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

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

[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).

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

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: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!

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...

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: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...