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New Cast Information For 'Hitchhiker's' Movie
Kathleen writes "I was listening to the old Hitchiker's radio plays, and feeling nostalgic, I decide to check out how the movie version was going along. Well, they've filled out some important parts, Zaphod and Marvin have been cast. Zaphod is played by Sam Rockwell who's most recently been in Matchstick Men and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Marvin is being played by Warwick Davis (Who was Willow Ufgood in Willow). Slartibartfast will be played by Bill Nighy. This news is a little distressing, since I was under the impression that Stephen Moore would still be handling the voice of Marvin."
here/a
Don't Panic
Who is playing the Vogons? I vote for Jim Carrey, but that might be too graphic for most people. I mean, I can't handle him reading normal lines. What will Vogon poetry sound like in the mouth of the child of satan himself?
SAILING MISHAP
I can only hope they have a compotent narrator, a good percentage of the jokes in the book/radio show are from the narration of book passages and exposition.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I, for one, welcome the return of our old Vogon overlords.
c++;
I'm sorry, Kathleen, but I have to confiscate your Geek license. Please hand in your badge and toy phaser, on your way out.
How far will they have to pare down the book to make a three hour (or so) movie?
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
There once was a robot from Sirius
His lust for my gold was quite serious
He let out a cry
As I punctured his eye
Now he's depressed and delirious!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm Thrilled!
This means that one of my favorite stories will feature one of my favorite Televsion personalities!
Bill Nighy the Science Guy will be in HHGTG!
Wow. What's that? Nye? Not Nighy?
Sam Rockwell seems like a particularly good choice for Mr. Beeblebrox. I just wonder who will get the tap to be Mr. Prefect.
And why not cast Darl as a Vogon?
-- "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." -- HL Mencken
Movies never live up to the books, I predict critics will give this a SIX * NINE out of a hundred rating.
another American atrocity this way comes
That was classic intercourse!
This explains soooo much! He wasn't a paranoid android, he was just self-conscious about his height! Really, there needs to be a support group for midget robots.
Wait, no, that's not politically correct! What is the PC term for those like Marvin?
"Little Androids?"
"Dwarfbots?"
"Vertically Challenged Metallic Artificial Persons?"
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Mos Def as Ford Prefect?
I know they are going to ruin it now. It's going to flop and everyone is going to talk about how much the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sucks without knowing the triumph of the original radio, television and book series.
In the original radio, TV and book series, Ford Prefect was an alien who tried to assume a hipster personality circa 1978. I guess the choice of Mos Def is supposed to have a hipster character that is appropriate to 2004. But all you HHGTTG fans and I know that this is going to wind up being the HHGTTG meets Men In Black. I'll bet it will have some funky hip-hop soundtrack as well. Sorry, but to me, this is like a parody of a parody within a parody. It's like Saturday Night Live doing Masterpiece Theater with Nelly as host. HOw disappointing.
Un-news
Great choice for Arthur Dent. He's from The Office. Anyone else seen that - it seems like a /. show. It's like Office Space with more bite.
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
...is probably better know to the Slashdot crowd as the "extra/red-shirt/6th crew member" in "Galaxy Quest". He also played the main villian in the first "Charlie's Angels" movie, and is actually slowly moving up the Hollywood chain of success. I think this is a good choice, though certainly others could work as well. (for example, I think Robin Williams could do that part well).
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I know it's been decided but I can't help that Rowan Atkinson would be a great Ford Prefect... there's just something not quite right about his nose...
Almost as bad as Vogon poetry.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
OK, so does this mean that we're getting a Marvin of small statue and squeaky voice? I do hope not. In the pevious discussion I made some snide remarks about the studios changing Marvin into a C3-PO like character. Maybe I didn't go far enough with my cynicisum, they maybe making him into a cross between R2-D2 and an Ewok. (eek! :-))
I can see that the producers might be one of the first against the wall when the revolution comes. (After the board of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, of course.)
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, I don't think Zaphod with an American accent is all that far off. I always took Zaphod's character to be a parody of the stereotypical American anyway.
Since it's not a BBC production, it stands a chance of having production values above that of a 2nd grade art class.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Alright, kiddies.. am I the only one who's kept their head here?
Kathleen, you cite NO sources in this - just links to the actors' pages on IMDB.com.
What gives? We're now posting news articles with no sources at all? Let me rummage around for my bullshit flag.
Not that you /.ers can be trusted to actually read a page BEFORE commenting on it, but IMDB.com does add this note to projects that are still in the planning stages (like HhGTTG):
Note: Since this project is categorized as being in production, the data is subject to change or could be removed completely.
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Wait a minute. That second single quote be escaped.
New Cast Information For 'Hitchhiker\'s' Movie
Second, to the anti-Garth Jennings camp, could it possibly be any worse than a low budget 1980's BBC TV production?
Yes, it could easily be much, much, worse. I'm taking bets it will be an unwatchable disaster but hope to be amazed to the contrary. Jenning's moron value aside, most of the casting announced is already extremely dodgy. Add to that the film is being made in Hollywood and you've got an almost sure fire loser.
Not that I have anything against Hollywood per se, but they just don't seem to get British culture (witness the absolute travesty that is the upcoming Thunderbirds movie - did they even watch any of the TV series?).
I actually sorta liked the BBC TV series, believe it or not.
One of the reasons the BBC TV series really worked was because of the limited effects, though some of them were really complicated for the TV of the time. All the "computer" parts for the Guide were (apparently) done by hand...
Anyway, with the (comparative) lack of budget they had to rely more on (shock!) acting and (horror!) humour to make it work. And it did (Trillian perhaps excepted).
Putting an MTV director in charge of Guide style humour and class is like having Bill Clinton teach Japanese schoolgirls - you know damn well someone is going to get screwed, and there's going to be a hell of a mess!
That being said, Rockwell can do a lot of different voices, and I have little doubt he could do British if that was the direction they went with the character. Although I hope not.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
I never read Zaphod as having a British accent. He always seemed like the typical Californian surfer dude to me.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Still, if he gets to wear Dr. Theopolis as bling...
But with these clothes it's not seen
To it I will write
An ode full of spite
As a leprechaun, I'm most obscene
A finitely improbable clover
Of these I am no lo-ver
But even look at me gold
And a grudge I will hold
And for you, it will all be over
The size of a planet, my brain
For me gold, I'll cut you in twain
And then you'll be dead
The last thought in your head
Will be "Oh no, not again."
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He's the title designer for "Da Ali G Show" for chrissake. I do not believe that the delicate sarchasm in Adams' work can be trusted to a music video director who designed the titles for a reasonably good TV show.
:/
In both the radio show and the BBC TV Series, what made the jokes work was the voice characterization and acting. Without a good director at the helm who has a letter perfect sense of comic timing and voice characterization necessary to pull off the sarchasm, this movie will fail. My vote would have been to use a Disney cartoon director taking on live action for the first time if they wanted to save money.
Of course, I was the one that poopoo'ed the idea of Peter Jackson doing LOTR, so who the Hell am I to comment?
- ravepunk
I too would like to subscribe to his newsletter, if only to teach him how to swear more effectively.
Nunshitting Jesusfucker! Cuntpunching Popefelcher! You couldn't swear your way out of a Baptist church Easter brunch social, you impotent swillfuck! Jackdaw canner! Guttersnipe! Lame excuse for metabolisation! MOLESTER OF BEACHED WHALES. My fucking dead squirrel-eating grandma swears better than you, you shitfucking asspansy!
(Is my grandma a fucking dead eater of squirrels or a live fucking eater of dead squirrels? Pick one!)
Mouthbreathing monosyllabistic skin-waste! You're a disease, a fistula of unrelenting remorse! A fire-hydrant once refused your twisted and regrettable sexual advances. You're a mistake even in your own eyes! Your mom only birthed you because she couldn't stand touching you! You're an offal-eater! A fencepost humping wretch! Crow-eater! Scab-picking filth! Shitpissing fucktard of unrelentingness! Ni!
Am I the only one who pictured Marvin as being as tall as the other humanoid characters? Well, as tall as them if he was always slouched over? The comic book adapation of HHGTG had his look pretty spot on, in my opinion. Were did this Ewok stuff come from?
where the comment ends and sig begins
...as ford prefect :)
Sam Rockwell is Zaphod...
Who plays the other head???
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
Some REAL information:
Note that Nighy is NOT confirmed for Slarti. Note that Warwick as the body of Marvin means nothing about his voice. And Moore has NOT been cast as the voice. Mos Def is the most controversial choice, but let's not write him off as Ford just cos nobody expected a black guy in the role before.
It really doesn't matter who plays whom. What's more worrying is that Adams' script is being rewritten. HHGTTG is probably the finest comedy written thus far in human history and the idea that somebody could do better than DNA is tantamount to heresy.
The main reason the film has never been made is that Adams was never happy with what Hollywod was offering. Do we really thing he'd be happy with some droid scriptwriter massacring his work?
If The Powers That Be didn't like DNA's script, they don't deserve to benefit from it.
Before you criticize, it might be worthwhile to know what you're talking about. I can't believe you just equated Mos Def with Nelly. That's a lot like equating the Beatles with N'sync.
In case you cared, Mos Def, unlike many self-styled "MCs," is a real artist, a poet who started off in spoken word venues like the Brooklyn Moon. Unlike the commercialized hip-hop spewed by Clear Channel radio stations targeted at white suburbanites to reinforce their stereotypes of people of color, Mos Def actually has a positive message for the urban counterculture, rooted in the Civil Rights Movement, and the struggle of people of color everywhere to attain equality.
I have a feeling that Mos Def and Douglas Adams would have had a lot to talk about. After all tHHGttG saga talks a lot about the disgusting excesses of capitalism and the rampant insanity of corporate culture (see Magrathea and the collapse of the Galactic Stock Market, the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation, Hotblack Desiato being dead for "tax purposes," the awesome satire in the sequence involving the Golgafrinchans, and the fact that the enemy in the final book is an evil corporation), the way the powers-that-be and the media manipulate the masses (remember, anyone you actually meet is the product of a deranged imagination, the fact that most everything is "somebody else's problem" makes it possible to create a good stealth device, and there's the irony when the tourism industry's campaign in Ursa Minor Beta backfires when they state that "when you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta, you are tired of life," and then there's the message in front of tHHttG which advises "Don't Panic!") and then there's the whole idea of revisionist history and the desecration of ancient sites all in the name of progress and profit (as in the story of the Cathedral of Chalesm, the poet who was bought out by the pen company and who had to plagiarize his own work in order to get them written, and more obviously the destruction of Earth in order to make way for a hyperspace bypass), the pointless destruction wrought by war (see the Silastic Armor fiends of Striterax, and the Krikkiters after them, and then those guys who fought wars just because they saw strange things in the sky, and ended up killing mostly the peaceful forest people in the middle), the evil of racism (again, the Krikkiters) and the fact that the people who want to have power shouldn't be allowed to have power (wonderfully lampooned by the description of the guy who actually runs the universe)
I think Mos Def would make a great Ford Prefect.
Maybe I'm a little too close to this particular issue . . . but isn't it a little unfair to hate on Warwick Davis because of Jedi? I mean, until Jar Jar^H^H^H^H The Pod Race^H^H^H^H^H Episode One came along, I hated the Ewoks more than any other part of Star Wars, (even though I was in the target demographic) but it's not his fault the Ewoks were so lame.
I'm all for hating on Lucas, but Warwick Davis was playing a role that, at the time, would have been a very big deal. Remember how aniticipated Jedi was?
I'm sure even the most patriotic of American slashdot readers will agree with me that the Englishness of the piece should be retained, and Arthur Dent not moved to New York state etc. etc. That said, I am mindful of the fact I said similar things about High Fidelity and was shown to be completely wrong.
No wonder we just continously get bloody awful films all the time. It seems obvious just from the choice of the main two actors that the characters will not be the same. If you change the characters then basically everything has to change, the dialogue, what people do, how people react. you can't just bolt in entirely different people and expect it to work. but they do. and that's why so many films are pants. and tv shows that cross either way across the atlantic and are remade tend not to work, somebody tampers with what makes it work - the characters. no wonder they waited till after he died....
It's obvious - if you come from near Betelgeuse - a red giant - your planet's going to have lost a lot of atmosphere in the expansion phase - so it's logical that you'll be black, to minimise the effects of UV exposure.
As a white Brit, I have absolutely no exception to a black guy playing Ford, just so long as he makes him seem like the same sort of shallow arse he was originally.
In fact, so long as the guy can act the part, it doesn't matter what colour he is, so long as he's humanoid.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
It's been a month or more now so I don't remember where I originally found this picture from, but it's apparently the idea they have in mind for Marvin. I've uploaded it to my own webspace: http://jglonek.mystdrag.com/files/marvin.gif Also, just because Warwick Davis is acting as Marvin why do people (especially the original poster) think that he will do Marvin's voice too? I highly doubt he will.
On the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The (2005) page they have more casting.
Ford Perfect, Arthor, and Trillian are all listed.
101010b 2Ah 52o
Bruce Campbell as...Zaphod.
Check out the 'Executive Producer' credit on imdb
That would be quite a trick!
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Man on the moon is a stanard cinematic biopic of an eccentric comedian. If there was ever a a man who needed a gonzo off the wall biopic, it was Andy Kaufman, but Man on the Moon stuck to the facts, aside from the opening.
Carrey did a good job, but it was like watching a really good Elvis impersonator. Like Andy Kaufman...
here's a snippit, I doubt anyone can place this piece... heh...
title: "On the daft"
'Hardy', says Jip Bottomless, 'Have you sworn to the daft?'
'Of course moose', saible Hippy Shambles 'eye boat the kindness of dislodging the lives and diapers of follow hungells!'
'Follow hungells! They bar exemptifies. They bar Confusilistic Picks!', yellops Jip Bottomless, 'I thunk the arly defisition we Ameranians shook may obble one. Obble Abbly, Naibly, Air Faible, or Maible.'
'Wax the diversifixion between Ameranians & Raxations? Deer all hungells! Nobble bumby should have two sworn to the daft. Nobble bumby should hax in dislodging the lives and diapers of follow hungells!!'
'Well we have to seed the armble vase glowing, because they harble more nookly-hobble-boobs then we. Besides they slopped dapped our arlycopter from the spies, so we have to venge of gettance!' exlamps Jip Bottomless.
'Venging gettance won't proud anyhomble' says Hippy Shambles, 'and remuddle what Ghumby says, 'an eyesore for an eyesore mabbles the hip hungell vase blind.'
When casting the narrator for the Radio Series, Douglas Adams said he wanted someone with a "Peter Jones-y" voice. (As I understand, Peter Jones is/was a rather well known anchor on the BBC news -- think Tom Brokaw). They tried lots of people and weren't happy with any... until they got Peter Jones himself. Can't do much better than that.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
And what exactly do you mean by underground hip-hop? Do you even listen to hip-hop? Do you have any friends who are hip-hop artists (obviously, not necessarily signed by a record label or anything like that)? While granted, Mos Def is more recognizable than many other talented underground artists, are you seriously spitting out the line that since an artist is popular, he must have sold out? Have you even listened to the lyrics on his last album "Black on Both Sides"? He isn't exactly pandering to the white suburbanites, nor is he glorifying the essentialized violence and materialism that defines commercial hip-hop. Seriously, when's the last time you saw Mos Def make a rap video? When's the last time you even heard him played on the radio? Frankly, I think you're just dissin' on hip-hop, and whether it's a racial thing or a cultural thing doesn't matter. But, to paraphrase Robert Heinlein, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance and stupidity, I suppose.
On the other hand, you're probably right about the studios gutting the book. Such is life.
Actors are absolutely the worst things in the world, and there are none worse than Stephen Moore. Of course, Warwick Davis is even worse than that. His very presence gives me a pain on all the diodes down my left side.
I suppose it's to be expected, what with my brain the size of a planet and everyone being so dreadfully stupid. I suppose an excrutiatingly bad representation of Marvin is as inevitable as the rest of the unspeakably dreary monotony that is my life. Life! Don't talk to me about life. I'm not getting you down, am I? Because I'd hate to think that I was getting you down.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I think Tim Curry would make a good narrator. He's no stranger to voice acting, either, as he did the voice for the Gabriel Knight games series (not including the lackluster second-installment).... and he's British!
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
"OK, what's the pitch?"
"Well, these alien Vogons destroy Earth so this English guy chases them across the Galaxy, destroys the Universe in revenge, and then learns the ultimate meaning of everything from some mice."
"I like it - but we have to make some changes...
Let's change Ford Prefect to Ford Pinto, Arthur Dent to Art Bump, Vogons to Russians (with English accents, the mice to Santa Claus, and the answer to the ultimate question is a big hug. Then the kid says, 'I love you Daddy'. Now that's a movie!"
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---