite a bit... The television version is fine though.

Re:Word twisting

[jayhawk88]

No, TNT did that.

Re:Word twisting

[ikoleverhate]

The "voice of the guide" narration in the bbc TV series worked pretty well - when the audience was confused as to what was happening in the main story, a calm voice would start to explain... and leave you even more confused but in fits of laughter.

"after disproving the existance of god, man goes on to prove 1=2, black=white, and gets run over on the next zebra crossing"

Re:Word twisting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but a Christmas story wasn't that good to begin with. There was only so far it could fall.

Re:Word twisting

[andyrut]

Given that the original was a radio show, which contained one or two words....

With radio, the audience isn't shown what's going on, thus there has to be a certain degree of narration to give them some idea of what's going on.

With a movie, the audience sees the action for themselves so narration wouldn't have to be used.

Re:Word twisting

[kuiken]

There was a TV serries aswell.
I got them on DVD and they are pretty funny.

There is alot of narration done in the serries, but the dialoges come out verry good.

Re:Word twisting

[clontzman]

Not a finger!

Re:Word twisting

[mirko]

With a movie, the audience sees the action for themselves so narration wouldn't have to be used.

You may achieve excellent results using narration in a movie, one of my favourite situations is the one where Don Lockwood explains is idea of "Dignity".

Re:Word twisting

[Jellybob]

The TV series seemed to manage it... the narration was there, and added to the experience - I believe that the narration was mostly made up of quotes from the guide, but I havn't seen it recently enough to be certain on that.

Re:Word twisting

[trellick]

Ah and don't forget the 'Blade Runner' narration - (the original - not the awful Director's Cut). Harrison Ford's voiceover added tremendously to the overall film.

I just the original would be put on DVD.

"Dear Mr Scott, please please please change your mind..."

Re:Word twisting

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? RS was forced to add the narration because the studio thought the audience wouldn't understand the film otherwise. You can tell HF was bored out of his mind while reading the narrating-script. It's much better without the narrating.

Re:Word twisting

[Dilbert_]

There was the television version, and also a couple of stage adaptations... I'm sure it will look good on silver screen too. Can't wait to see this!

Re:Word twisting

[Silverlock]

Just a few days ago I found a DVD of the 1981 film version in a video store. Of course, I immediately grabbed it. The special effects and graphics are horrible but it's still Hitchhiker's.. I enjoyed it immensely.

I bring this up because the original has a ton of narration (accompanied by bad graphics) but, hell, it could be a starfield screensaver with some guy reading the entire text in the background and I would still love it. I think it's too good of a book to be ruined by a change of medium. It's been a radio show, a book, a film, an Infocom text-adventure game, and who knows what else. There's a reason for that...

Re:Word twisting

[eln]

You know, when I first read the book, when I was quite young, I came to the part about the zebra crossing and became very confused. I couldn't imagine any place in England where there was such an abundance of zebras hanging around that they would have to put in zebra crossings.

Then of course, the idea of someone getting run over by a zebra, or perhaps a herd of stampeding zebras, made me laugh, so I thought maybe the author was just going for some kind of absurdist humor.

Re:Word twisting

[Thud457]

The "country" of "England" is absurdist humor.

Re:Word twisting

[ackthpt]

A film version of Hitchhiker's may be interesting, but I think it's safe to say that a film simply cannot pick up on the wordplay of Douglas Adams. Adams is simply a master of twisting words that can make the reader laugh out loud.

Unless the director chooses to use lots of narration, which could ruin a film.

Received H2G2 series DVD as Christmas present, haven't watched yet, but did catch a bit of the series on PBS years ago, looked pretty good.

I think that it's being done by brits gives it a pretty good shot, alone. Before you get your wingin' engine up to a whine, consider how bad this could have been if done by Hollywood standards. John Travolta as Zaphod... *shudder*

Re:Word twisting

[philbowman]

OK, I have to ask - you do know that a zebra crossing is a pedestrian road crossing marked out with black and white stripes, right? Knowing which, maybe your version is more surreal...

Re:Word twisting

[eln]

Yes, I know that NOW. My point was when I first read the books, I didn't know that.

Re:Word twisting

[HTH NE1]

You know, when I first read the book, when I was quite young, I came to the part about the zebra crossing and became very confused.

As would most Americans, when we call them "crosswalks". "Zebra" is an essential part of the humor there. Also, the "I'm in the car park" joke just doesn't have the same punch with "parking lot".

But then we got the bit about the word Belgium inserted in our edition of the books to offset the sanitizing of the Rory for The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word "Fuck" in a Serious Screenplay. (Also "arsehole" was replaced with "kneebiter".)

Still, everyone got revisions about probability of rescues and the name of the writer of the worst poetry in the Universe due to problems of people calling phone numbers and the writer actually being a former classmate of Adams who wasn't amused (though in exchange for changing the name, we did get the actual poetry about dead swans).

Re:Word twisting

[tomlouie]

I loved the bit of animation that depicted the two invasion fleets that were at war "settling their differences" (the extra ships on one side blew up, thus making the two fleets equal in number) and coming to Earth, only to be eaten by a dog.

Tom

Re:Word twisting

[HTH NE1]

Just a few days ago I found a DVD of the 1981 film version in a video store.

That would be the TV series.

There is also at least one comic book series.

And the radio play is the original, though there came a point where multiple versions were being made simultaneously, then more radio episodes to finish out the book adaptions, and only now a movie.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has almost as many adaptions as has "The War of the Worlds". I wonder if they'll come out with an arcade game version next (Cinematronics did TWotW as an arcade game). Or pinball?

Re:Word twisting

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, except that up until his death, Douglas was writing the screenplay himself. And it was my understanding that he completed almost all of it, having it only brushed up after his passing.

Re:Word twisting

[Rallion]

Come now. John Travolta isn't even up to Hollywood standards these days.

Re:Word twisting

[b00le]

Harrison Ford's voiceover added tremendously to the overall film.

No, it didn't. It added only the assumption that the audience was too dumb to follow the movie. The only thing better about the original was that there was no unicorn.

"The unicorn is a mythical beast..." James Thurber

Re:Word twisting

[werfele]

Actually, a zebra crossing is not quite synonymous with crosswalk, at least as I had it told to me. It's a specially marked crossing where traffic is theoretically required to stop for pedestrians. That's why the notion of being run down in a zebra crossing has a certain irony.

Re:Word twisting

[jandrese]

I remember playing HHGTTG on my old Commodore 64. The box came with a bunch of extras (including Peril sensitive sunglasses--they were just black cardboard, a miniature invasion fleet in a baggie, some lint, and a few other things). It was one of those annoying "adventure" games where you have to try 6000 different bizarre things before you stumble across the one that lets you advance the story, because the programmers never bothered to account for the obvious solutions.

For instance, instead of just cupping your robe in front of the Babel Fish vending machine (because they are too slippery to catch and the vending machine shoots them out at high speed for no particular reason), you have to hang your robe on a hook, put a towel over a drain, move a bag over a door, and pile mail on the bag to get the fish and advance the storyline. Garrgh!

Re:Word twisting

[SamSim]

What I really don't want to see in this movie is an identical re-hash, opening in exactly the same way as the book, the TV series and the radio series, with exactly the same dialogue and jokes. There'd just be no point. The film should open on Ford Prefect waking up in the middle of the night and decoding the signal from the incoming Vogons, or Zaphod speeding across the oceans of Damogran towards Easter Island.

Re:Word twisting

[adjusting]

It also came with no tea.

Re: Word twisting

[gidds]

People said similar things about the TV version. And in a way, they were right: the pictures weren't as good as the radio version. But it worked nonetheless, because it introduced new things (notably, the Guide sequences) which made up for that. The result was something that wasn't the same as the radio series (or book, or LP, or computer game), but something good in its own right.

And if they make a film, the same might apply. It won't be quite like any of the previous versions, but it could still work well by doing something different.

I'm prepared to wait and see. On the one hand, I doubt that they'll have the guts to make it as dark and different as it'd need to be; a version that played it as safe and as conventional as films usually do would ruin it. But on the other, it's good to see English actors used, and films like LOTR have shown that it's still possible to take a single vision through the complexities and committees of film-making, so the final result might still bear something of the late DNA's imagination.

Re:Word twisting

[geoffspear]

Umm, traffic is theoretically required to stop for pedestrians in all crosswalks. That's what they're for.

Re:Word twisting

[ashitaka]

Umm, traffic is theoretically required to stop for pedestrians in all crosswalks. That's what they're for.

You don't live in Vancouver, do you?

Re:Word twisting

[ahdeoz]

I imagine the English just sit around and laugh at their own poor English all day. It goes beyond just weird colloquialism to just a bad understanding of their own language. No wonder the people in India never really learned to speak it.

Re:Word twisting

[ahdeoz]

sounds like a crosswalk. To an American, as it stands, it's funny. But to a Brit, "trampled by nearsighted Zebras at a crosswalk would be better."

Re:Word twisting

[plugger]

Theoretically required to stop? You are quite right that many vehicles don't stop, but if through inattention a driver badly injures or kills a pedestrian on a crossing, they will likely go to jail. The pedestrian has right of way once they have stepped onto the roadway, but I always stop for people who are waiting.

Re:Word twisting

[anotherone]

Ok, you're going to laugh at me, but I hadn't realised that until just now. I also assumed that he meant that Man was run over by a zebra.

Re:Word twisting

[geoffspear]

No, but I did say "theoretically." I doubt British drivers stop at "zebra crossings" any more than North American drivers stop at "crosswalks."

Re:Word twisting

[ahdeoz]

I'd hire you on to the screenwriting team, if any positions were open, and I was in HR

Re:Word twisting

[FromWithin]

I'd just like to point out that the Infocom game that you are talking about was co-written with Douglas Adams. The babelfish problem was most certainly devised by the man himself. So let's not blame the difficulty on "...the programmers...".

It's one of the most difficult Infocom games. Just try getting past the door. Ludicrous!

Re:Word twisting

[Thud457]

Xemu heard that, ratbrain!

Re:Word twisting

[gowen]

"The unicorn is a mythical beast..."

And if I suggest otherwise, you'll have me put in the booby hatch.

Re:Word twisting

[RancidBeef]

I'd always heard of him referred to as "Xenu". After doing a google search to be sure, I see him referred to as both "Xenu" and "Xemu". Go figure...

Re:Word twisting

[TomV]

But then we got the bit about the word Belgium inserted in our edition of the books to offset the sanitizing of the Rory for The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word "Fuck" in a Serious Screenplay. (Also "arsehole" was replaced with "kneebiter".)

'Belgium' (I'm so sorry!!!) was in the Radio Series, season 2, Fit The Tenth (In which our heroes have some close encounters with others and themselves), uttered, in total desperation, by Zaphod as he hangs from the lip of the Nutrimatic Cup, thirteen miles above the surface of Brontitall ("There's nothing out there Ford, like no Ground! Some cat's taken the ground away!") and tries to persuade Ford to rescue him instead of discussing the origins and applications of the phrase "Holy Zarquon's singing fish" ("I don't want to be interested, I don't want to be stimulated or have my horizons broadened. I just want to be rescued, Ford, I just want to be swutting well rescued").

When Ford refuses, Zaphod utters the unmentionable imprecation; Ford relents and goes to fetch his towel.

Frankly, the interactions of the series, the TV show, the stage plays and the books is one whole joojooflop situation already before we try and retcon a film into the mix.

Re:Word twisting

[lisany]

I think a movie would work if it just showed a recording of the actors doing the original radiocast. Think of it as radio - with pictures!

Re:Word twisting

[wondafucka]

>> It was one of those annoying "adventure" games where you have to try 6000 different bizarre things before you stumble across the one that lets you advance the story, because the programmers never bothered to account for the obvious solutions.

I'll take an "adventure" text parser game over any game on the xbox or pc hands down.

Re:Word twisting

[spike hay]

The original version of Blade Runner sucked. The idiot movie execs made Ford do a voicover after the fact because they thought the audience would be too dumb to follow the movie. They also added a ridiculous happy ending.

Re:Word twisting

[Golias]

Right there with you. I had always assumed that "Zebra crossing" must have been the proper name of a specific street corner somewhere in London.

In America, we call them "crosswalks" as they don't really look much like zebra stripes at all.

(Insert RedvsBlue.com "why do you call it a wart-hog? I think it looks more like a puma" joke here.)

Re:Word twisting

[Anonymous Coward]

They really do stop. British drivers & pedestrians are very polite about that point!

Re:Word twisting

[ChreodeRiot]

yeah, same here. I guess it's a USA-Adolescent thing....

Re:Word twisting

[glesga_kiss]

Don't crosswalks have traffic lights though, to tell the traffic to stop?

A zebra crossing is different...there are no traffic controlling lights and pedestrians on it get right of way, always.

Re:Word twisting

[MrBlint]

Theres an on line (java) version of the game here. Be warned there is no save game facility but It's a nice bit of nostalgia. There are plenty of full walk throughs available on the web and it's interesting just to follow it through to recapture sone of the feel of the computer games of yore.

Re:Word twisting

[danila]

There surely must be at least a few jokes in the whole book (or the whole series) that can be translated well into cinema... Remember, that the script (speech only) is usually 5-10 times smaller than the speech in the book.

Re:Word twisting

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably why the game includes Invisiclues.

Re:Word twisting

[Dogtanian]

when I was quite young, I came to the part about the zebra crossing and became very confused.

Actually, I reckon many kids in the UK nowadays (including, I guess, England, although I actually live in Scotland) wouldn't be familiar with a "zebra crossing" either; I saw one in another town last week, for the first time in ages(*)- they're virtually extinct.

I remember seeing quite a few when I was a pretty small kid (probably not that long after the book first came out), but I *think* they were all replaced with red/green-man crossings (in conjunction with 'proper' traffic lights) because they were safer.

(*) An odd exception I saw recently is a set installed on a newly-built road on private land. This may be temporary; I'm not sure.

Re:Word twisting

[bobbozzo]

That's probably why the game includes Invisiclues.

Actually, you had to buy the clue books seperately, at least when the game was first released.

And the game was terribly difficult. I managed to finish almost all of Starcross without the cluebook (I did need it to understand the chemistry problem as I had not had chemistry yet).

Starcross was later given Infocom's "Advanced" rating (indicating their hardest games), but HHGTTG was MUCH harder for me.

Re:Word twisting

[philbowman]

No, I'm not laughing. Just one of those cultural references, but it's a good example of Douglas Adam's the kind of humour - fast moving to the point that you only catch up with the joke by the time he's through the next one.

(for those for whom it's too early in the morning the joke runs (massively cut down to the point of unfunniness - just go buy the book, CD, DVD, whatever...)

Man proves God doesn't exist because proof denies faith, without faith God is nothing, and the Babel fish is proof that he exists, therefore he doesn't QED. God disappears in a puff of logic. Man says that was easy ...

and goes on to prove that Black is white, and promptly gets run over at the next zebra crossing [because zebra crossings have black and white stripes so drivers know where they are, and if black is white then there's no difference between the stripes and drivers won't spot them so Man will get run over].

You just have to be able to do the above in realtime...

phew.

For those still reading, Zebra crossings are one of a range of UK road features with wierd names. Others including Pelican crossing (from PEdestrian LIght CoNtrolled).

Re:Word twisting

[Lars T.]

For those who still don't get it: How 2 Do Pedestrian Crossing. A Zebra crossing is a path across a road marked with black and white stripes where pedestrians may cross. They have NO traffic lights.

Now imagine black=white, and man crosses the street ona Zebra crossing.

Re:Word twisting

[Larry David]

Even the BBC refer to England as 'a country within the United Kingdom'. This may not be the popular usage, but technically England is a country within the United Kingdom, which is a conglomerate of countries.

This is also why Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England are all independent national soccer teams in international fixtures, rather than just having a single UK team.

Re:Word twisting

[radixtwo]

In Australia, we suffered a complete failure of imagination and called them Pedestrian Crossings. But with our closer ties to the UK at the time, I think most would have known what a Zebra Crossing was.

Re:Word twisting

[julesreid]

What seems to be lost here is that zebra crossings are not merely crosswalks: the pattern on the pavement is significantly different. Instead of it being two parallel lines in which you walk, a zebra crossing has wide, white rectangles perpendicular to the pedestrian, creating an alternating black and white design. (Think Abbey Road cover...)

The effect when a pedestrian is walking in the crossing is that of an interference pattern, which it makes it easier for cars to see them.

Now if you reread the joke again, it will make more sense...

Re:Word twisting

[zoeblade]

Unless the director chooses to use lots of narration, which could ruin a film.

What, like Fight Club? (yes, that was sarcasm, before a bunch of David Fincher fans flame me).

Re:Word twisting

[JimBobJoe]

It was one of those annoying "adventure" games where you have to try 6000 different bizarre things before you stumble across the one that lets you advance the story, because the programmers never bothered to account for the obvious solutions.

A later version of this game was my first encounter with the Hitchhikers guide (my father bought it for me when he saw that I liked Monty Python.) At first you had to buy a clue book, but with the game I had the clues were built in. I remember typing in "help" every other turn. (And it still took a very long time.)

I played it on the XT. God help you if you turned on the turbo button.

Re:Word twisting

[samhain_tm]

Xenu is something like their devil in scientology... they are forbidden to say it or something like that... bunch of whack jobs if you ask me.

Re:Word twisting

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh i hated when i got stuck at first; how many think about typing "smell" when you hate that blackout you get from entering the ship? Took me hours and frustration.

Re:Word twisting

[Brendan Byrd]

Ohhhh...so there's actually no zebra involved in crossing the crosswalk/crossing/whatever?

Re:Word twisting

[Brendan Byrd]

Actually, the babelfish was one of the hardest puzzles in the game, and it was fairly early into it, too. I also seem to remember the whole "PUT BIT IN TEA" puzzle being fairly hard as well.

Yes, my parents were playing that game (and Alternate Reality) on the ATARI 800XL. I had vivid memories of being 6-7 years old and learning about Vohgons and depressed androids.

Re:Word twisting

[Wolfrider]

--I played it on an old Mac once. The part that put me into a rage was when your character was knocked out, and I tried everything under the SUN to get him to wake the hell up. Nothing worked until the guy that owned the game gave me the hint that it was one of the 5 senses, so I finally typed "smell" and the game woke him up. Needless to say, I wanted to kick the programmer in the nads for being such a narrowminded idiot. The game wouldn't even give you a hint!

Re:Word twisting

[RexxFiend]

If I remember correctly, the game did give you a hint.
The text said something like: you can`t see anything, you can`t hear anything, you can't touch anything and you can't taste anything. Notice it didn`t mention smell.
They used this a couple of times in the game and it was always a different sense, but the clue was that only 4 of the 5 were mentioned.

You are right tho, it was a damn frustrating game, especially when you got to the end and realsied you hadn't been looking for the 4 bits of pocket lint, so you couldn't do the last puzzle,
aaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

Re:Word twisting

[geoffspear]

Not always. At least in Pittsburgh, there are plenty of intersections with marked crosswalks, either with or without big "Yield to Pedestrians in Crosswalk" signs, with no traffic signal or stop sign at all.

Of course, drivers pretty much ignore them, just like they ignore "No turn on red" signs at intersections with pedestrian-only light phases with a cuckoo alarm for the visually impaired. And red lights. In fact, they ignore the crosswalks so much that the city council a couple of years ago passed an ordinance making the fine for not yielding to pedestrians a lot higher than is provided for in state law, but it doesn't seem to have much effect.

Re:Word twisting

[biglig2]

Oh yes we blooming well do. I don't think I've ever seen anyone run a Zebra crossing. I mean, hit someone on a Zebra and you're going to prison, no excuses.

What I want to know is why Pelican crossings are so called.

(For the North Americans: a Pelican crossing is a "crosswoalk" with traffic lights that is controlled by a button the pedestrian presses)

Re:Word twisting

[Carmody]

I saw it recently, too - having seen it before, decades ago, when it was shown on PBS.

How did the actors get so young? Younger than me, even?

Sequel

[stanmann]

What about the other 4 books in the trilogy???

Re:Sequel

[Leffe]

It's a joke, a joke is supposed to be funny, get it?

It's officially called Trilogy.

Re:Sequel

[danidude]

the other 4 books

Did you forget about "Young Zaphod Plays it Safe"?

Re:Sequel

[Kenja]

The last book in the series was titled ?the fifth in the increasingly inappropriately named Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy.?

Re:Sequel

[geoffspear]

No, there are 5 books in the trilogy. He said "other 4".

To be technical like you, however, since "tri" means 3 and "logos" means word, a trilogy can only have 3 words. Any longer works will need to find a new name. Now go away, kneebiter.

Re:Sequel

[taliver]

Well actually, the last book in the series actually has the line "Continuing to redefine the meaning of the word trilogy." .

Re:Sequel

[MemoryAid]

"Young Zahpod Plays it Safe" is probably more of a short story. I'm not sure it was ever published as a book in its own cover.

On another note, it seemed to me when I read it years ago that it didn't really mesh with the plot of the trilogy, but was more of a stand-alone work.

Re:Sequel

[princewally]

It's officially called "The increasingly misnamed Hitchhiker Trilogy."

Re:Sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there are 5 books in the trilogy. He said "other 4".

Well, yes. "Other." As in, besides this one. THGTTG plus four more equals five. Five books in the trilogy. See, math really isn't that difficult is it?

Re:Sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

Author of grandparent post, please ignore parent post. I attributed your reply to a differnt post. You were pointing out the same thing I was. I'll go soak my head now.

Re:Sequel

[PhuCknuT]

I think the cover of the 4th book said 'The fourth book in the increasingly inaccuratly named hitchhiker's trilogy". Or maybe it was the 5th.

Re:Sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention doing the gag visually may be appealing, I don't think you would win any PC Point for taking the piss out of that particular guy at this particular point in his life.

Re:Sequel

[hetairoi]

Are you trolling or just stupid? I bet you think six times nine isn't forty-two either.

Re:Sequel

[princewally]

I think it was both, but after buying the first 4, I decided to get the Ultimate Hitchhiker.

Re:Sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a winner, ladies and gentlebeings! therealcaf is the biggest pillock in this thread!

Re:Sequel

[jazzyseth]

No, the fifth one, "Mostly Harmless" was the book that gave a "whole new meaning to the word trilogy".

Re:Sequel

[TheXRayStyle]

No, there are 5 books in the trilogy. He said "other 4". To be technical like you, however, since "tri" means 3 and "logos" means word, a trilogy can only have 3 words. Any longer works will need to find a new name. Now go away, kneebiter.

Well, to really be technical (and increasingly more off-topic), that's not entirely true. The word logos (as used by Herodotus and Thucydides among several others) can mean a story or tale. It was used to differentiate a story both from mere fable (muthos, from which our word 'myth' comes from) and from a historical text (historia).

That's not to say that it wasn't funny...it's just so hard not to be a pedantic bitch.

Also, the HHGTTH is officially called a trilogy. It's funny. Ha ha.

Re:Sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not kneebiter, I've always heard ankle-biter.

Re:Sequel

[ahdeoz]

well, -ology, as everyone knows, means the study of things in groups (Biology, the study of pairs; Psychology, the study of Psychologists) A triolgy is about a manage a trois. Which, I'm sure you'll all agree, was not in either the HGTTG or the LOTR. Hence the "increasingly misnamed" and "whole new meaning" bits.

Re:Sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pillow-biter.

Re:Sequel

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

The actual were three "Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy books" (hence a trilogy), one by Douglas Adams, the one that the Douglas Adams' one was about, and the one that another and much later book by Douglas Adams (his fifth on the subject) was about!

Come on...

[cybermace5]

Is Dilbert really that boring?

Or maybe Taco's just trying to find a cute way to say that "The Office" is really funny?

Re:Come on...

[Bertie]

It's an absolutely ridiculous comparison to draw. Dilbert takes a sledgehammer approach to a load of heartbreakingly unfunny material about the minutiae of office life, and in my book it's usually rubbish. The Office has absolutely nothing in common with it other than that it's set in a boring office. It's about people, not procedures, and as a result it's touching as well as hilarious, and like so many other great comic characters (Fawlty, Rigsby, just about everybody in Porridge), David Brent is essentially a tragic figure.

Re:Come on...

[arafel]

I think how funny it is strongly depends on your point of view; personally, I can't stand it. The actor will probably make a good Arthur, though.

Stephen Moore

[mccalli]

Stephen Moore's TV version was already a revival. Stephen Moore is the original voice from the radio series, which predates the books, TV series...anything. To my mind remains the best incarnation, though I'll accept an argument in favour of the books.

He'll probably be quite pleased. Marvin, on the all.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Stephen Moore

[mccalli]

Marvin, on the all

Aarg. Preview. Oh well, I mean to say "Marvin will remain very depressed about it all".

What a waste of a 1000th comment this correction is. Oh well. I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed...

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Stephen Moore

[corbettw]

Yes, well, that sort of thing wouldn't happen if you had a brain the size of a planet. Not that you care.

Re:Stephen Moore

[JordanH]

• Oh well. I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed...

"`The first ten million years were the worst,' said Marvin, `and the second ten million, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.'"

Re:Stephen Moore

[baldass_newbie]

I'm thinking of a number between one and ten, guess what it is...

Hopes for Zaphod

[dpille]

I hope they'll spend some serious CGI money on Zaphod- I was always somewhat disappointed that on the TV series, the 2nd head mostly looked asleep or simply turned from side-to-side. I've always thought there are sections of dialogue in the books that make much less sense or are less funny if you can't imagine each head speaking its own mind.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[fruey]

They don't have to spend serious CGI. He just has to play the part twice, and then stitch them together, rather like in "Death Becomes Her" where the body and head parts were filmed separately, and the results were far more realistic than a completely CGI head like TPM or AotC. The plot of the film wasn't great, but it won the 1993 Oscar, BAFTA and Saturn awards for special effects.

The key part is how to get a decent neck on him so that the two heads work. You could get twins or a pair of similar looking actors to play each part separately, then CGI them into one. Kinda like by tying them together before shooting and stuff. Way too many cool ways to do it, but don't make him 100% CGI!

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[JasonUCF]

Yes.. I must say for a 1981 TV series the CGI effects on Zaphod's head are lacking... [manic sarcasm dripping mode disengaged]

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[eggoeater]

I never saw the TV series but from reading the book I've always had in my mind's eye what his two heads would be doing. The thing I like most about Zaphod is that he has two heads, two brains, but one "mind".
In other words, were not subjected to the shtick of the two heads talking to one another as if there were two people sharing the same body. I like the idea of two faces showing the same emotion in slighly different ways. I also like the idea of only one head at a time talking unless he's screaming in which case he would use both. Another thing they could do is have him sing in harmony using both heads. Lots of possibilities! From an "acting" point of view, it adds a whole new dynamic.
So my hope for Zaphod is that they take advantake of all that.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[coastwalker]

Its the first natural role for conjoined twins :-)

casting director take note!!

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[fermion]

The second head was a thing that worked well for the book and radio, but was just a distraction on TV. It would just be better to take that bit out in rewrites. It won't be a big problem, since any fans knows that the main character is the Guide, not the people.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Seraph]

Its the first natural role for conjoined twins :-)

You haven't seen Big Fish yet, have you?

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[cjpez]

Bah. I hope they use as little CG as possible. HHGTTG isn't supposed to be some glitzy high-production thing; it's B-movie camp, and B-movie camp at its finest. Zaphod's plastic-head-attached-to-his-shoulder thing from the BBC TV series was outstanding. CG could ruin a good movie like this.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Half-pint HAL]

I read a tribute article ... or did I see something on the TV? Either way, Douglas Adams knew that the second head wouldn't really work, so he tried to rewrite it so that it wasn't there. His preferred solution was to have the second head under his coat so that he could open his coat and cut to a different shot whenever they needed to speak to the second head.

Executives vetoed this on the grounds that it wasn't like the radio series. Douglas was apparently a little miffed -- it was *his* radio series after all: why shouldn't he be allowed to change it?

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember right, the "less popular" head only actually said one thing in the series. Something along the lines of "You mind if I eat this?" if I remember correctly.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[coastwalker]

I stand corrected, or slump typing to be accurate.. Big Fish looks a little on the serious side so I should have said natural leading comedy role perhaps. Zaphod does have to contend with his dual nature occasionaly although its not developed very far.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Deanasc]

You could get twins...

Yeah like the Olsen twins and then CGI them together. Actually I could think of a thousand things to do with the Olsen twins and CGI.

I would rather see them build a puppet head and control it by hydraulics then watch cartoonish CGI. But that's just me.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Vinnie_333]

They had huge problems with the head when they did the TV series. The build a pretty good mechanical head (for the day), but right before filming it broke down. They just didn't have the time/money to keep fixing it.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[HTH NE1]

No, it had more lines, such as this exchange:

Head 1: "Hey, what?!"
Head 2: "Hey, what?"
1: "The ship picked them up all by itself!"
2: "So what?"
1: "So what? The ship picked-- oh, go back to sleep, will you?"
2: "Ey."

And:

1: "Spooky, eh?"
2: "And dark."
Ford Prefect: "You've still got your sunglasses on."
1: "Too right!"

They did however keep the lines brief. And most of the time the third arm was tucked in Napoleon-style.

Remember also that the DVD and VHS releases have added footage that wasn't in the original run of the series, and the VHS release cut the line, "Arthur bruised his upper arm," when they re-edited the 6 episodes onto two tapes with one credit sequence each.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[calyphus]

I never saw the TV series but ... I've always had in my mind...

It's better not to have seen the TV ver. That second head (not to mention the third hand) is so poorly made it completely fails at "suspension of belief." Rereading the books, I sometimes have flashes of the horrid thing and it ruins things. However, even though Marvin was done no better, he was forgetable. Considering how clunky he sounded on the radio series, one can build a very inelegant looking Marvin and get away with it.

One thing the TV series did add that I like is making Trillian the source of the probability reciting voice on the Heart of Gold...Hmm, the Heart of Gold? A Nike product placement opportunity in the making!

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[iabervon]

Having the second head be plastic means they don't use it much, and therefore the character doesn't work as well. I think they should have a second actor for the second head and edit them together. Zaphod needs to be able to argue with himself and finish his own sentences. I agree that it needs to be low-budget, but it should also be ambitious. The low budget shouldn't affect the script, like having a mostly-inanimate head would. Instead, it should be written as if they could achieve any desired special effect, and then produced with cheap effects. the BBC series was actually on a low budget, and therefore couldn't do some of the content. I want to also see effects that look cheap but are actually quite expensive.

Now I'm imagining people writing CG for B-movie camp. "For Zaphod, we rendered the whole thing, because it was easier that way, and then we came up with a technique for getting the second head to move like it was just overlaid on the rest of the model. We had to figure out how to produce the artifacts you get around the edges with blue-screen, too. Now this scene is completely CG, including the wires you can see blocking stars on occasion. The Heart of Gold is an actual running shoe model from a shoe company."

Re: Hopes for Zaphod

[gidds]

The danger with spending lots on the effects is that it then becomes about the effects. The producers want something to show for all that money, and the technical people want to show off. And in a movie where the effects are the thing, that can be great.

But HHGG isn't about the effects. The double head, like the third arm, was originally just a throw-away gag in the radio series, a few extra words at no cost. HHGG, like all good science fiction (and I know DNA didn't really consider HHGG as proper science fiction, but I do), is about ideas. (And gags.) As long as the effects are there to serve the story, it'll work. The moment they work the other way around, it'll fail.

(In fact, I often find low-budget productions more satisfying than high-budget ones. Lack of money forces people to think about how to tell their story: they get creative. And that sometimes gives far better results than simply throwing money at a problem.)

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

He just has to play the part twice...

You've just described some expensive CGI.

...just...stitch them together...

Have you any clue just how much work is involved in stitching another head onto someone's body in a convincing manner? In "Death Becomes Her" the neck was expensive CGI. This would require much more work.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Man of E]

They could just use the fantastic special effects in the three-headed-giant scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail film.

You're lucky, you're not next to him.
What do you mean?
You snore.
Oo, lies. Anyway, you've got bad breath.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Brian the Bold]

Oh come on! H2G2 on the TV was made with the usual BBC budgets and wardrobe department. Since Douglas had come up via the Dr Who series as a writer I always thought that added immeasurably to the charm of it.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[belroth]

In the stage show they had two actors playing Zaphod, at the same time in the same costume.
One actor was behind the other - the clothes went round both actors so 'zaphod' had two double thickness legs, one double thickness arm and two normal arms (and two heads of course). The shoes were two paris of normal shoes on plates fixed heel to toe. Obviously the actors need to be of the same height and twins would be ideal.
The two actors on stage split the lines and did some nice business with both arms on the same side doing a task together,like feeding the 'opposite' head while the near head spoke. It was very effective.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you don't know "any fans" then.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Anonymous Coward]

That wasn't Douglas Adams, it was John Lloyd (TV series producer).

The two of them also wrote "The Meaning of Liff".

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[G-funk]

Man I don't know about the rest of you nerds, but of the things I want to do with the Olsen twins, CGI is way way way way down the list.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[CaptainAvatar]

Hmmm, but expensive CGI in 1993 is surely not nearly so expensive in 2004?

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[wattooau]

What are you talking about exactly? The TV show, the novels or the radio series? Douglas Adams continually expressed dissatifaction with the FX on the TV show so if your contention is that the author wanted it to look like crap then I m afraid you're a little off the mark. The humour in Hitch Hiker's always stemmed from the writing and not the cheapness of the FX. People say the same thing about Doctor Who and its FX and they are wrong there also. Do you really think that the directors, producers, designers and writers all sat around in the 70's going " Yeah, we want this to look really really glitzy and cheap"? No they tried their best with the limited resources that they had. Shows like this with better FX (providing they get everything else right) can only get better and show the Americans just how awful Star Trek is.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[cjpez]

What are you talking about exactly? The TV show, the novels or the radio series?

Er, I think I was perfectly clear when I said "from the BBC TV series."

if your contention is that the author wanted it to look like crap then I m afraid you're a little off the mark.

Where did I say that DNA wanted it to look like crap? All I said was that I thought the cheap special effects did a much better job than vast amounts of expensive CG could do with the material. And I still stand by that.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Wolfrider]

--I was just going to mention that. I gave the film 5 stars, but the twins CGI was *horrible.* Great cast and performances tho. The actresses that played the twins were actually ok.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Yeah...but this is a harder job. In death becomes her we had one scene with neck twisting around a single axis. For Zaphod we need to fix every scene in which he appears and the new neck needs to follow hundreds of different head movements. It'd probably also require some of the clothing to be CG to hide some of the join. And really you need two CG heads otherwise you'll have the BBC result: one head is central and one hangs to he side. You really want a pair of symmetrical heads. This is expensive work - but doable I think.

Re:Hopes for Zaphod

[Zalgon 26 McGee]

Mod the parent -1, underage...

Poor Synopsis

[Afty0r]

If you haven't seen The Office, it takes the subject matter Dilbert has bored us with, and makes it utterly hysterical.

That's an utterly terrible synopsis. Dilbert and The Office share only their setting (an office) and very little else. In contrast to Dilberts "engineers banging heads against the system" the office chooses to explore primarily the relationships and personalities of people in a small office and the lack of authority or system which allows an incompetent boss to reign supreme.

Re:Poor Synopsis

[bigjocker]

the office chooses to explore primarily the relationships and personalities of people in a small office and the lack of authority or system which allows an incompetent boss to reign supreme

And that differs from dilbert because ...

Re:Poor Synopsis

[Jellybob]

That, and claiming it's hysterical.

Everytime I've watched The Office, I havn't felt amused... I've felt embarrased.

Especially the lead character I feel like I shouldn't be watching someone make that much of a dick of himself... and more disturbingly it appears to be the only part he can play.

Re:Poor Synopsis

[kj0rn]

I got the Ricky Gervais stand up DVD, it's well funny. He's good, it is kinda reminisent of The Office, but he's damn good on stage.

Re:Poor Synopsis

[Bertie]

Oh, yeah. I've been curled up in a ball with embarrassment on a few occasions myself ("Free Love Freeway", the management seminar thing, and of course the dance). But just wait till the two Christmas specials make their way Stateside (I'm assuming they haven't already). You might see poor old Brent in a different light.

Re:Poor Synopsis

[pacman on prozac]

He was a standup comedian for years and is still going with it so he does do a few other things.

It's meant to make you cringe, thats the point of it really. They deliberatly avoid obvious gags, its not that kind of show. I guess you could see it as one of those shows thats main point is to make you feel better about your own life because its not as bad as theirs, although I have worked in offices with worse bosses & atmospheres so I could be wrong on that.

I'd say its a very individual thing as to whether you find it incredibly funny or just annoying as hell, and perhaps a very thin line. For years I just thought the former, now I'm hooked. My girlfriend hates it and cannot sit for more than 30 seconds with it on the tv.

If you do appreciate their humour then it is hysterical, they are more down-to-earth than most other comedies on the TV so it seems a fair statement. It wouldn't have run for 2 series plus xmas special if nobody liked it either.

Re:Poor Synopsis

[TwistedSquare]

Depends on what sort of humour you appreciate really. Tim's expressions while the crazy world happens around him are hilarious, Keith can even make exhaling funny, and Brent so perfectly picks out all the terrible boss characteristics that some find it amazing, and many find it too close to home...

Also, not on a hysterical note, your sympathy for Brent grows more and more towards the end of the series (last 2 included), including the amazing scene where he is fired and then stands up to reveal his costume :)

Re:Poor Synopsis

[nosferatu-man]

"The Office" isn't a pathetic apologia for the cubicle life. It's a genuinely subversive take on the meaninglessness of work in general. Oh, and "The Office" is piss yourself funny, whereas Dilbert has never been anywhere within sniffing distance of an actual joke.

'jfb

Re:Poor Synopsis

[ShootThemLater]

Especially the lead character I feel like I shouldn't be watching someone make that much of a dick of himself... and more disturbingly it appears to be the only part he can play.

David Brent is such a significant character that it could be easy for Ricky Gervais easy to find himself typecast in the future - we'll have to see how well avoids the trap.

Incidentally, he and Stephen Merchant (Office collaborator) have a radio show on London's XFM that can be very funny (they broadcast on the net also).

Re:Poor Synopsis

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Dilbert isn't a comedy.

It's a documentary.

Re:Poor Synopsis

[adamofgreyskull]

I still say the funniest he's been is in the spots on the eleven o'clock show, though I'm always partial to the Man-Ranting school of comedy...

Re:Poor Synopsis

[Anonymous Coward]

The writers/directors (ricky gervais and stephen merchant) do a great show on xfm , sat afternoons 1 to 3 (GMT).

Yeah Tim

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who have not seen "The Office" I would highly recomend it. Tim is definitly one of best characters and it is good to see that Martin is getting some more work because he is really funny.

As a long time lover of the guide, it is great to see such a pairing!!

Two heads?

[quigonn]

I'm still available to play Zaphod.

CmdrTaco has two heads? How comes?

Re:Two heads?

[Codex The Sloth]

The second head posts dupes of stories that the first head just posted, natch!

Re:Two heads?

[AKAImBatman]

CmdrTaco has two heads? How comes?

Of course he doesn't. He gets the second head surgically added after he picks up Trillian at a party on Earth. Hmmm, I suppose Taco's wife might have a thing or two to say about THAT little jaunt...

Re:Two heads?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he had the second head then. He put a birdcage over it and covered it up with a cloth. He didn't have the third arm then, though.

Re:Two heads?

[calyphus]

Zaphod had the third arm added, just for Trillian, after the party.

The Office is great...

[SpaceRook]

...but don't expect laugh-a-minute jokes. It's incorrectly called a comedy, when it is really a satire. If you understand the type of humor in "Six Feet Under", you'll understand the type of humor in "The Office". The first season is available on Netflix.

Re:The Office is great...

[110010001000]

Satire is a form of comedy. It is not a sitcom though.

Re:The Office is great...

[OriginalArlen]

satire? yes, sort of,.. actually it's really in a category of it's own, or rather, a small category along with Alan Partridge, perhaps League of Gentlemen (Royston Vasey, not Alan Moore), er,... can anyone think of any more? I'd love to see how these go down in the US. It's not funny, per se, it's more... cruel? David Brent always seems on the very verge of a complete breakdown. It exposes us all as the shallow, ignorant, self-regarding fools we are... I couldn't watch more than the first couple of episodes of Series Two; it just makes you screw your face up in a permanent wince, curl your toes in cringing embarrassment and shame. Utter genius. I can't imagine anything further away from Friends, or Dilbert come to that.

Tim as Arthur Dent is a good call - Tim is really the tragic everyman character, doomed to realise his own, uh, doom, and completely unable to do anything about it. Sounds rather like Arthur already ;)

Re:The Office is great...

[Bertie]

The Royle Family's very much in a similar vein, or at least was for about the first two series before it got really popular. I remember trying to explain this show to a French-Canadian girl: "Well, it's about a family who sit around watching the TV, and nothing ever happens. It's hilarious". Didn't have much impact... I did hear a while ago that they were making a version for America, called "The Kennedys".

Not funny's the new funny, y'know.

Re:The Office is great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Satire is a form of comedy, yes.

Satire doesn't neccessarily make a sitcom, but, the office falls under the broad heading of situation comedy (it's not stand-up, or gameshow-based).

Satire, Comedy and Sitcom are all broad terms.

the office stinks

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the Office sucks.

It just has some people acting embarassingly. If it happened in real life you'd like to punch the guys. But now that it's on tv people find it funny. I'm puzzled, frankly.

Re:the office stinks

[Eu4ria]

I take it you have never worked in an office then, some people do act like that and you are right you do want to punch them.

Re:the office stinks

[Bertie]

The beauty of The Office is in the fact that the people are barely acting at all. The humour is in the fact that these characters are only very slight exaggerations of the reality of office life. We all know somebody who's a bit like David Brent, or Gareth, or Finchy, or Keith. Especially Keith. Every office has a Keith. The humour's in a glance, or a facial expression, or a moment of dead silence, rather than some familiar character running onto the set and uttering their catchphrase for the three thousandth time like you get in most sitcoms.

Re:the office stinks

[szmccauley]

My favourite scene from the first season of The Office is Gareth in the sidecar of the motorcycle heading off after being picked up by the swingers. The expression on his face is priceless. Absolutely the funniest show on Tele in my books. And since my sister bought me the DVD at xmas I've watched the first series twice and each time it gets funnier. Kind of like repeated viewings of Fawlty Towers.

Re:the office stinks

[Espen]

The beauty of The Office is in the fact that the people are barely acting at all. .... The humour's in a glance, or a facial expression, or a moment of dead silence, rather than some familiar character running onto the set and uttering their catchphrase for the three thousandth time like you get in most sitcoms.

I think you are missing the point. It may look like they are barely acting at all, but trust me they are. Its being able to do this is what seperates great acting from the adequate. Perhaps you are watching too many American sitcoms?

Re:the office stinks

[Bertie]

I don't really see the point of getting drawn into a debate on this, but have you ever seen Ricky Gervais when he's not playing David Brent? There's not really that much difference. It's like Brent's a magnified version of him, or what he could have been if he hadn't gone into showbusiness, or something like that. Tim and Gareth are definitely putting it on more, I'll grant you.

But yes, you're right that acting just a little bit is the mark of an accomplished performer, and they pull it off extremely well in that show.

Re:the office stinks

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe, I found his expression brilliant as well, I instantly had to think about Wallace and Gromit when I saw that scene...he sort of looks like the dog (I can never remember which one is Gromit and Wallace, Gromit sounds like a dog name to me but you can never be sure nowadays) sitting in that sidecar...

Re:the office stinks

[dave420]

And the fact that there's no laughter track to tell you what's funny :-P

Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[eggoeater]

...will be pissed when they find out that the Ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything, is never revealed.
I remember after the end of FOTR I overheard people saying "What happened to the ring?". Were these people living in a cave before going to the theater?? ....but hey...screw 'em.
This is going to be great.

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[corbettw]

...will be pissed when they find out that the Ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything, is never revealed.

What are you talking about? The Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything is "What is 6 times 9?"

The answer, of course, is 42.

(For the humor impaired, the joke is that 6*9 is not, actually, 42, implying there's something seriously wrong with the Universe when it can't even answer its own question correctly.)

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[AKAImBatman]

(For the humor impaired, the joke is that 6*9 is not, actually, 42, implying there's something seriously wrong with the Universe when it can't even answer its own question correctly.)

Actually, the Earth matrix that was calculating the question got irrevocably screwed up by the arrival of all the telephone cleaners, hair dressers, and other useless beings from another planet. Thus, depending on how you interpret it, either the question of Life, the Universe and Everything is 7*6 or the question is simply lost forever.

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[Mwongozi]

The computer designed to compute the question (The Earth) was corrupted by the introduction of Arthur Dent, Zaphod, and the B-arc, thus corrupting the calculation.

Arthur's brain contained the computed question, since he was alive just before the Earth was destroyed, but because of the corruption, the question was wrong.

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I suggest you go back and read the books and stop posting about HHGTTG on Slashdot, because it only makes you look a little silly.

The mice built a computer to find The Answer, which is 42. They then built a much bigger computer to find The Question. That computer is the Earth.

The Googlefrinchan B Ark crashlands on Earth, which essnentially causes a "bug" or "virus" in the Earth-program. Hence when Ford & Arthur attempt to find The Question by pulling Scrable letters from a bag at random, they get a question but it is the wrong; the greatest program ever to run was broken because of the Googlefrinchans.

That is the joke. If you like you can look upon it as a commentary by Douglas Adams about the Earth being "wrong" or the awful consequences of introducing a foriegn species into an ecosystem. Whatever you like. But thats the joke at face value.

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[Zak3056]

(For the humor impaired, the joke is that 6*9 is not, actually, 42, implying there's something seriously wrong with the Universe when it can't even answer its own question correctly.)

I'm not quite certain this was the point of the "6x9" joke, given that the program of the computer called Earth was corrupted by the arrival of the Gulgafrincham. OTOH, I do agree about the premise that there is something seriously wrong with the Universe. :)

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[corbettw]

H2G2 was a *comedy*, not a drama. Which is funnier, that the computer was infected by a virus and the Question was lost, or that the Question is non-sensical? I vote for the latter.

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[corbettw]

Wish I had found this before posting my first reply:

From wikipedia:
"In the original radio series, this scene occurs at the end of the first series (Fit the Sixth). On discovering the question, Arthur Dent remarks "I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.". "

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[Sebastopol]

According to Adams (paraphrasing):

Yes, 6x9=42, in base 13, but no one writes jokes in base 13.

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[HTH NE1]

...will be pissed when they find out that the Ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything, is never revealed.

But it was, twice, by Marvin and Eddie, in the third book.

I've already posted the relevant sections. It's a tribute to Adams' subtle writing style that most people still haven't picked up on it.

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Were these people living in a cave before going to the theater?? ....but hey...screw 'em.

nope, they had lifes. You on the other hand live in your mothers basement.

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[gpinzone]

It is if you assume it's base 13.

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[KMitchell]

Combining the two, I initially read THHG and LOTR fairly close to each other (within a few months) and decided that the Question was "how many orcs did Gimli kill?"

Recently watching the extended Two Towers DVD, it seems that Peter Jackson decided to make it 43 instead. Now Legolas weighs in at 42... No idea why this was changed from the book...

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actaully, I don't think so. That question was revealed by picking letters out of a Scrabble bag. The idea being that the question would be in Arthur's subconscious (since he was part of the program that was figuring it out). However two problems exist. 1) The human race was not part of the original program, and 2) The program was terminated 5 minutes before it was done.

The question revealed in the books is close, but wrong. Which, in fact, it happens to be considering the known answer. So, what IS the right question? My money is on, "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 7?"

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[Anonymous Coward]

The program gives the answer to life, the Universe and every thing as "42". Then the program gives us the question to life, the Universe and everything as "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?". In base 13, 6 x 9 = 42, but Douglas Adams said several times that "nobody writes jokes in base 13".

Re:Movie go'ers who haven't read the book....

[babbage]

From what I've seen -- the essays in "Salmon of Doubt", Neil Gaiman's biography, the interviews on the HHGTTG tv series DVD -- it seems like Adams wasn't at all interested in what the question actually turned out to be.

The really funny part isn't so much that 6*9 != 42, but that this great ancient race built a machine to solve all their philosophical questions and the best thing it could come up with was a random number -- and so, raising even more deep philosophical questions & solving exactly nothing.

Everything he wrote after that first revelation -- regardless of whether we're dealing with the radio, television, book, etc version of the story -- was mainly just made up crap to keep the story moving along, and he really didn't seem to interested to get to the answer in a big hurry. I seem to remember, but haven't actually tried to verify this, that he actually presented slightly different variations on the answer -- err, "question" -- at different points much later in the story. Like everything else with the Hitchhiker's story, keeping explanations consistent or logical was definitely not important, and if Marvin found one version of The Question written on the side of a mountain, and Arthur found a completely different & contradictory answer in a bag of Scrabble chips, that's just fine.

Damn I miss Douglas Adams -- it was nice knowing that the world had someone like that somewhere out there...

So what's the answer?

[UsedToCould]

42. What's the question? Shut it! If I wanted your opinion, I'd give it to you.

I'd pick...

[Xpilot]

Sean Connery for Slartibartfast!

Re:I'd pick...

[Baby_with_a_nailgun]

Sean Connery for Slartibartfast!

Would that make him Shlartibartfasht?

Re:I'd pick...

[Schnapple]

Wasn't that DNA's pick?

Picture "It was made from the ribcage of a Stegosaurus!" in a Scottish accent.

Re:I'd pick...

[Gleng]

I always hoped for either Spike Milligan or Vivian Stanshall to play Slartibartfast, but they're both dead now, which kind of screws it.

Adams was a jack-of-all-trades in life and writing

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's safe to say that a film simply cannot pick up on the wordplay of Douglas Adams. Adams is simply a master of twisting words that can make the reader laugh out loud.

I wouldn't say that's safe to say at all. The BBC radioplay version of "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" precedes the novels - and is (at least in my worthless anonymous opinion) easily on par with the novels as far as humor goes.

This will be interesting

[downix]

especially if they pull a harry potter and begin using all 5 books of the trilogy to produce the movies in sequence.

Come on you movie guys, this can work!

Re:This will be interesting

[mccalli]

specially if they pull a harry potter and begin using all 5 books of the trilogy to produce the movies in sequence.

I hope they don't, to be honest. Specifically, I would like to consign the fifth book to the dustbin of history. The humour seemed to have gone, and the overall impression was one of bitterness rather than anything else. Fenchurch dismissed with a not especially good joke too, although to be fair that also happened to Trillian in the original radio series (The joke was funnier there though. Actually, damn near anything Peter Jones said could have been funny).

Cheers,
Ian

Re:This will be interesting

[cyrek]

Nobody ever seems to understand Mostly Harmless.

It was written entirely in the style of a form literature mentioned within the story itself.

And when you read it again, you'll see what I mean.

Re:This will be interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? Mostly Harmless was a great book! Arthur being dull but clever and brave, Ford leaping around offices and out of windows, small furry animals with sharp teeth that you beat with a stick, Guide Mk II and a robot named Colin!

Much better than So Long.., which was a nice book and had the excelent concept of the asylum but wasn't really a Hitch Hikers book and was written by Douglas during quite a nasty bout of depression.

I'd rather read Mostly Harmless than So Long.. if I had to choose. You just didn't like it because of what (Might of. Think about it!) happened to Arthur and the lack of Zaphod & (The late) Marvin.

Re:This will be interesting

[lahi]

What's this Mostly harmless I keep hearing about? Sometimes I get a flash that I may have read or browsed a book called something like that, but afterwards my mind is always blank. As for So Long and thanks for all the fish, I think it is a great book. It really is a damn shame that DNA didn't write a fifth book, though. I always wanted to know more about how the relation between Arthur and Fenchurch evolved. In a parallel universe he wrote/is writing one, maybe.

-Lasse

Re:This will be interesting

[babbage]

If you read the essays in "Salmon of Doubt", one of the gives kind of an apology for "Mostly Harmless" -- basically, DNA writes that he was going through a rough year, it sounds like some friends &/or family had passed away, and basically he just wasn't in the mood to be writing a comedy book at the time. In hindsight, he seemed to think it would have been better to shelve it for a while, and try another draft later, but of course it didn't work out that way. Still, he was disappointed to have left the Hitchhiker's series on such a down note, and seemed interested in finding a way to correct that by adding one more volume. He seemed optimistic about the story he was gradually working on under the name "Salmon of Doubt", which had started out as a Dirk Gentley book, but he seemed to feel that the story would work better if rewritten as a Hitchhiker book. Alas, there wasn't time for that, and the unfinished draft he left behind, as published today in "Salmon of Doubt", is a clearly unpolished Dirk Gentley story.

If only he had lived...

The Office

[grandmofftarkin]

For those of you who have never seen 'The Office' it is a BBC comedy filmed in a semi documentary format (though it is all fictional). On the BBC website linked above there is a clips section to give you a taste of what it is like. Though to really 'get it' you have to watch a couple of episodes. You can buy the complete first series online from PlayUSA.

Re:The Office

[jdtanner]

We have an old saying in the UK...

"It takes one to know one" ;-)

Re:The Office

[Filmwatcher888]

You can also watch it Sundays at 9PM on BBC America.

Re:The Office

[EnglishTim]

Then I was wondering why they were all so ugly.. then I realized it's an English show.

American shows do like their beautiful people.

It's always amusing to compare the people in American soap operas to the people in English ones like, say, EastEnders...

Re:The Office

[AchmedHabib]

I saw it for the first and last time yesterday. To me it was slow and boring although it was a plus that it lacked the censoring and PC crap that makes American comedy shows toothless and trivial. I guess I will give it another go. :)

Re:The Office

[Aardpig]

It's always amusing to compare the people in American soap operas to the people in English ones like, say, EastEnders...

That's because American soaps are aspirational, while English ones are cautionary. Dallas: you, too, can be a millionaire with hot chicks if you work hard. East Enders: if you don't work hard, you'll end up as one of these drunk, ugly, poor peasants.

Australian soaps sit in the middle: the people are poor but beuatiful. Not sure what the message is, but it sure looks nice...

Re:The Office

[DigitalBubblebath]

Yeah, that's what real people look like.

:p

Re:The Office

[lemsip]

Everything about the show is intended to look mundane and dull. Everything from the opening titles, showing shots of traffic driving about in dull commuter-belt town Slough, to the mundane way everyone in the office is sitting there looking ordinary and bored, adds to effect. Use models and good looking actors and it would destroy the effect the show is aiming for.

Or maybe it's just that us Brits are less superficial than you Americans... :-)

Re:The Office

[Anonymous Coward]

i remember seeing the first episode of the first series and thought that it was awful - brent made me cringe so much. however, i stuck with it, and my opinion of it changed. both series really are excellent.

Re:The Office

[pubjames]

I saw it for the first and last time yesterday.

Watch a few episodes before you give up. It gets much funnier as you get to understand the characters.

Re:The Office

[pantycrickets]

If you haven't seen The Office, it takes the subject matter Dilbert has bored us with, and makes it utterly hysterical.

Looks like a good show anyway, kind of like Office Space I guess.

Re:The Office

[slim]

It's always amusing to compare the people in American soap operas to the people in English ones like, say, EastEnders...

It's also amusing to compare the people in American soaps to the people in American real life.

The Office is funny because it closely resembles real life. In real life, beautiful people are the exception.

Re:The Office

[Bertie]

Erm, don't mean to sound patronising or anything, but working in an office is slow and boring. Maybe it's just culture shock. It's not in your face like most American sitcoms (though you could hardly say it's subtle). Stop watching it expecting punchlines, and try to see the humour inherent in the characters themselves.

I mean, how can anybody watch Keith and not crease up?

(Interestingly, I've learned since graduating from university that Keith was in my class - and I didn't notice him, which amuses me immensely)

Re:The Office

[ajs318]

You can also watch it almost any time of the day or night on UK Gold, Britain's third-favourite "repeats" station {ITV and BBC1 are the first two!} but be sure to record it because there are so many bloody adverts on satellite {except the movie stations, which do show films mostly uninterrupted except for talking over the credits, and of course the BBC themselves}.

Re:The Office

[Bertie]

Yeah, and of course your humdrum office in Dogshit, Nebraska is like a Victoria's Secret show, right?

It's supposed to be a fake documentary, for fuck's sake.

Re:The Office

[Anonymous Coward]

The Office is funny because it closely resembles real life. In real life, beautiful people are the exception.

whoohoo! not only am i beatiful but exceptional to boot!

Re:The Office

[Alioth]

...but a realistic one, too. Having gone on a 7-year trip to the United States, I can confidently say that the real American people generally look nothing like "the beautiful people" Hollywood stick in films and the networks put on the TV. Most people in the US are plain or ugly or fat too. The fact that Hollywood seems to believe the entire US consists of a small piece of California and maybe New York if they remember doesn't help.

The Office would just not be realistic if they had all these "beautiful made for Hollywood" people in it, instead of real people.

Re:The Office

[Anonymous Coward]

American Soaps are fantasy, not aspirational. They're also shit.

Australian Soaps are idealist. They have the added bonus that, being a notion born of convicts and prostitutes, they have a 'less ugly' populace.

British soaps are about realism. Not realistic, the two terms are different.

I never understood soaps. If I wanted a fantasy, I'd watch LOTR. Idealism? Give me American Pie. Realism? Wake up.

Re:The Office

[pacman on prozac]

here are some david brent quotes, good to gauge if you'll love or hate this show.

David Brent: Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them.

Re:The Office

[EnglishTim]

*heh* +1, Funny.

Re:The Office

[Flower]

All I'll say is one man's ROTFLMAO is another man's WTF.

Thanks for the link btw.

Re:The Office

[Malfourmed]

Australian soaps sit in the middle: the people are poor but beuatiful. Not sure what the message is...

Everybody needs good neighbours.

Re:The Office

[TomV]

"Come friendly bombs and rain on Slough,
It isn't fit for humans now"

John Betjeman, 1937 (full text) - the town has been a byword for dull mundanity for over 60 years now, and to some extent the series could be seen as an extrapolation of the poem.

Re:The Office

[hendrix69]

Or just d/l the whole thing with BitTorrent.

Re:The Office

[Slashamatic]

Dallas: you, too, can be a millionaire with hot chicks

....or if daddy has an oil-well in the garden.

If anything we can probably blame JR of Dallas for the need to introduce business ethichs into the MBA.

Re:The Office

[JimBobJoe]

That's because American soaps are aspirational

I disagree with this statement. Mexican "Telenovelas" are aspirational.

In Mexican soaps (and to a certain extent, soap operas from the rest of Latin America) the story is often rags to riches; the heroine seeks to marry some terribly attractive hero (and telenovelas are built to end, usually they number under 500 episodes, and then they end with the heroine and hero marrying.) There is an overall plot aspiring from one condition to another, and by the end that aspiration is fufilled. (There is a new reaction to this, which is TV Azteca's soaps which are soap operas married to Jerry Springer. More info as this develops.)

American soaps I would describe as "faux-dramatic." Everyone in the soap is already rich and comfortable, and complex inter-relationship situations are leveraged for drama. Often soaps will make an entire cast change, but still carry the same name (and be from the same "family.") Rarely are soaps ended, and even rarer are new ones begun.

While the British may consider East Enders a soap opera, I don't. To me it's just a serialized drama. Instead, the closest thing the British have to soap operas is expensive productions set in different time periods (often based on a book, I mean, how many Pride and Prejudice remakes can the British do anyway?) Interestingly enough, there was a Mexican Telenovela (the name of which I don't recall) that was based in late 1800's Mexico. It had quite a following.

Re:The Office

[bearave]

The drunk ugly poor peasants from London's East End were the convict stock that were Australia's first settlers. Two centuries of breeding, with a mixing pot of immigrants and poor refugees from around the world, can produce beauty without wealth. The message is beauty and wealth aren't synonymous in an egalitarian society.

The Office

[squirrelpants]

The Office puts a more realistic spin on Dilbert. It really is one of the more original and best shows out there. They're still showing episodes on BBC America or you can pick up the first season on DVD. David Brent is truly a classic character.

Picture

[klocwerk]

here's a pic of him.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38281000/jpg/_3 8281639_office300.jpg

looks like he could pull it off. never seen that movie though.

Re:Picture

[jayhawk88]

Yeah, that's Arthur Dent alright.

Re:Picture

[slim]

looks like he could pull it off. never seen that movie though.

The Office is a TV series (two 6 parters and two Xmas specials, in fact), not a movie. It's massively popular in the UK, it's been shown on BBC America, and a US remake is in the works which will probably miss the point by a mile.

Tim will be a perfect Arthur Dent IMHO.

Re:Picture

[sporktoast]

Character-wise, I'd agree. But don't the books mention Arthur Dent as being something like 6 feet tall? Martin looks like he's barely over 5 feet. Look, here he is in "Love, Actually", opposite Joanna Page, and I'd be surprised if she were more than about 5'2".

I suppose they could do a reverse-hobbit on him ...

Re:Picture

[Bertie]

Oh, I dunno. Ricky Gervais (the guy who plays the central character, David Brent, and also one of the scriptwriters, for those who don't know) is consulting on it, so they surely can't put it too far wide of the goal, can they?

Re:Picture

[jayhawk88]

Maybe, but that's getting a little nit-picky IMHO. I must have missed that description, because I always pictured Arthur as a short anyway.

Re:Picture

[plugger]

I suppose that will depend if the execs are prepared to risk a show that takes time to be appreciated.

Re:Picture

[plugger]

They could just do a Marvin costume with the actor's head at chest level, like those giant cartoon character costumes you see in theme parks.

Re:Picture

[lahi]

I always thought Michael Palin would have been a good Arthur Dent, but he is too old for that role now. Seeing him in his travels around the world always made me think of Arthur Dent.

-Lasse

Re:Picture

[grummerX]

One need only compare the British and American versions of "Coupling" to answer that question.

Re:Picture

[Larry David]

Uh, that picture isn't a grab of the entire frame. It's a crop. If you see the film, or even just the trailer with that section in it, you'll know she is standing in a house up two steps, and he is standing in the street. He is taller than her.

Re:Picture

[corian]

i realize the transfer was in the oppposite direction, but ...coupling was (is?) just "friends in a pub". still wasn't worth watching.

Re:Picture

[Carmody]

I've always pictured him sounding exactly like Simon Jones (I think that's his name) and when I saw the show I started picturing him as looking exactly like him - it will be hard for me to change

Re:Maybe I should watch the first one...

[m3j00]

Ok I think the fact that my serious comment/question got modded +1 Funny might illustrate the fact that I'm completely out-of-the-loop on Hitchhiker stuff. Apparently it was a TV series and not a set of movies?

Anyone who liked Marvin the paranoid android....

[mgpeter]

Check out Marvin the Web Server.

Re:Maybe I should watch the first one...

[Leffe]

It's a set of books, 5 of them, actually. Originally a radio show that aired 'back in the days', before I was born, probably.

Go visit your local library, if you know what that is, and go get the Guide, you won't regret it for the rest of your life!

It's a joke!

[shadowj]

Trilogy relates to 3. Sorry, just being technical.

I think the word you're looking for is "pedantic", not "technical".

You obviously haven't read the books. The fourth and fifth books both have a blurb on the cover that says something like "fourth in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy". It's a joke, very much in keeping with the late author's sense of humor.

Re:It's a joke!

[dot-magnon]

Yeah. As the author says himself, "A trilogy of five books". At least the one I read :-)

Re:It's a joke!

[kogs]

I think the word needed is pentantic.

It would be interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

To see how well this does here in the States.
It might gain a crossover audience for special effects (they do go to many weird places, after all), but I don't think it'll get good critical reviews. The Hitchiker's Guide doesn't have a three-act movie structure, it bounces around from episode to episode. It's really more suited to be a TV series.
It's also peculiarly British. Think about it: Arthur Dent's home is destroyed (twice) by bureaucrats. (Here it would have to be corporations.) They spend time looking for a cup of tea. The end of the universe comes, *and it's no big deal*: people go to a restaurant to watch it happen. (As they say, in England, death is imminent, in Canada, death is inevitable, and in California, death is optional.) The frat-boy Zaphod is a figure of fun and the hero is the mild-mannered Arthur Dent.
I'm also disappointed that they're probably going to make Trillian into a bimbo again; she was supposed to be an astrophysicist. Nobody seems to like nerd women, except for Slashdot, Harvey Pekar, and Howard Dean ;)
And I wonder how well the nerd community is going to rally around it: THHGTTG has been out for a while, and some younger nerds have never heard of it. Hey, I never knew about the Goon Show until I read they were part of the inspiration for Python (I'm 24).
Oh well, I hope it's good...

Re:It would be interesting...

[graikor]

"...bimbo again"?

Trillian (Sandra Dickinson) was sexy, but she wasn't a bimbo, squeaky voice to the contrary. Even on the BBC TV version, she was still the most competent being on the Heart of Gold.

Re:It would be interesting...

[siskbc]

It's also peculiarly British. Think about it: Arthur Dent's home is destroyed (twice) by bureaucrats. (Here it would have to be corporations.) They spend time looking for a cup of tea. The end of the universe comes, *and it's no big deal*: people go to a restaurant to watch it happen.

Right, but all these lovely stereotypes are why we Americans love to poke fun at the British. Also, remember that the Hitchhiker series as as beloved by geeks on the left side of the pond as the right.

I'm also disappointed that they're probably going to make Trillian into a bimbo again; she was supposed to be an astrophysicist. Nobody seems to like nerd women, except for Slashdot, Harvey Pekar, and Howard Dean ;)

It would be a disappointment if she were *just* a bimbo...but she *is* a bimbo.

And I wonder how well the nerd community is going to rally around it: THHGTTG has been out for a while, and some younger nerds have never heard of it.

Who? Let me go kick their asses. I think the standards will be high, meaning it will either be reviled or loved by the geek community.

Re:It would be interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I never knew about the Goon Show until I read they were part of the inspiration for Python (I'm 24).

In which case, you may also be interested in "Round The Horne", which is very much along the same lines. The BBC sell CDs of it; it was a radio show.

Re:It would be interesting...

[plugger]

Sometimes you can listen to it streamed from BBC7, along with other classic SF, drama and comedy. Also, do yourself a favour and check out "I'm sorry, I haven't a clue". Pure genius, rather rude and broadcast at teatime on Radio 4 in the UK.

Re:It would be interesting...

[Chuk]

Hey, I never knew about the Goon Show until I read they were part of the inspiration for Python

The Goon Show inspired a programming language? I'm betting that's not a good thing...

Re:It would be interesting...

[rpj1288]

I'm a teen here in the "land of the free" and a freshie in highschool, yet, even I have heard of THHGTTG! I've read all the books, Salmon of Doubt, watched the BBC version, and listened to the radio play. Every single version had my laughing like mad.

Deep Thought

[CelticWhisper]

Maybe the Deep Thought supercomputer will be played by Virginia Tech's Power Mac G5 cluster! I'm sure Apple would state that if any computer can tell us the meaning of life, it's the G5. How's 'bout it, guys?

Re:Deep Thought

[irokitt]

I think it would be better if it's portrayed as a beowulf cluster of Virginia Tech Mac G5 clusters.

Re:Deep Thought

[SamSim]

Life, n.:

The state of being which begins with generation, birth, or germination, and ends with death; the time during which this state continues; that state of an animal or plant in which all or any of its organs are capable of performing all or any of their functions; figuratively, the potential or animating principle; the period of duration of anything that is conceived of as resembling a natural organism in structure or functions; collectively, that which is alive; animation; spirit; vivacity; vigor; energy

Was there anything else?

Re:Deep Thought

[soyle]

Maybe the Deep Thought supercomputer will be played by Virginia Tech's Power Mac G5 cluster! I'm sure Apple would state that if any computer can tell us the meaning of life, it's the G5.

Given that Douglas Adams liked his Macs, that sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

Re:Deep Thought

[Anonymous Coward]

No Need!

Zaphod

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's a little revisionist, but Zaphod could be played by a biracial team of actors. It worked well with Rosie Greer and Ray Milland.

Wouldn't Cmdr Taco make a better

[3.5 stripes]

Vogon ??? :)

Re:Wouldn't Cmdr Taco make a better

[MooCows]

Vogons never do the same poetry twice (or thrice).

Re:Wouldn't Cmdr Taco make a better

[LittleBigLui]

[sig] This post was created by millions of tiny cows jumping around on my keyboard

So you're into vogon poetry yourself, eh?

scnr :p

Re:Wouldn't Cmdr Taco make a better

[Anonymous Coward]

How about John Travolta as the Vogon captain? He could just wear his stuff from Battlefield Earth and read some Dianetics...

Re:Wouldn't Cmdr Taco make a better

[redhat_redneck]

If he was cast as vogon, would he be able to reproduce the vogonic poetry? I wonder if I can actually sit through vogonic poetry on screen without chewing my arm off??

Re:Wouldn't Cmdr Taco make a better

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean "might be worse"? (.ra)

Re:Wouldn't Cmdr Taco make a better

[MooCows]

Nah, Vogons would eat cows. (even tiny cows)
I let them type my posts for me. ;)

Re:Wouldn't Cmdr Taco make a better

[Zoop]

Actually, I think Shatner might make the perfect Vogon. The part doesn't call for...subtlety.

Re:Wouldn't Cmdr Taco make a better

[bad_fx]

Actually, I think Shatner might make the perfect Vogon. The part doesn't call for...subtlety.

...Not to mention The Transformed Man which I think illustrate he has the perfect poetic abilities for the part....

DON'T PANIC!

[Darth23]

Maybe the BBC twits will do this one right. I wasn't too impressed withthey're lates incarnation of Dr. Who, and the fact that Douglas Adams isn't around to possibly work on the movie kind of concerns me.

Re:DON'T PANIC!

[irokitt]

Douglas Adams had started on the script before he died. I don't know how much of it was his, but it's nice to know that at least some of it shouldn't suck. Right, Disney?

I will be the official taste tester

[cerebralsugar]

for the pan-galactic gargle-blasters. If I am to taste them and deem them correct, then they will look correct. if the drink is correct, then the movie will be good, the more i drink.

Re:I will be the official taste tester

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds good to me. If somebody's digestive tract has to disolve, I'm glad it's not mine.

Red Dwarf

[PaulGrimshaw]

Lets not forget about red dwarf due sometime this year (fingers crossed!).

Re:Red Dwarf

[pklong]

seconded, if it ever gets finished

Re:Red Dwarf

[dJCL]

I agree, I recently watched the entire series and really want to see more, esp since they left the seriese sorta hanging there...

And the website has said that the movie would be in progress for a while now. But no updates have been done, anyone done any research on this and know the real current story on this one>

The Office

[pantycrickets]

If you haven't seen The Office, it takes the subject matter Dilbert has bored us with, and makes it utterly hysterical.

First I was wondering why I had never heard of this show, and so I went to the website. Then I was wondering why they were all so ugly.. then I realized it's an English show.

It's the guy in the "high noon" graphic

[c4miles]

If you're getting the same image at the top of the article as I am, the guy in front of all the christmassy ladies is Bill Nighy, the actor lined up for Slartibartfast.

On a related note, Slartibartfast was originally a working name for the character, which Adams chose just because he didn't like the typist the BBC had assigned for him whilst he was writing the scripts.

Re:It's the guy in the "high noon" graphic

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. He liked her, but she complained that the names he kept choosing for his characters were a pain to type. So he deliberatly used the name Slartibartfast, and then he deliberatly had the character avoid telling anyone what his name was ("My name is not important..") simply to annoy the seceratary who was no doubt dreading a new character with an awful name which she would have to type, and Douglas was teasing her by leaving the name as long as possible.

Which is really very funny.

Re:It's the guy in the "high noon" graphic

[Hieronymus Howard]

On a related note, Slartibartfast was originally a working name for the character, which Adams chose just because he didn't like the typist the BBC had assigned for him whilst he was writing the scripts.

In an interview he said that he arrived at the name by writing down all of the 'rude' words that he could think of, and then arranging parts of them until he had a name that was funny without actually being offensive.

HH
--

Re:It's the guy in the "high noon" graphic

[Anonymous Coward]

In an interview he said that he arrived at the name by writing down all of the 'rude' words that he could think of, and then arranging parts of them until he had a name that was funny without actually being offensive.

...said parts being "farty fuck balls," according to some article, reminiscence, or drug-induced vision that I recall.

Re:It's the guy in the "high noon" graphic

[TomV]

It's in Adams' notes in the Radio Scripts book (London, Pan Books, 1985):

"I wanted it to sound as gross as possible, while still being broadcastable. So I started with something completely unbroadcastable, which was PHARTIPHUKBORLZ and simply played around with the syllables until I arrived at something which sounded that rude, but was almost, but not quite, entirely innofensive"

Re:It's the guy in the "high noon" graphic

[knightbg]

Not only do the radio scripts discuss a completely different origin of the name (see below), but they also talk rather clearly about Adams typing the scripts up on something called "snappies" which seem to be some kind of carbon paper system, so that copies did not need to be typed up. So this story about the typist is a bit odd. Sources?

Re:It's the guy in the "high noon" graphic

[c4miles]

"Don't Panic", the Biography of Hitchhiker's and Douglas Adams, by Neil Gaiman. Thanks for trying to keep the site honest, although as another poster has pointed out, i recalled the story from memory and made a couple of minor errors.

It's also possible that the BBC needed their own copies for archival purposes, I guess, and copies wouldn't suit.

Nice....

[locutus_borg]

For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says ''You are here.''

I can't wait.

Re:Maybe I should watch the first one...

[m3j00]

Aah, I'll have to dust off the library card and go check it out. I haven't been to the library since my Isaac Asimov binge a few years ago.

Does the humour cros the atlantic?

[91degrees]

A lot of Hitchhiker's stuff seem remarkable British. Do you guys actually get half the jokes? I'm pretty sure the Ford Prefect was never an American car, there's no such thing as a Zebra crossing, and you have a completely different type of petty beaurocrat.

Re:Does the humour cros the atlantic?

[TrueBuckeye]

Sure, there are those who don't "get it", but Monty Python is very popular here, as are some other British shows like Absolutely Fabulous and the original Who's Line is it Anyways. British humor isn't mass culture ready in the US, but many still enjoy it.

Re:Does the humour cros the atlantic?

[mooingyak]

Some of it gets lost on we Americans (at least, on me), and some things broaden your horizons a bit - there is no Ford Prefect in the US, but the joke is still gotten with a little digging.

Other parts are funny regardless of cultural background:
(Quoting from memory, sorry if I get any wrong)

"The Vogon ships hung in the air in exactly the same way as bricks don't."

"Fly is the art, or rather the knack, of throwing yourself at the ground and missing."

And of course the cow at the Milliway's.

It's one of my favorite series. I tried to get my wife to read the whole thing. She enjoyed the first book but couldn't get past that.

Re:Does the humour cros the atlantic?

[graikor]

I read it in High School (back when it was a stand-alone book), and I understood the Ford Prefect joke, even if I knew I'd have appreciated it more had his last name been "Pinto" or something. I had to look up "Zebra Crossing", but those do exist in the States, even if they don't have the same name (and yes, I get the pun), and I would argue that petty bureacrats are the same everywhere.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[CaptainBaz]

The Office is pretentious and boring. Is one of those things that only Brits get I guess.

American huh?

This may help.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Aardpig]

The Office is pretentious and boring. Is one of those things that only Brits get I guess.

Nah, nah, no sense of humour!

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a British person... and I don't find it funny.

If you haven't seen it, it's a satire based on work life, but from what I understand a lot of people like it.

IMHO, Dilbert OTOH, is far funnier.

So stop generalizing! Generalizations are bad!

So many things I could say

[The I Shing]

I could on and on and on until I was foaming at the mouth and falling backwards about the most insignificant minutia of how they might portray my all-time favorite satirical science fiction radio and book series, but I won't.

I'll just throw casting ideas like everyone else.

I think the choice for Arthur is an inspired one. Ian McKellen would make a great Slartibartfast, but that guy from Love Actually will be good, too, I'm sure.

Hugh Grant as Ford Prefect? Any takers on that idea? Colin Firth as Zaphod? Or would those guys want too much money? Elizabeth Hurley as Trillian?

It's an exciting prospect. Despite their respective tenures on the NY Times Bestsellers list, the Hitchhhiker's books and characters are not household names in the US. Will those of us who cherished the story of Arthur, Ford, Trillian, Marvin, Zaphod, Eddie the Computer, and a spaceship full of chatty doors and appliances be vindicated by a blockbuster series of movies the way all those LOTR fans were? We're on our knees, here, make this movie good!

Re:So many things I could say

[Anonymous Coward]

Hugh Grant and Colin Firth? Good lord no! Those two are apparently required under law to have a staring roll in any British film made between 2001 and the heat death of the universe. The number of times I've seen a film with Hugh Grant and Colin bloody Firth in it..gah! There are more actors than Mr. Grant & Mr. Firth. Use them!

Elizabeth Hurley as Trillian?!?! Shoot yourself. Now.

Re:So many things I could say

[The I Shing]

Okay, not Elizabeth Hurley. But not that Knightly girl, either... she's too young. Of course, by the time the movie actually gets made, she might be old enough.

Hugh Grant & Colin Firth will get the middle-aged American women out to see it, but they'd be too expensive.

And I can't shoot myself, I donated all my firearms to charity. At least, they said they were a charity. Now that I think about it, do charity administrators typically drive around in El Caminos?

Marvin

[Housermag]

the best incarnation of marvin the robot is still the droid from the "Time Patrol" toon.

In defense of Dilbert.

[Anonymous Coward]

...it takes the subject matter Dilbert has bored us with.

You keep using that word, us. I do not think it means what you think it means. I've never seen The Office, but I think Dilbert is one of the most consistently funny cartoons out there.

Re:In defense of Dilbert.

[WuphonsReach]

Compared to what?

I've only suffered to watch (2) episodes of Dilbert, and both were absolutely horrid. (Elbonian Trip and something where Dilbert invents a toy that turns into some sort of super-smart alien race)

Dogbert is under-acted (sounds as if he's bored playing the part, rather then being a quick, sarcastic wit who's good at a con job). Actually, most of the characters are completely under-played, with long drawn out dialogue (almost as if they don't have enough dialogue to fill the time-slot).

Maybe it was funnier at first, but compared to Family Guy it falls completely flat.

Who will play Hotblack Desiato?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say Keanu Reeves, but that would be pushing his acting range a bit... :-)

Re:Who will play Hotblack Desiato?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spending a year dead for tax purposes sounds just about the perfect role for Keanu.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Anonymous Coward]

G. W. Bush is pretentious and boring. Is one of those things that only Americans get I guess.

Re:I'd pick...Monty Python

[eggoeater]

I'd like to see some of the Monty Python crew in this. I think John Cleese is a shoe-in for the role of the starship captain always in a bath tub that crashes into pre-historic Earth in RATEOTU.

Re:Anyone who liked Marvin the paranoid android...

[Anonymous Coward]

More depressed now he'll be slashdotted.

Keep your head on

[xee]

Hey taco,
I'll be your second head! And between scenes, we can go get high behind the set.

Special Effects?

[uber_mechaniker]

I just want to see what they do with the triple-breasted-whore of Eroticon-6. I laughed my way through adolescence reading these books. Too bad Douglas Adams isn't still around to have a good laugh with us.

Re:Special Effects?

[userloser]

"just want to see what they do with the triple-breasted-whore of Eroticon-6"

So, you've never seen 'Total Recall' then?

Re:Special Effects?

[kmweber]

Jenna Jameson as Eccentrica Gallumbits!

Re:Maybe I should watch the first one...

[c4miles]

What's so great about them? I trust the /. community to inform me of the joy that is Hitchhiker.

Wordplay, and complex humo(u)r. A couple of paraphrased examples from memory...

"The Vogon constructor fleet hung in the air in exactly the same way that bricks don't" (HHGTTG)

[while doing underwater exploration]...
"'Ship, do what I do' said Zaphod. The ship had a long think for a few milliseconds, and then began, slowly and inexorably, to sink to the lowest depths..."
(Yound Zaphod Plays It Safe, a short story from his posthumous collection and published in a couple of other places as well)

My votes for casting...

[Hiro Antagonist]

Christopher Lloyd as Slartibartfast.
Mike Myers as Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Owen Wilson as Ford Prefect.
January Jones as Trillian.
Alan Rickman as...someone. Maybe the waiter at Milliways? He just has to be in there somewhere.

Yeah, I know, too expensive, but I think it would work pretty well.

Re:My votes for casting...

[cjpez]

Mike Myers? You've gotta be kidding me. And while I dig Owen Wilson in general, I think he'd make a lousy Ford.

Zaphod should go to Bruce Campbell, and Jeff Goldblum would be great for Ford. And if Disaster Area makes it into the movies, they should do whatever it takes to get the Rolling Stones to play them.

Re:My votes for casting...

[Hiro Antagonist]

I can't see Campbell as Zaphod -- Zaphod is supposed to be a swingin' frood who is so hip he can't see over his pelvis. Myers fits this better than Campbell does by a long shot, although I certainly wouldn't say he'd be ideal. You need someone who can pretend they live in the 60's in a campy-yet-believable way. And with a less powerful chin.

I could see Goldblum for Ford, except he's a bit too deadpan, but yeah, he's probably better than Wilson.

Agreed on the Stones for Disaster Area. Didn't even think of that. But who would be the captan of the Vogon fleet?

Re:My votes for casting...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Agreed on the Stones for Disaster Area. Didn't even think of that. But who would be the captan of the Vogon fleet?"

Donald Rumsfeld

Re:My votes for casting...

[Hiro Antagonist]

Please, go and shoot yourself now.

Come now, Marvin, do I look like a tank to you?

Re:My votes for casting...

[Hiro Antagonist]

Donald Rumsfeld

The Vogons aren't *that* bad.

Re:My votes for casting...

[cjpez]

I can't see Campbell as Zaphod

Campbell's got this incredible, self-important swagger about him though... I can see what you mean 'bout Myers though. I guess I've been so unimpressed by everything Myers has done since the first Austin Powers that I just don't want him anywhere near the works of good ol' DNA. :)

Re:My votes for casting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gene Wilder for Ford Prefect.
Andrew G. Wilson for Gag Halfrunt.
Dennis Rodman for Zarniwoop
Andy Fordham for Prostetnik Vogon Jelz
George W Bush for leader of the Vl'hurgs

Re:My votes for casting...

[Darth23]

Mike Myers? nah. Ford Prefect - Ben Stiller or Steve Buscemi
Arthur Dent - John Favareau or William H Macy
Zaphod Beeblebrox - Vince Vaughn
Trillian - Kirsten Dunst
Slartibartfast - Ian McKellan (why not, he's in everything else) or maybe Charlton Heston - if he can remember his lines.
Marvin - Brad Garrett

Of course, the movie really should have an all Brit cast.

Re:My votes for casting...

[plugger]

I'm probably being proprietorial here, but being English, I'd like to see a few British faces in the cast. Especially for Arthur.

Re:My votes for casting...

[cjpez]

Yeah, me too actually. I just know far fewer British actors than I do American ones. :P

Noir it up, beeyatch.

[fenix down]

Blade Runner-style, g.

Instead of a narrator, you just have the Guide chip in with an internal monologue every once and awhile. That's what Fight Club did to keep all their clever wordplay in. Admittedly, they had it easier since FC's first-person to start with, but most of the good stuff in H2G2 is cleverly-worded exposition, so it's no problem to just have the Guide say most of it.

Re:Noir it up, beeyatch.

[Cragen]

Well, that voice-over bit was done by the studio AFTER Ridley Scott finished the movie, and, it is said, he was very unhappy about that. (I liked it, actually, but I have no taste, anyway.) In the "recent" director's cut DVD of Blade Runner, there supposedly was no voice-over. I never bought that as I really, really liked the "original" just the way it was.

*cragen

Re:Noir it up, beeyatch.

[lambadomy]

Yeah, no voice over in the directors cut, and the ending is what Ridlet Scott wanted it to be. You should check it out - I really liked the original, but the directors cut was leaps and bounds better.

Re:Noir it up, beeyatch.

[ChreodeRiot]

Well I especially liked the ending of the director's cut..the implication about Decker's identity (don't want to give too much away, but if you've seen it, you probably know what i mean) is much truer to Phillip K Dick's paranoid style.

Re:Noir it up, beeyatch.

[zonker]

you should read future noir if you want to know about the history of blade runner...

btw, the directors cut wasn't really a director's cut as such because they were given a very short period of time to make that cut, they couldn't do it properly. as such, it isn't exactly the way he'd like to have left it, but it is closest to his vision as was possible at the time given the short period of time they were given.

also, there are about 6 different versions of the film that are in (or were in) existence...

Trillian was NOT a bimbo!

[Morgaine]

I'm also disappointed that they're probably going to make Trillian into a bimbo again; she was supposed to be an astrophysicist.

You're way off the mark there by thinking only of her chosen appearance and happy disposition. Trillian was always portrayed as bright and level headed --- in fact she was just about the only sane person around in a universe of loonies. :-) The fact that she was pretty just let her take advantage of men's usual attitude towards the "weaker sex" (not that there was ever much of it in HHGG), which is a sign of intelligence, not bimboness. And she had a great voice for the part too, very consistent with the position of the mice in the story --- at first sight just rodents, but actually in charge. So was she.

Why open doors and carry stuff when there are loads of willing servants around? :-)

Re:Trillian was NOT a bimbo!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Trillian of the BBC's TV version was a bimbo. Come on..., she was wearing a skimpy one-piece bathing suit while at the helm of a space ship (and that's ignoring the silly blonde Cindy-Lauper-80s-Hairdo and the squeaky voice).
Even the Star Trek TOS women wore (a little) more fabric...

Re:Trillian was NOT a bimbo!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Trillian of the BBC's TV version was a bimbo. Come on..., she was wearing a skimpy one-piece bathing suit while at the helm of a space ship

LOL, wearing a skimpy suit (it wasn't a swimsuit, more like a leisure suit) while at the helm of a space ship makes you a bimbo? If anything, it's the other folks on the ship that are dressed ridiculously. I guess Arthur and Ford have a reason for it since they've just escaped from Earth, but the way Zaphod is dressed is daft for lounging around on a spaceship.

Trillian's got it right, as usual in the series.

This has everything to be great

[rcastro0]

I hope they have a good budget and don't spoil it. BTW, I don't know that actor, and haven't seen "The Office", but his puzzled face in the picture someone posted looks perfect. If this works perhaps more people will get to know where the names "DeepThought", "Trillian" and "BabelFish" first appeared.

Anyway, Douglas Adams fans should know that his computer works are now abandonware, and available for free download:

Last Chance to See -- The CD ROM, multimedia version of his book about endangered species

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- the text adventure game adaptation (by Infocom)

Bureaucracy -- the original text adventure game (by Infocom)

Cheers.

Re:This has everything to be great

[rleibman]

You are going to make me cry. I loved seeing the game again! I bought that game when it was first out and played it to the end in my old IIc. I wish I knew what I did with the pocket fluff and Peril Sensitive Sunglasses that came with it. I'm sure they are in a box somewhere (it doesn't seem like the kind of thing I would throw away).
I'll have a blast replaying this game, thanks.

Re:This has everything to be great

[dave1212]

nice, thanks for the links. I'm getting 240 KB/sec DL for the Last Chance To See game. It sucks that it won't most likely include the Mac version.

Starring ???? as Zaphod

[cryptochrome]

It's the part Bruce Campbell was born to play!!!

Re:Starring ???? as Zaphod

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the part Bruce Campbell was born to play!!! If you want a damned YANK, stinking up the screen.

Re:Starring ???? as Zaphod

[cryptochrome]

If you want a damned YANK, stinking up the screen.

He's the playboy president of the galaxy, not some boring prime minister. Sounds pretty American to me. Arthur Dent is the only really English one.

WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie director!?

[vapid transit]

WHY!? For the love of god. I've never heard of Garth Jennings. Its not like this guy's even worked his way up to director. IMDB does not have him listed as crew or writer for any major motion pictures. I hate to be negative but I'm truly anticipating disappointment from this film.

Re:Obligatory Office Quote

[cjthompson]

Gareth: Alright, if you're so clever, what am I thinking? Tim: You're thinking 'How could I kill a tiger armed only with a biro'. Gareth: Nope. Tim: You're thinking 'If I crash landed in the jungle could I eat my own shoes'. Gareth: No. And you can't. Tim: Alright, what are you thinking? Gareth: I was wondering wether there will ever be a boy born who can swim faster than a shark.

Marvin sez:

[jefu]

"Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to respond to a slashdot post."

Memories of Douglas Adams at Apachecon

[gtrubetskoy]

Those of us who were lucky enough to attend the 2000 ApacheCon in London saw a keyonote by Douglas Adams. Little did we know that he has less than a year to live. I remember he was excited about his recent move to California and talked about his daughter too. After the keynote we all got a copy of the authographed Hitchhiker Guide book.

Anyway, I hope the movie is good.

BCC web archive

[RefriedBean]

Slightly OT, but does anyone know when the BBC is supposed to put their radio/tv archive online? I can't find it now, but /. had a story about it a while back..

Re:BCC web archive

[philbowman]

Just had a look at BBC Research Central but this doesn't seem to be what was discussed in this story. In particular, they just go off, find what you want and post you a VHS tape, and you have to pay full broadcast rates... Nothing else obvious visible on the BBC website yet, so don't hold your breath.

Once and only once?

[jefu]

I'm not sure that "The Office" is something that you'll manage to completely appreciate on one viewing. It is very much driven by the characters involved and once you know them better it gets funnier. It is very funny indeed, but sometimes I it a bit painful to watch.

Re:Maybe I should watch the first one...

[Damn_Canuck]

If possible, before reading the books, try to find an audio copy of the original radio show. Although the books are amazing, the radio show is the original.. what the books are based on. Nothing can beat Douglas Adams' use of humor here, as everything is left to the listener's imagination, with some twisted sound effects thrown in from time to time. (Oh, and the second "series" of it (episodes 7 thru 12) of the radio show mostly differ from what you will find in the books anyways!)

6 * 9 = "42" (base 13)

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, on Prehistoric Earth, Ford mentions that the arrival of the Golgafrinchans (who call Earth "Fintlewootlewix" (spelling?)) who replace the native ape-men, will cause the answer Arthur draws from the Scrabble bag ("W-H-A-T-D-O-Y-O-U-G-E-T-I-F-Y-O-U-M-U-L-T-I-P-L- Y-S-I-X-B-Y-N-I-N-E") to be partly wrong.

Re:6 * 9 = "42" (base 13)

[HTH NE1]

Except the real Ultimate Question wasn't in that form at all. Marvin knew it. Eddie knew it. And both said it in the third book:

"I gave a speech once," he said suddenly, and apparently unconnectedly. "You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."

"Er, five," said the mattress.

"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"

And again here, more blatently:

"That's a pity," said Arthur. "I'd like to hear what he [Prak] had to say. Presumably he would know what the Ultimate Question to the Ultimate Answer is. It's always bothered me that we never found out."

"Think of a number," said [Eddie] the computer, "any number."

Now that's bloody Informative!

Re:6 * 9 = "42" (base 13)

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it.

Re:6 * 9 = "42" (base 13)

[messerman]

Yeah, but "think of a number" isn't a question - so that obviously isn't the right one.

Re:6 * 9 = "42" (base 13)

[Neop2Lemus]

I know that Marvin could read it in Arthur's brain waves but where does it say that Eddie could?

Regardless, your theory is by far the most interesting I've read on the book.

Re:6 * 9 = "42" (base 13)

[Thedalek]

Of course, in the radio series, it's entirely possible that the entire scrabble scene with the cavemen takes place in the artificial electronic universe in the Hitchhiker's offices.

Consider: Arthur and Ford are trapped on prehistoric Earth. Zaphod finds himself at the Hitchhiker's offices, which proceed to get bombed by Frogstar Fighters, and Zaphod gets hauled off to the Frogstar to be plugged into the Total Perspective Vortex, supposedly lethal to all sentient life. He survives, but it is later revealed that he only did so by being inside the artificial universe at the Hitchhiker's offices, which isn't dismantled until much later in the series.

Before the artificial universe is deactivated, Zaphod picks up Ford and Arthur from prehistoric Earth. They are quite definitely inside the artificial universe when it is deactivated, too. So, either Zaphod jumped out of the fake universe to get Ford and Arthur, and then back in to find Zarniwoop, or the whole business with the Gulgafrinchams happened in the artificial universe, in which case it could have been one of the minor differences between the fake and real universes.

Now that's offtopic!

Re:6 * 9 = "42" (base 13)

[HTH NE1]

Yeah, but "think of a number" isn't a question - so that obviously isn't the right one.

We're talking Douglas Adams here, not Alex Trebek. It would be perfect for him to have the Ultimate Question not even be in the form of a question.

And it explains the answer: the answer itself is meaningless, a number pulled out to provide the initial seed value for the Universe.

It also matches what he did in "Mostly Harmless" wrt Stavromula Beta: at the end of chapter 4, there's mention that Alpha was Stavro's original club in New York, now run by his brother Karl, and there being little love lost between Stavro and Karl Mueller, and if you were quick enough to figure it out on the first read, you thus knew then about Stavro Mueller's Beta.

You notice more on the rereadings of the 5-book trilogy than on the first.

Re:6 * 9 = "42" (base 13)

[HTH NE1]

I know that Marvin could read it in Arthur's brain waves but where does it say that Eddie could?

They're both Sirius Cybernetic Corporation products with Genuine People Personalities. I wouldn't be surprised if the self-satisifed doors in the Heart of Gold and the precognitive lifts at the Guide's offices didn't also know.

But not necessarily from reading Arthur's mind.

Re:6 * 9 = "42" (base 13)

[Neop2Lemus]

Hmmm.

Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter:-)

That is an excellent theory and I think I buy it. I just wish it was "official", but then, I doubt DNA would have openly ever stated exactly what the question was (apart from his famous comment as to where he got the answer). Its all a part of the mythos I guess.

Ancient history

[shadowj]

Originally a radio show that aired 'back in the days', before I was born, probably.

The series first aired in 1978, so if you're less than 25 years old it would indeed have been before you were born.

I was 17 at the time. God, I feel old.

Attn: /.

[Anonymous Coward]

We will be destroying the internet as you know it for a new hyperspatial version based on telekenisis. We are very excited as this new version will eliminate any Trolling due to the extremely low intelligence of Trolls.

All documents have been properly filed and posted at the Inter-Galaxy Court House. - The Vogons

WilWheatonWilWheatonWilWheatonWilWheaton

[Rogerborg]

I have no idea who he could play, I just wanted to say WilWheatonWilWheatonWilWheatonWilWheaton.

Re:WilWheatonWilWheatonWilWheatonWilWheaton

[Anonymous Coward]

actually now you mention it he might not be a complete failure for the part of Ford Prefect...

Marketting!

[Stonent1]

I can't wait to pick up a bottle of Pangalactic Gargleblaster at the local liquor store. Or what about poetry so bad that ones intestine will crawl up the body and strangle your brain?

Re:Marketting!

[calyphus]

Heart of Gold Nikes, Galumbits Corsets, Snornquelous Beta Matresses, Sirius Cybernetics Tea, ...will your next car come in Disaster Area Black?

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'm don't normally reply to psudeo-trolls, but seriously, I am British! You're not going to believe me, probably, I don't care. But I'm still gunna post anonymously. I am a coward.

The 'I'm a British person' line is a (subtle) joke from South Park, in the Episode entitled 'Pip'. Its the first line in the whole episode AFAIK.

So stop generalizing! Generalizations are bad!

This is the nail in the coffin. There is no way you are British if you spell like that! Tell me, what exactly was the point of saying you are British? Did you think people would respect your opinion more if you did???

Stop that! Its far too silly. Now, no-one enjoys a good laugh as much as I do, but why should a British person get more respect than anyone else?

Alright, alright, I'll be honest. I'm not really British, I'm from Essex.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Anonymous Coward]

(He's probably Canadian or just likes to think he's British.)

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Anonymous Coward]

its because Americans are stupid

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[dapulli]

Probably because he is one of those MTV generation who get their directing knowledge from music videos.

He works for Hammer and Tongs, who produce very innovating videos espically "Coffee and TV" for Blur and "Demons" for Fatboy Slim. The company as a whole does Badly Drawn Boy's videos, all of which are the right style and humour for a HHGTTG film.

The company Hammer and Tongs

We already know the meaning of life

[wiredog]

It's 42

Hmmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

An H2G2 movie huh? I understand Peter Jackson may be free...

Re:Hmmmm.

[Doc Scratchnsniff]

That is only true for exceptionally large values of "free."

Tho IMDB doesn't reflect it...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the Coming Attractions archives have been set to 451 by the firemen at Cinescape, I remember reading that Douglas Adams had been working on the film screenplay for a while, right up to the date of his passing. He'd done at least one revision, which means the bare bones as envisioned by him were there. If the current scriptwriters used DNA's version as a base, the end product might not be so far from what the man himself wanted. It is Hollywood, so I won't be holding my breath on that, but the possibility is there...

Ninnle Eddie

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Eddie the Shipboard Computer, (who's feeling just GREAT, guys!), run Ninnle Linux?

Don't panic

[arvindn]

Like most /.ers I'm a big fan of the hitchhiker's guide. I even made a funny splash screen for a program I'm writing parodying the guide. Enjoy :^)

Zaphod played by...

[Popageorgio]

Clearly, Johnny Depp would make a kick-ass Zaphod. I'm thinking the same attitude he gave to Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean" and Hunter S. Thompson in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

All the film's creators should keep Oscar Wilde's words in mind: In an absurd play, no character can acknowledge the absurdity, or it all breaks down. Thus, the new screenplay should omit lines like the "these guys are ridiculous!" parts in the Shooty and Bang-Bang scene (where the heroes are trapped behind a computer bank on Magrathea).

As for the bit parts, there are dozens of chances for cameos. For example, Bill Murray and Steve Martin should play Magikthies and Vroomfondel.

Re:Zaphod played by...

[vroomfondel]

For example, Bill Murray and Steve Martin should play Magikthies and Vroomfondel.

I'm not big on most of the suggestions of Americans to cast, but I think this is a phenomenal idea, if only it could be made to happen.

On the other hand, that one scene in the hands of those two could steal (and/or ruin...yaneverknow) the whole movie.

For the most part, though, I think there's something wonderfully British about the whole thing that I hope can be preserved in the movie. American actors probably aren't the best way to go about that in general, unless anybody wants to cast Renee Zellweger as Trillian...thought not.

Re:Zaphod played by...

[Yewbert]

As for the bit parts, there are dozens of chances for cameos. For example, Bill Murray and Steve Martin should play Magikthies and Vroomfondel.

Brilliant! These would be perfectly appropriate 'big names' to play tiny (literally) bit parts; in general, I hope they avoid big names for the main characters - way too distracting, and all too often chosen in order to bring in the viewers, and emphatically not because they're just right for the part. Will Farrell (sp?) as Ignatius J Reilly in the upcoming A Confederacy of Dunces? Puh-LEEZE!

Ah, Douglas Adams, you left us too soon. I had the pleasure of seeing Douglas speak (along with Ray Bradbury) a couple/three years ago at Butler University in Indianapolis, IN. He talked about writing and various things, and read bits of H2G2, and was generally hilarious. Ray Bradbury - who has had at least one stroke, and whose voice was slightly shaky - just talked about writing and answered questions - and was inspiring, if a bit maudlin; it was wonderful to hear stories of his early days as a writer.

Who ever would have thought that Bradbury would outlive Douglas Adams, some 30-ish years younger?

(Douglas did a meet-and-autograph session afterwards, but Ray sent only his apologies for not having the energy to join in. Ever the geek, I had Douglas sign my (pretty rare, apparently) first American edition of The Meaning of Liff (not the more common The Deeper Meaning of Liff) - look this up if you appreciate peculiarly British humor and a long tolerance for pursuing a simple comic premise through a whole book's worth of punchlines.)

Re:Zaphod played by...

[skwog]

Obligitory Zaphod quote:

"Hey..."

Hey, dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

In every Hitchhiker's article, someone says this, and everytime, we all have to point out that the story began as a radio play to begin with. It's getting old. Stop being an idiot.

Oops...

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Of course he doesn't. He gets the second head surgically added after he picks up Trillian at a party on Earth.

Well...No.

Zaphod's second head was under a bird-cage at the costume party where he met Trillian. One could presume he arrived at the party with the extra head since he had the presence of mind(s) to bring a bird cage to disguise himself.

Re:Anyone who liked Marvin the paranoid android...

[BAM0027]

Cached from Google

Sounds Interesting

[coastwalker]

Back in the day when the radio series was first broadcast the most exciting aspect of the experience was the groundbreaking music and sound from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

(I have it all on hissing cassette tape recorded off air, complete with fake links at the end of the show announcing availability of the guide from the Megadodo Corporation of Sirius Minor... )

As a story with the premise that nothing is what it seems and that the unexpected should be expected the sound was correspondingly imaginative for the time.

For example the noises used to show that the Hitch Hikers Guide book was being accessed have become part of our world - predating windows startup sound by a decade. Marvin the Paranoid Androids voice is a classic along with the squeaky mouse voices and the mournfull bleeps in the background when all seems lost.

I expect a good sound track for the movie. In fact I now expect that pressing the lift buttons makes a windows startup sound before the talking Sirius Cybernetics corporation lift suggests the basement of the Hitch Hikers office as a good destination before the Frogstar fighter blasts them all into oblivion.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[ajs318]

I suspect a foreign impostor!

Any self-respecting real-life "British person" would spell "generalise" and so forth properly, i.e. with an S. And they'd probably say "I'm a Brit" or "I'm a Briton" or "I'm from Britain" or "I'm British" ..... not "I'm a British person". It just somehow doesn't sound right. Oh, and they would show their .uk e-mail address too!

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[grandmofftarkin]

So why prey tell can't you spell 'generalising'? Since when did it contain a 'z', unless as I suggested, you are American??

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop that! Its far too silly. Now, no-one enjoys a good laugh as much as I do,

except, perhaps, my wife and a few of her friends. in fact...

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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the lost script...

[syle]

CONNERY: I'll take MY GREAT THING for 600, Alex. HOST: "Uh, That's MAGRATHEAN, Mr. Slartibartfast." CONNERY: "But my thing is great! That's what your mother said last night!"

I'm probably not the first to point this out

[ajs318]

but if you multiply 6 by 9 in triskadecimal {base 13}, you do get 42.

Whether or not this is of any significance is -- to borrow a quote from one of the best textbooks -- left as an exercise for the reader.

Younger Nerds?

[irokitt]

Yes, sir, my generation has heard of it. And I live in California, where death is optional.

Was the role dead?

[p3d0]

I think you meant "reprising" the role.

Zebra Crossing

[Deanasc]

Yeah, when I was a kid and saw the TV show on PBS I was confused by that. I thought he was run over by a zebra. That perhaps zebras lived in England and roamed free. Kind of like a Deer Crossing in rural America. But then that shows you the true value of an American public school education.

Bad lighting and sponge creatures?

[juanfe]

I hear BBC Films and I can't help but think of campy foam-rubber creatures and sets that look like they're lit with a votive.

It's as if there's only one, lonely lightbulb that the BBC shares amongst all its productions--anyone see the Chronicles of Narnia that they glopped out?

Let's hope that rather than character acting under poor conditions we get crunchy gravel, faces you can see and no visible strings.

JFR

Fitting, actually...

[ackthpt]

It would be fitting to noir it up a bit, as it really is a very cynical work. When I read H2G2 back in the early 80's I thought it was a stitch. The last time I read it, about 1995, I realized it was cynical and very biting, though appears humorous and whimsical on the surface. What DNA was saying about things though his characters and story line is unfortunately true enough about Britain if not other parts of the world, the USA prominently included. Sirius Cybernetics == Microsoft? That would have been some foresight, but that SC would be some company or companies was inspired by something.

Read the books again and look beyond the humor. It's probably only the humor which will appear on the screen, which could be a bit of a let down. Include some of that cynicism from the books and it could be better than just another light british comedy.

Re:Fitting, actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a lot of the humor is the dark cynicism.
HH and Monty Python are a huge part of many people's
sense of humor (mine included) -- when I was in high
school, they were absoutely hilarious -- mostly
because of their dark humor and irreverence to
authority figures.

Monty Python: Sargent Major marching up and down the square a bit! Upper Class Twit of the Year

Hitchhiker's Guide: Mostly Harmless, the utter silliness of the hyperspace bypass and the records on file in the basement of the library for public review...

neither of these is exactly 'light humor'

Re:Fitting, actually...

[Plugh]

Blockquoth ackthpt:

Sirius Cybernetics == Microsoft? That would have been some foresight

You're right, Mr. Adams would indeed have to have had lots of foresight to see how Big and how Ugly Micro$soft would become.

As it turns out, Douglas Adams did have that much foresight; see his anti-MS rants here, here, here, and... oh, shit, just Google for "Douglas Adams + Miscrosoft" and you'll see :-)

(Disclaimer: I love everything about Douglas Adams, and work for a company famous for opposing Microsoft.)

No.

[jotaeleemeese]

Mexican, sorry guys, you think you are the most humorous people in the whole Universe, but sometimes one is just left with a feeling like "what the fuck!?"....

Re:No.

[ahriman]

Generally I think that British comedy is better than the American offerings I've seen, but there are exceptions, especially in cases where people claim that programs like The Office is "subtle" - excuse me? Subtle? The idiot that replied to you assuming you're American is typical of a new breed of Brit, one that is in fact quite difficult to discern from the Americans he mocks.

The Office is being remade for an American audience with little modification to the 'feel' but using American actors and running jokes that will be more recognisable and lead to the the "hahaha I know someone who does that!" 'comedy' that sells the program.

Needless to say I don't find humour like that funny, perhaps you would if it was remade specifically for a Mexican audience, but seriously, it's amusing for a span of only one episode and then it's just garishly predictable.

Re:No.

[plugger]

A lot of British TV comedy *is* crap, that's why gems like The Office stand out and generate discussions like this.

Re:No.

[dave420]

And what was the last big mexican TV export? :-P

I'm just kidding... obviously The Office isn't bad, as people all over the world love it. If you don't understand it, then that's your loss.

Re:No.

[TwistedSquare]

I would say the office is indeed subtle. Compare it to something like Friends. In Friends it's all jokes with signposted punchlines, and obvious quirks in the characters. The Office has a lot more humour in the general conversation, more observational than gag-based, which I would say was the more subtle of the two. Also the Office often works on facial expressions and reactions for humour, the sort of thing often lost in comedies filmed in front of live audiences.

Re:No.

[ahriman]

I agree that it's more subtle than Friends, but that is really no great achievement. The Office just doesn't appeal to me, but that wasn't why I replied; the immediate presumption that anyone who doesn't find it funny must not 'get it' because of it's 'subtlety' is something I find laughable when comparing it to the majority of British comedy around right now.

In my opinion the humour used in The Office is narrowly applicable to a British audience and needs modification for specific regions in order to maintain it's appeal (which is backed up by the modifications they are making before a US release), therefore the attempted aspersion of "you must be American haha they're all stupid" is simply moronic for more than one reason.

Re:I'd pick...Monty Python

[irokitt]

It would be far funnier for (who was it that played Captain Picard?) to be the guy in the bath tub. Really drives it home. When I read the book, that's what I kinda pictured in my brain.

'The Office' as aspirational model for Microsoft..

[tomato]

Just the thing for them huh :)

***

hmm

hmm

David Brent, the nightmare boss played by Ricky
Gervais in 'The Office' was expected to disappear after the two-part special which aired over Christmas. However, Brent has been brought out of retirement already... by Microsoft.

Microsoft have paid Gervais an undisclosed sum to write and star in a series of training films, to be recorded at the company's head office in Reading. The Microsoft headquarters are reported to already be full of posters freaturing David Brent with the slogan: "I'm Back, and this time it's Personal Development".

However the general public are unlikely to get to see any of the training videos. A Microsoft spokeswoman has said "It is an internal thing and not something we like to publicise."

From 'Funny.co.uk' - comedy sector news website

http://www.funny.co.uk/news/art_77-1692-Microsof t- bring-David-Brent-back-to-Life.html

My only comment...

[MsGeek]

I still think it should have been animated rather than live-action. That's it, you may now go back to your regularly scheduled trolling.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical French... they suspect everyone.

Office/Hitchiker overlap

[Sideshow Coward]

Perhaps Authur Dent will put Ford Prefect's Babelfish (which has his name written in Tippo on it) in a bowl of jelly.

Series or just the one

[bluewee]

Anyone know if they are planning the whole series, or just the one. Lets hope it is for a series like LOTR, and not a series, like the Matrix, where the first one rocks, and the rest, are mediocore.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any self-respecting real-life "British person" would ...

Alright, I'm really a fictional character. French, of course.

re: radio version

[airdrummer]

was definitely the best:-) paddy kingsland(?)'s sound effects were the greatest!

"que the giant marischino cherry"

"bad graphics"???

[rpjs]

Bloody hell, I remember when that series was first shown on the Beeb, we were gobsmacked at the quality of the computer graphics!

Of course it turned out that the computer graphics weren't computer generated at all 'cos the kit to do them didn't exist then (or if it did was way out of the Beeb's pricerange).

Ah, those were the days.

Re:"bad graphics"???

[Golias]

You are kidding, right? The animated graphics (along with everything else about the effects) on that show were so bad they made Dr. Who look like Return of the Jedi. The editing was mostly awful, too, as was most of the supporting cast beyond the main players.

Re:"bad graphics"???

[Tony Hoyle]

It was supposed to look a bit tacky - that's the whole point.... to quote Arthur "It's a bit squalid isn't it?"

The book graphics were pretty good for the time - there's loads of detail in there you miss unless you watch sections of it in slow motion.

Re:"bad graphics"???

[Golias]

there's loads of detail in there you miss unless you watch sections of it in slow motion

Or unless you use this other technique I've developed called "paying attention."

Clockwork Orange had detail that you could only see in slow motion (do freeze-frames during the second home invasion scene at the moment he murders the yoga woman. Subliminal abstract art.) HHG did not have "good graphics for the time." We are talking about the 1980s here, as in after Star Wars, Tron, etc. Even sci-fi TV we are talking about the era of Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and the "V" mini-series.

Things didn't look "a bit tacky"; they looked fake. Fake as in "why has that actor got a cheap mannequin head on his shoulder?" fake. Also, the deck of the ship utterly failed to look squalid. They didn't have the budget for "squalid", so they settled for "dark."

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[I confirm I'm not a]

Z? Yuck. I believe, however, that it is a*reasonably* common spelling in Britain. At least one application I use regularly (Dreamweaver, maybe?) offers a choice of dictionaries - British-S and British-Z. Can't say I use Z myself, or know anyone who does (apart from folk who'd spell colour with a "k"...) I suspect it's a creeping Americanisation, like Sulphur => Sulfur.

WARNING!! PARENT CONTAINS SPOILER FOR UNIVERSE!!!!

[Omni-Cognate]

That is so inconsiderate! You've gone and ruined the whole of creation for me.

A casting demand

[lone_marauder]

Ford Prefect must be played by one of the following:
Christopher Lloyd
Tom Baker

That is all.

Wonder if

[jazzyseth]

they will use Radiohead's songs from 'OK Computer' (e.g - Paranoid Android, Subterranean Homesick Alien) in the soundtrack.
I can see Yorke's voice in Paranoid Android fitting pretty well in some scenes.

What about Gareth?

[Dani Filth]

I think he would make a much better Arthur....

Trillian???

[advocate_one]

This young lady would be ideal for trillian...

Re:Trillian???

[beebware]

Ahh, Chloe Annett *drool*

Re:Trillian???

[ozbird]

Chloe Annett would be an interesting choice, but it will be difficult not to think of her as Kristine Kochanski.

Speaking of which, what's with this "Red Dwarf: The Movie" listed on the same page?!
I love Red Dwarf, but I think it has even less chance to succeed as a movie than HHGTTG.

Re:Trillian???

[kabrakan]

And she gets major nerd cred for starring in Red Dwarf.

Re:Trillian???

[dancingmad]

I don't know if anyone in the universe ;) has it, but I've got this huge "Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", an edition of the first book with a lot of photo illustrations. In addition to being a fun little thing on its own (the first photo of Zaphod doesn't jive with the in-text description of him, so the photo caption says something along the lines of "Zaphod looks doesn't appear like the in-text description if you have mad human disease [sorry, the actual text escapes me]."

Point being the Trillian in the photos was HOT and she ought to be considered :D

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[Walt Dismal]

Every movie done by a music video director has sucked. EVERY ONE. It's because there's a big difference between flashy clips with lots of quick cuts for a limited attention span audience, and what is necessary to carry the audience through 90 minutes of story. I predict this movie will be pretty disappointing, unless you liked Charlie's Angels II. Which was directed by another music vidiot.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[ajs318]

Qui tu appelles Francais?

Oh, merde ..... je me suis decouvert!

Re:I'd pick...Monty Python

[Anonymous Coward]

John Cleese was in HHGTTG, tho. He was slartibartfast.

Bill Nighy for Slartibartfast

[StrawberryFrog]

Sean Connery for Slartibartfast!

Nice choice, but the article says that they've got Bill Nighy for that role.

Movie roles...

[GabrielStrange]

I call dibs on the role of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged!

...

But hey, I'll get to play him eventually anyway.

...

Ya bunch of hapless twits.

...

Who's gunna be Wonko the Sane? He's my other favorite Hitchhiker's character from the later books.

Re:Anyone who liked Marvin the paranoid android...

[Rich0]

Ah - now I know what my apache project for the night will be!

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[TwistedSquare]

I would say that the office is near the opposite of pretention, poking fun at all the pretentious characters contained within. It's very subtle humour, not to everyone's tastes I guess.

Primary Argument Against Totally-CGI-Zaphod:

[Schwartzboy]

Three words, my friends. Three words.

The Incredible Hulk

And therefore, if Chewbacca does not make sense, you must acquit. The defense rests. Good day to you.

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[yoz]

Every movie done by a music video director has sucked. EVERY ONE.

Are you including "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" in this generalisation?

Oh the Vogonity!

[AB3A]

Hey you too can play the part of a Vogon Poet

I miss Douglas Adams' wit...

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[yoz]

I've never heard of Garth Jennings. Its not like this guy's even worked his way up to director.

Whereas you, clearly, have more than paid your dues for your role as Ignorant Slashdot Bigot.

(I'm constantly amazed at the number of times I hear the "I've never heard of X, it's clearly no good" argument. I'm not sure which offends me more, the breathtaking ego or the total logic breakdown.)

And what do you mean by "worked his way up to director" exactly? He's done plenty of directing work, just not on movies. Most directors get their starts on short films; his just happen to be music videos (and fantastic ones at that - check out REM's "Imitation Of Life")

Re:Anyone who liked Marvin the paranoid android...

[Anonymous Coward]

They called him paranoid, depressed, perhaps even pyschotic... but wouldn't you be if you had half a million geeks simultaneously going for your throat?

Also in Love Actually

[hellfire]

Tim also stars as one of the Porn Movie stand ins in Love Actually.

He's the guy who's fondling the cute blonde while the crew are testing the lighting conditions. ;)

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[Walt Dismal]

Good point. I forgot Spike Jonze and his film, which was decent. I could quibble about Adaptation however. My comment meant in the main any of the people whose directing range is limited to 180 seconds of eye candy. But I think Spike is an exception proving the rule.

Jim Carrey was Adams choice

[kabanossen]

A couple of years ago I went to a seminar with Douglas Adams in which he spoke a bit about the upcoming movie. Among other things he said that Jim Carrey was his favourite choice for Zaphod. Not many people in the audience seemed to appreciate this preference so he explained how Carrey is a very good actor but in all his movies they let him turn up the crazy-o-meter to eleven which is why we don't get to see the finer sides of his acting. What I don't get is why Adams thought Zaphod Beeblebrox would bring out the non-crazy side of Jim Carrey.

Re:Jim Carrey was Adams choice

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that Jim Carrey got beat out by Johnny Depp for the role woff willy wonka in the remake of willy wonka and the choclate factory. In this role as in h2g2 I have a hard time seing carrey being anything other than off the wall crazy with silly little gags. Would he be able to control himself enough to make all the witty dialouge believable?

Americans, English and Australians In A Nutshell

[dwm]

That's because American soaps are aspirational, while English ones are cautionary. Dallas: you, too, can be a millionaire with hot chicks if you work hard. East Enders: if you don't work hard, you'll end up as one of these drunk, ugly, poor peasants.

Australian soaps sit in the middle: the people are poor but beuatiful. Not sure what the message is, but it sure looks nice...

THAT is a stunningly insightful observation about all three cultures...

What it's really like...

[halfsad]

...is a Christopher Guest phony documentary -- "Waiting for Guffman", "Mighty Wind", etc. They work on the Excruciating Awkwardness principle of comedy: Put your characters into situations so embarrassing, pathetic, and all-around squirmy your audience wants to scream. Then any joke gets a big relief laugh. Fortunately the jokes in the Office are pretty good, but what's really strong is it's minute observation of characters and cubicle life.

The Office is hilarious but you'll need some time to get through it on DVD -- it's hard to watch more than one episode at a single sitting.

I'm excited -- Martin Freeman's beleagured Tim bodes well for a great Arthur Dent.

Re:What it's really like...

[JimBobJoe]

Put your characters into situations so embarrassing, pathetic, and all-around squirmy your audience wants to scream.

It doesn't surprise me to hear that this is how the Office is, because a lot of newer british comedies are going this direction. "Coupling" is like this, and I despise it (I've spent every episode I've watched cringing. "One foot in the grave" was like this as well.) "Chef" could be like that, but it's saved by an amazingly strong actor, with a really good character (Chef himself.)

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[yoz]

My comment meant in the main any of the people whose directing range is limited to 180 seconds of eye candy.

Short films have always been a good starting point for young filmmakers, and music videos are easily the most popular kind of short film. Besides, there are several ways of thinking about music vids; either, as you say, meaningless eye candy, or as a chance to squeeze some brilliantly original film-making into a meagre three minutes while managing often-pitiful budgets, release schedules and pop star divas. (To me, much of H&T's work falls in the latter category)

I trust Garth Jennings, but that's mainly because <EGO ALERT>I was privileged to meet him (and Nick Goldsmith, his partner in H&T shortly after he got the HHG job and chat to him about it. He's a big fan from way back and he's not going to mindlessly Hollywoodise it. (If it helps reassure you, he's English) Sure, some of the casting decisions are going to raise eyebrows but you cannot please all of the fans at once, especially if you want to keep the studio (who are the ones writing the cheques, remember) happy as well.</EGO>

A whole load of work has gone into this film project for many years now, much of it by Douglas himself (who turned out several new scripts just before he died), much of it by people who love his work, Garth and Nick among them. They're not just going to throw it all away.

Re:Obligatory Office Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! That's soooooo funny! I'm pissing my pants! No wonder you snagletoothed Brits are the kings of humouuuuur!

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[halfsad]

Some studio exec had the balls hand the Lord of the Rings to Peter Jackson on the strength of what exactly?

A 30-second fantasy sequence in Heavenly Creatures?
The flop that was The Frighteners? Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles?

And it turned out great. I'd be more angry to see a Cultural Treasure such as Hitchhiker's in the hands of some big-name Hollywood chump. Maybe the newbie will turn the trick.

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[Cordath]

Let's be honest...

If you had your choice about who was going to direct this film would you choose:

a) Garth Jennings
b) Tim Burton
c) Terry Gilliam
d) David Lynch
e) Ridley Scott

The poster made a pretty valid point, IMHO. Garth Jennings, while perhaps a promising up and comer, is still an unproven quantity in the movie making buisiness. "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is the sort of property that proven world-class directors would line up and beat the snot outta each other for the chance to direct! It is an utter travesty that this fellow can get the budget for Hitchhiker (which should be at least 60 million) while directors like Terry Gilliam have so recently *failed* to raise the money to produce equally hilarious properties like "Good Omens". (equally funny, but less famous) Give Jennings the script for the sequel to Gigli, and if he can make it even moderately more tolerable than the original then start him on literary classics.

Re:Sperm Whale

[AndroidCat]

They could use Keiko who had acting experience in Free Willy, but there are a couple of problems with that.

In base 13,

[meowsqueak]

6*9 is indeed 42.

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[Walt Dismal]

Ok Yoz, I will cross my fingers and hope your trust is justified. But if the film turns out to be Hitchhiker's Guide to Heavens Gate I will tie you to a chair, pry your eyelids open with chromed instruments, and play Beethoven intermixed with endless bad music videos in heavy rotation until you scream "Magrathea awakes!" Vogon poetry too.

an ode

[db10]

Oh freddled gruntbuggly.. This movie seems to be As plurdled grabblegrotchits on a lurgid bee Groop! I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly CGI bindlewurdles Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon. See if I don't!

Re:Adams was a jack-of-all-trades in life and writ

[TomV]

The radio show *WAS* the Hitch Hiker's Guide. The books, TV series, LPs on Megadodo Records, superlarge towels, stage play, computer game and so forth were mere spin-offs.

And there's no trouble incorporating the expositions, after all, it was always announced as "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, By Douglas Adams, starring Peter Jones as The Book" (cue 'Journey Of The Sorcerer' by The Eagles).

Never 'starring Simon Jones as Arthur Dent' or 'starring Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect' or 'starring Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox'.

Or, to quote Adams: "This is the story of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy, perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor".

Exposition's not an issue.

Freeman played Ali G's best mate

[permaculture]

Martin Freeman's a versatile actor. He played Ali G's best mate in the Ali G movie.

"Hold tight Ricky C Ricky C"

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[TomV]

I'd be more angry to see a Cultural Treasure such as Hitchhiker's in the hands of some big-name Hollywood chump.

Agreed - while I've no idea who Garth Jennings is or what his work looks like, I'm much happier with that than I am with hearing that they've let Jonathan Frakes get his hands on the holy, sacred writ of Thunderbirds.

Re:Obligatory Office Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry. We'll have some overpaid Harvard idiot re-write it for American audiences. How about we change Gareths line to something like:

Gareth: I was thinking maybe I should punch your lights out and go watch the football.
Or maybe a joke about pretzels. It'll be a killer, trust me.

Garth Jennings != Jay Roach

[Rary]

Garth Jennings?!? How did he get the director's chair on this? Whatever happened to Jay Roach, whom Douglas Adams had selected back when he was still alive and able to have any say in the movie?

Re:Garth Jennings != Jay Roach

[BiOFH]

Apparently he's committed to doing... please sit down and take some deep breaths... OK? Find your happy place?... apparently Mr. Roach is committed to doing a sequel to "Meet the Parents" and that is taking precedence over the film he's been trying for 6 years to get made and that his friend Douglas entrusted him with before his death.

Way to go Jay... way to stick it out there for your friend who wanted you to handle the final telling of the creation for which he will always be known. I'm sure if it's a flop, as Douglas always worried and stressed about, he will forgive you... on second thought, no he won't. He'll sigh and say "I knew it. I told you it would happen this way."

Meet The Parents. Freaking Meet The Parents. Well, at least it wasn't Dumberer and Dumberer... I guess... No... never mind. In comparison to H2G2, they're about the same.

Apparently Spike Jonze recommended Mr. Jennings and company after turning down the film. God help him if he fucks up...

Re:Garth Jennings != Jay Roach

[Rary]

Hmmm. I enjoyed "Meet the Parents". It didn't change my life, but it made me laugh. Then again, I really like Ben Stiller, and you can't go wrong with something that originally came from the warped mind of Emo Phillips.

However, I see no need for a sequel (what, "Meet the Grandparents"? "Meet the Parents Again"? "Meet the Kid Sister"?), and more importantly, I can't imagine this being a more important project than H2G2.

Mr. Roach, you, sir, have let a lot of people down.

So the movie will only be the first book?

[NaveWeiss]

That's great! I was afraid they are gonna stuff several books in one movie and it scared me a lot.

Btw: I am looking for a H2G2-loving girlfriend.

Know what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you 99%.

6 * 9 != "42"

[tjwhaynes]

Also, on Prehistoric Earth, Ford mentions that the arrival of the Golgafrinchans (who call Earth "Fintlewootlewix" (spelling?)) who replace the native ape-men, will cause the answer Arthur draws from the Scrabble bag ("W-H-A-T-D-O-Y-O-U-G-E-T-I-F-Y-O-U-M-U-L-T-I-P-L- Y-S-I-X-B-Y-N-I-N-E") to be partly wrong.

If I remember the book correctly, Arthur postulated that the Question in his brain was not the final answer, but might be a couple of iterations away from the final answer. I'd always taken the 6x9 to be two iterations away ...

6x9 ... 6x8 ... 6x7 == 42

I'd always interpretted this to mean that seeking the question when you know the answer is a waste of time :-)

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Bit off-topic - Stephen Moore

[wdavies]

.. is also in Love Actually, the usual Annual Hugh Grant British Feel Good Movie, written & directed by Richard Curtis, one of Britain's finest comedy writers (think Blackadder), although without the attraction of Julia Roberts or any other hot American actresses..

If you haven't seen this movie, do. It's still playing in a few places, and Stephen Moore is hilarious as the "Body Double" delicately and cringingly embarressingly entering a workplace romance.

Total Perspective Vortex

[rev063]

A bit off topic, but I just came across a chart today which is the closest thing I've seen which gives a sense of the Total Perspective Vortex as Adams described it. All it needs is the "You are here". See it here.

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Hey, I dont think Peter Jackson deserved to do something as big as LotR since he's never done something of that scope before, and most of his movies have been slapstick/gore comedies. But that turned out pretty well, didn't it?

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[dancingmad]

Spike Jonze went from music videos to the brilliant Being John Malkovich and then Adaptation.

Peter Jackson's movies have been, charitably, crap before the LOTR trilogy (though I still get a B movie vibe from various aspects of LOTR, like some orc scenes, the slow motion, etc), granted it would be hard to make a crappy movie with the source material.

Prosser

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps this gentleman would be perfect for the role of Mr. L. Prosser.

What about Dirk Gently?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish someone would put the Dirk Gently books to film. They're really excellent stories, and it seems like only 1 in 10 "Hitchhiker's Guide" fans have even read them! Go read them, everybody!:

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Almost but not quite entirely unlike

[ahdeoz]

Friends? I'm getting the DVDs tonight!!!!

Brad Pitt

[Phil1]

American readers might be interested to hear that their very own Bradley Pitt is tipped to play David Brent in the American version of The Office.

Possibly unreliable sources are here, here and here. The public vote for who should play David Brent, as seen on the SMH page, is kinda interesting.

Re:Brad Pitt

[xaaronx]

An American version?!?

Great. This will be even better than the US version of Coupling. Oh, wait. . .

FIRST POST

[Anonymous Coward]

hi

6 * 9 = 42

[msf]

...(For the humor impaired, the joke is that 6*9 is not, actually, 42, implying there's something seriously wrong with the Universe when it can't even answer its own question correctly.)

Actually, 6*9 does in fact equal 42, base 13.

Re:6 * 9 = 42

[corbettw]

Really? Are you sure? Though this idea does seem familiar.

OLD NEWS

[ergean]

http://www.douglasadams.com/news/#20031005-0-n.dna

Hollywood Stock Market

[Merlinus]

time to go buy 10000 shares of this flick! ;)

http://hsx.com

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[wattooau]

Errr, Fight Club? Seven? David Fincher started off directing Madonna videos and it hasn't harmed his artistic sensibilities.

Re:I'd pick...Monty Python

[Red Rocket]

Interestingly, Douglas Adams actually did some writing for Monty Python, collaborating with Graham Chapman. Later, he and Chapman did a short-lived (I think just one episode) series for the BBC. I can't remember the title, though...something about trees. Swinging from the Trees or something like that.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Tony Hoyle]

As a Brit I find the Office as dull as dishwater. I watched an episode and didn't see any humour once.

OTOH Dilbert regularly still has me laughing out loud...

I guess it depends on what kind of office you work in - ours has just been taken over by Americans so all the buzzword/cubicle jokes I didn't get before are starting to make sense.

Eddie Izzard as Zaphod

[pulsewidth]

I think Eddie Izzard would be perfect for Zaphod. Who's with me?

On the reality of production decisions in H7d

[yoz]

Garth Jennings, while perhaps a promising up and comer, is still an unproven quantity in the movie making buisiness.

On feature films, maybe. But H&T's large existing body of work shows that they can consistently produce stuff that is imaginative, wild, fun, popular, on time and on budget.

Do not underestimate how vitally important the above sentence is to a movie studio exec.

Of the four other directors you list, only Tim Burton could be said to fit the same description. (Scott, while popular and imaginative, has also had his share of rough production rides - read about the making of Blade Runner. Plus, I really doubt that either he or Lynch could do DNA's comedy justice)

"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is the sort of property that proven world-class directors would line up and beat the snot outta each other for the chance to direct!

*cough* *splutter*

Yeah, nice idea, but evidence shows this to be untrue. Leaving aside the possible (un)popularity of HHG with directors, one of the major problems that all these fandom fantasy cast lists leave out is that they bear absolutely no relation to what may be going on in Hollywood at the time - in particular, who is or isn't available to do a project. If you're a world-class anything, you're going to be quite in demand and probably also quite busy, no?

It is an utter travesty that this fellow can get the budget for Hitchhiker (which should be at least 60 million) while directors like Terry Gilliam have so recently *failed* to raise the money to produce equally hilarious properties like "Good Omens".

Ignoring the horrific insult you've just dealt a talented director who you admit you know nothing about, I ask you to reread the sentence I highlighted earlier. Now think of Gilliam, then think of Munchausen and Don Quixote. The guy is a genius, but he is distinctly unlucky with projects.

Give Jennings the script for the sequel to Gigli

Oh for god's sake.

Zaphod Beeblebrox

[Anonymous Coward]

They should cast Bill Clinton as Zaphod.

At least post links to photos

[anticypher]

Try some shots from her FHM layout, or her official actors headshot.

Chloe would be good if the production remains all brit. But I fear that hollywood distributors will ask for a bigger name american bimbo-slut star. (no, I'm not making any suggestions, I'd be pasting URLs all night)

Karma whoring so I can sell my 5 digit /. login on ebay :-)

the AC

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[Walt Dismal]

With all due respect, any statement containing the phrases 'Madonna videos' and 'hasn't harmed his artistic sensibilities' has a certain inherent irony. On the other hand, de gustibus non disputandum. (shaking my head in dismay and giving up)

Re:I'd pick...Monty Python

[otis wildflower]

DNA also wrote for Dr. Who, during Tom Baker's reign..

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[Anonymous Coward]

well, fyi, the first episode of the office is the dullest, I was also not convinced after the first episode, the second was brilliant and from the 3rd on I loved the series, it is really excellent ...but on the other hand I find Dilbert has turned really boring the last years, two years ago I was still laughing at loud when reading the strips but most of the strips that Adams made the last two years are simply not funny, like todays strip: www.dilbert.com

Maybe it is time for Adams to quit..... Gary Larson left when he was a funny he could get, which probably was a wise decision.

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[grandmofftarkin]

Well I am English and I have never seen an English person do this despite the fact that I work for an American company. I would be highly suprised if it was reasonably common!

Re:Dilbert is funny, witty.

[I confirm I'm not a]

I don't know about *England* - my sister lives in Bristol and says no-one she knows uses "Z" - but here in Scotland a few friends (straw poll!) said they'd seen it. Elsewhere in Britain YMMV...

Re:WHY is this being entrusted to a newbie directo

[Triskele]

Who the hell was Douglas Adams before we heard HHGTTG on the radio? A Doctor Who script editor! That was back in the heyday of the big corporation of course. The Beeb was always a good place for giving new talent a chance to try something. Of course, nowadays you've talk to 26 different companies just to get the coffee machine on manual...

Wait, wait...

[DesertFalcon]

Ford and Arthur are *inside* the artificial universe when it gets deactivated? How do you figure?

I totally missed that one.

Re:Wait, wait...

[Thedalek]

Summarizing here:

Ford is with Zaphod during the meeting with Zarniwoop (albeit very drunk at the time).

Arthur is with the surviving Lintilla, describing the 13-mile tall statue of himself. The cup starts to fall, and the sky starts sliding sideways. The narrator states that this is as a result of Zarniwoop deactivating the artificial universe.

The real question is how Lintilla got to be there.

Re:Wait, wait...

[DesertFalcon]

Cool, thanks :-)

Telenovelas

[jotaeleemeese]

Worm feeling when one sees Mexican soap operas in Manila, Beijing, Cape Town or Moscow :-)