HHGTG Screenwriter Interviews Himself

Overly Critical Guy writes "The screenwriter for the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy film has interviewed himself. A snippet: 'Who am I? "Not Douglas Adams" is the answer that concerns most people.'"

Comments

Actually..

[MooCows]

.. this guy strikes me as a good person for this task.

And when I told him of my "I'm not worthy" moment, he said "I think you're perfect for it and that attitude will probably help you."

And he seems to really grasp the bizarre HHGTtG humor :)
(Let's just hope the rest of the movie will be made by equally promising folks)

The Radio Shows

[TaxSlave]

I'm glad to read that he followed up his script-reading and hiring by going straight to the radio shows. Both the TV shows and the first two books showed amazing genius, primarily because they sprung forth directly from those radio shows.

In radio, you must build your images in the spoken word with minimal sound effects. You must do it clearly and succinctly. This translated very well to the TV screen, because they didn't throw away the descriptions altogether and replace them with images. They just added TO the descriptions.

The first two books were very dialogue driven, and dialogue is where Adams' genius really showed through. The other books in the "trilogy" never felt quite the same, and I stronly believe that feeling came from the lack of basis in well-formed radio drama/comedy.

I can't wait.

Nice attempt at a pre-emptive strike

[Tuvai]

But I doubt this stunt will be enough to silence the most rabid of followers of Douglas Adams' work, that particular camp will only be content if this movie is never released at all. After all, not even Peter Jackson, with his vision, scope, funding and love of the books could silence the complaints following the rings trilogy.
He has to realise that with book-to-film adaptations, whether it be Harry Potter or Battle Royale, you can never satisfy the lunatic fringe. In fact, in the end, you can never win, all you can do is please as many people as you can.

execs have the infinte power to $@~$ things up

[Random_Goblin]

If you've read through "the salmon of doubt" you get a sense of just how difficult it's been to get this film made. Adam's was repeatedly told "there's no market for a funny sci-fi film". I don't recall his exact words on the success of "Men In Black", but you can feel the head bashing against a brick wall.

there is more film goodness here including what I think is a picture of marvin.

You know what? It just might work, after all Pete Jackson did a damn good job, and everyone thought he would suck.

Lets just all pray George Lucas doesn't walk near the studio. [shuddering at the thought of Ja-Ja Marvin]

Problem isnt the sci-fi

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem is the HHGG is based on an undercurrent of very British humour, particularly jokes about class, beaurocracy and the like (do Americans really get the references to British Rail etc.?). E.g., Vogons aren't funny because they are grotesque green aliens, they are funny because they are the local council town planning department in space. It is a well known fact that cricket makes no sense to Americans whatsoever. But theres a reason that he didn't write about the "baseball wars". Etc. The zany sci-fi stuff floats along top this. I'm a little concerned its going to end up all the latter and none of the former.

Re:Can we stop bashing the US

[nathanh]

There are a lot of posts here claiming that Americans just won't be able to get the subtle British humor of HHGTTG, and pointing to various great Brit comedies to support this. The thing is, when people talk about 'British comedy', they mean the comedy of one particular period, the golden age of really great British comedy from about 1965 - 1985, when Fawlty, Python, and HHGTGG flourished.

Umm... Black Adder, Red Dwarf, Men Behaving Badly. The golden age never ended. The Brits keep churning out brilliant comedy.

The only good comedy sitcom to ever come out of America was Frasier.