The GHZ Forum

Hitchhiker's Guide always had a strong opening. It was beginnings that Douglas Adams was good at, middles and especially ends being a bit trickier. The dialogue between Arthur and Prosser, which was written for a sketch in a Cambridge Footlights revue in October 1973, is a terrific example of Douglas' clever way with - and love of - language:

"I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the Display Department."
"With a torch."
"The lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But you found the plans, didn't you?"
"Oh yes, they were 'on display' in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'"

Or, as the movie version has it:

"I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"But you found the plans, didn't you?"

There are, astoundingly, individual phrases and even words that have been removed. For example, in the Vogon poetry scene which, like Prosser's confrontation, is now so short as to be utterly pointless, Arthur’s line "counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor", a brilliantly crafted piece of faux literary critique, has become "counterpoint the underlying metaphor." How is that justified? Did someone try to keep the film under two hours by crossing out some of the long words?

Great chunks of familiar, much-loved and (crucially) funny material has been replaced or dispensed with entirely. Instead of cleverly tricking Prosser into lying down in the mud, Ford simply distracts the workmen with a shopping trolley full of cans of lager which he just happens to have with him. Also, the conversation with the Vogon guard before Arthur and Ford are thrown into the airlock, which was apparently included in an early cut of the film, was nowhere to be seen in the version that I saw (nor do we get, “I really wish I had listened to what my mother told me when I was young.â€￾). Yet, while all this great stuff is absent, room has been found for some real clunkers of new lines. For example, Ford's sincere "How would you react if I told I wasn't from Guildford after all?" - which is actually now quite funny, spoken with a New York accent - is sledgehammered home shortly afterward with Arthur saying: "So you're not from Guildford after all? That would explain the accent." Yes, that was definitely worth losing the ‘wish I’d listened to my mother’ gag for.

plasticwingsband wrote:I am eagerly anticipating it. I think it's cool that Martin Freeman is getting a big role like this.

MJ Simpson is an idiotic twat. The only reason he's pissed off is because he was helping to write the tie-in book, which subsequently got cancelled for a re-issue of the original novel with a movie poster cover.

The books are described as "a trilogy in five parts", having been described as a trilogy on the release of the third book, and then a "trilogy in four parts" on the release of the fourth book.