Magrathea presents...
Home / News / About me / About my book
Nick and Garth – The Interview (part 2)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Jim: When you say ‘what you do best’, why do you think you’re the best people to do this movie?
Garth: “I think it’s a combination of things. Obviously one of the things was: it had to be done in a more ingenious, economical way, and less CGI-heavy type way. It had to be up there cinematically with all the other big movies but it had to be different, it had to have a different voice. It had to have personality and humour. I think a lot of effects-driven movies, certainly a lot of science fiction, have got a little bit stuck in their ways. This just had to be more fresh and original and, I guess, we were new to this whole world. We had a lot of things that we wanted to do and this seemed like the perfect vehicle to put all that love and passion into, I guess.”
MJ: The script has three elements: material that we know and love from the books and the radio scripts; new stuff that Douglas wrote in his various drafts; and whatever new stuff Karey Kirkpatrick has had to put in to make the whole thing fit properly. How much new stuff are we going to see?
Garth: “There’s an awful lot of new Douglas stuff. There’s some wonderful inventions – characters and creatures and devices. I don’t think we’ve put anything in. Karey’s main role has been ordering and editing and making sense of it. We never once had to invent something. I don’t think you ever get projects like this where you could never be stuck for an idea. If you’re ever concerned about ‘What are we going to do here?’ you just go back to the original material or back to the hard drive and there’s always an answer there. Even in production design, if ever we’ve been stuck for an idea or not sure what to do, we just go back to the books or the radio series and it’s all there. There’s always an answer, which is really fabulous.”
Robbie: “It is important to stress that this is not a literal adaptation of the novel, just as the novel was not a literal adaptation of the original radio series – and indeed neither was the TV series nor the computer game. It’s not like Lord of the Rings, where you have a book and you want to turn that into a film which is as faithful to its source as possible. There is no single definitive Hitchhiker’s Guide story, and never has been. The book, radio, TV, game – they all share some characters and plot elements but they add, remove, change or re-order others. Douglas’ various script drafts did the same. And that’s another difference from Lord of the Rings. All the fundamental changes from previous versions were made, in this instance, by the original author.
“Every step of the way, the team who have been working on this since Douglas died have been striving to be faithful to the spirit of Hitchhiker’s: its humour, its intelligence and its astonishing inventiveness. To use a great phrase I heard from an executive in Hollywood, there really is no need to ‘put a hat on a hat.’ It was Douglas who showed us the way for the new ideas in the film, they are fundamentally his.”
Jim: What was your experience of Hitchhiker’s before you came on board? Were you fans?
Garth: “Yes, both Nick and I were fans when we were younger. I loved the TV series and the books and I had the radio script that my dad bought me and all that kind of stuff. I don’t think either of us had gone back to it since early teens but we had such fond memories, which is why our reaction was, like I told you: ‘Oh my God, let’s hope they haven’t screwed that up.’”
Nick: “Weirdly enough, one strange coincidence when this project came up to us, there’s a scene in the TV show where they’re going into Magrathea and he’s wearing – you’ll have to excuse me, I can’t remember the name of the sunglasses.”
MJ: Joo Janta 200 superchromatic peril-sensitive sunglasses. I must get out more...
Nick: “My dad’s a spectacle frame designer and weirdly enough they were based on my dad’s spectacle frames. So there was a fantastic, bizarre coincidence there. I guess that’s my strangest, closest connection to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I read it when I was a kid and I watched the TV show religiously when I was younger. It’s one of those things which you grow up with. It was always around for me, one way or another.”
MJ: There has been masses of discussion about this movie on the internet. How much attention are you guys paying to what the fans of the story, and the people who are going to see this movie, are saying that they want?
Garth: “That’s a good question actually. The nice thing with having Robbie on board is that we are able to keep within a healthy range of opinion. Because as I’m sure you’re aware, there’s only so much opinion that’s actually useful. Everyone’s been very, very good at keeping us informed of what we need to know. We certainly don’t go looking for answers. We’ve kept a healthy distance but we’re paying attention through Robbie and other people.”
Robbie: “I think that one of the key things that Garth and Nick have got to do, and are doing, is to have their own creative vision. They’re no more and no less looking at other people’s opinions than Douglas would have done when he was writing something. They are primary artists in their own right. They meet people, they talk to people with Hitchhiker sensibilities – it’s absolutely there. But I think frankly you’d go nuts if you spent too much time trawling through the internet. In the nicest possible way, there are some scary posters out there and reading too many of them, I think you’d run screaming and hide under the duvet and not want to come out for a while! But there is a network of people that I’ve worked with for many years, all of whom know far more about Hitchhiker’s than I do, and many of whom knew Douglas well or worked with him, that we’ve been able to plug Nick and Garth into and that’s proving to be really helpful. It also has to be said that there are many people who are working on the team at the Studio who aren’t too shabby when it comes to their knowledge of and love for Hitchhiker’s Guide.”
Nick: “It’s a fantastic problem to have – to have so many people interested in a project that you’re doing. In a way, you couldn’t ask for more.”