Don’t Panic: Hitchhiker’s Guide screenwriter interviews himself
Who am I? “Not Douglas Adams” is the answer that concerns most people. So with this in mind let’s proceed. Here are some of the questions I imagine most fans of the book (and the radio series and the TV series and the Infocom game) are asking at this point…
Huge sigh of relief: It looks like the Guide might be in good hands for the movie version. Karey Kirkpatrick is the screenwriter responsible for the Aardman film Chicken Run (which, if you ask me, could have been handled more effectively in a 30-minute TV show format) – but it looks like he might really be suitable for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the absence of the late Douglas Adams. The Guide never really cracked along at a pace anyway, but paused to indulge in its own absurdity and turn of phrase (like the Vogon Constructor Ships, which “hung in the air exactly the same way that bricks don’t.”)
On the good news front, Kirkpatrick was advised not to even look at the TV version, which suffered from low budgets, limited access to technology, a really crap Ford Prefect and general hokey awfulness.
Best news of all is that Martin Freeman will be playing Arthur Dent. Simon Jones will always own that character, but 25 years on from the radio series, I can’t think of anyone more suitable. Ten or fifteen years ago I might have suggested Nigel Planer, but Freeman is just that little bit more Arthur. Bloody good casting choice. He’ll look exactly right in an old dressing gown.
Sam Rockwell as Zaphod is pretty well inspired too (looking forward to seeing the two heads with the aid of CG) – but Mos Def as Ford Prefect? I guess it’s conceivable that he could pass for a guy who turns out not to be from Guilford after all, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.
It’ll never be the radio series, of course – but the fact that the directing duo ‘Hammer and Tongs’ were recommended by Spike Jonze, I have high hopes. Roll on 2005.
