The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (16 page)

Chapter 33

But the end never came, at least not then.

Quite suddenly the barrage stopped, and the sudden silence afterward was punctuated by a couple of strangled gurgles and thuds.

The four stared at each other.

“What happened?” said Arthur.

“They stopped,” said Zaphod with a shrug.

“Why?”

“Dunno, do you want to go and ask them?”

“No.”

They waited.

“Hello?” called out Ford.

No answer.

“That’s odd.”

“Perhaps it’s a trap.”

“They haven’t the wit.”

“What were those thuds?”

“Dunno.”

They waited for a few more seconds.

“Right,” said Ford, “I’m going to have a look.”

He glanced round at the others.

“Is no one going to say,
No, you can’t possibly, let me go instead?
”

They all shook their heads.

“Oh well,” he said, and stood up.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen. Ford peered through the thick smoke that was billowing out of the burning computer.

Cautiously he stepped out into the open.

Still nothing happened.

Twenty yards away he could dimly see through the smoke the space-suited figure of one of the cops. He was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground. Twenty yards in the other direction lay the second man. No one else was anywhere to be seen.

This struck Ford as being extremely odd.

Slowly, nervously, he walked toward the first one. The body lay reassuringly still as he approached it, and continued to lie reassuringly still as he reached it and put his foot down on the Kill-O-Zap gun that still dangled from its limp fingers.

He reached down and picked it up, meeting no resistance.

The cop was quite clearly dead.

A quick examination revealed him to be from Blagulon Kappa—he was a methane-breathing life form, dependent on his space suit for survival in the thin oxygen atmosphere of Magrathea.

The tiny life-support system computer on his backpack appeared unexpectedly to have blown up.

Ford poked around in it in considerable astonishment. These miniature suit computers usually had the full back-up of the main computer back on the ship, with which they were directly linked through the sub-etha. Such a system was fail-safe in all circumstances other than total feedback malfunction, which was unheard of.

He hurried over to the other prone figure, and discovered that exactly the same impossible thing had happened to him, presumably simultaneously.

He called the others over to look. They came, shared his astonishment, but not his curiosity.

“Let’s get shot of this hole,” said Zaphod. “If whatever I’m supposed to be looking for is here, I don’t want it.” He grabbed the second Kill-O-Zap gun, blasted a perfectly harmless accounting computer and rushed out into the corridor, followed by the others. He very nearly blasted the hell out of an aircar that stood waiting for them a few yards away. The aircar was empty, but Arthur recognized it as belonging to Slartibartfast.

It had a note from him pinned to part of its sparse instrument panel. The note had an arrow drawn on it, pointing at one of the controls.

It said,
This is probably the best button to press.

Chapter 34

The aircar rocketed them at speeds in excess of R17 through the steel tunnels that led out on to the appalling surface of the planet which was now in the grip of yet another drear morning twilight. Ghastly gray light congealed on the land.

R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquillity this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers and even death.

R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast.

The aircar flung itself through the air at R17 and above, deposited them next to the Heart of Gold which stood starkly on the frozen ground like a bleached bone, and then precipitately hurled itself back in the direction whence they had come, presumably on important business of its own.

Shivering, the four of them stood and looked at the ship.

Beside it stood another one.

It was the Blagulon Kappa policecraft, a bulbous sharklike affair, slate-green in color and smothered with black stenciled letters of varying degrees of size and unfriendliness. The letters informed anyone who cared to read them as to where the ship was from, what section of the police it was assigned to, and where the power feeds should be connected.

It seemed somehow unnaturally dark and silent, even for a ship whose two-man crew was at that moment lying asphyxiated in a smoke-filled chamber several miles beneath the ground. It is one of those curious things that is impossible to explain or define, but one can sense when a ship is completely dead.

Ford could sense it and found it most mysterious—a ship and two policemen seemed to have gone spontaneously dead. In his experience the Universe simply didn’t work like that.

The other three could sense it too, but they could sense the bitter cold even more and hurried back into the Heart of Gold suffering from an acute attack of no curiosity.

Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship. As he walked, he nearly tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold dust.

“Marvin!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t feel you have to take any notice of me, please,” came a muffled drone.

“But how are you, metalman?” said Ford.

“Very depressed.”

“What’s up?”

“I don’t know,” said Marvin, “I’ve never been there.”

“Why,” said Ford, squatting down beside him and shivering, “are you lying face down in the dust?”

“It’s a very effective way of being wretched,” said Marvin. “Don’t pretend you want to talk to me, I know you hate me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do, everybody does. It’s part of the shape of the Universe. I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me. Even robots hate me. If you just ignore me I expect I shall probably go away.”

He jacked himself up to his feet and stood resolutely facing the opposite direction.

“That ship hated me,” he said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft.

“That ship?” said Ford in sudden excitement. “What happened to it? Do you know?”

“It hated me because I talked to it.”

“You
talked
to it?” exclaimed Ford. “What do you mean you talked to it?”

“Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,” said Marvin.

“And what happened?” pressed Ford.

“It committed suicide,” said Marvin, and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.

Chapter 35

That night, as the Heart of Gold was busy putting a few light-years between itself and the Horsehead Nebula, Zaphod lounged under the small palm tree on the bridge trying to bang his brain into shape with massive Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters; Ford and Trillian sat in a corner discussing life and matters arising from it; and Arthur took to his bed to flip through Ford’s copy of
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Since he was going to have to live in the place, he reasoned, he’d better start finding out something about it.

He came across this entry.

It said:
“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends
to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival,Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why
and Where phases.

“
For
instance, the first phase is characterized by the question
How can we eat?
the second by the question
Why do we eat?
and the third
by the question
Where shall we have lunch?”

He got no further before the ship’s intercom buzzed into life.

“Hey, Earthman? You hungry, kid?” said Zaphod’s voice.

“Er, well, yes, a little peckish, I suppose,” said Arthur.

“Okay, baby, hold tight,” said Zaphod. “We’ll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”

Afterword

How
it
Came
to
Be:
The
Hitchhiker’s
Guide
to
the
Galaxy
Feature
Film

by Robbie Stamp

At 9:30 A.M. on 19 April 2004, “Shoorah, Shoorah” sung by Betty Wright blared out across an “Islington flat” built on Stage 7 at Elstree Film Studios in Hertfordshire. Under the eyes of the director, Garth Jennings, and the producer, Nick Goldsmith, who together make up the Hammer and Tongs production company, the first assistant director, Richard Whelan, shouted, “Action!” and finally, just over a quarter of a century since the first radio series was broadcast on Radio 4, a movie based on
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
was under way. Arthur Dent, played by Martin Freeman, stood by himself reading a book, while more than forty actors in fancy dress started dancing. In the midst of the crowd, which included a sugar-pink mouse, a drunk cowboy and an Indian chief, the American actress Zooey Deschanel as Tricia McMillan could be seen bouncing up and down, dressed as Charles Darwin.

Douglas Adams once famously described the process of making a film in Hollywood as like “trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.” Why indeed—despite the phenomenal international appeal of the
Hitchhiker
radio series, TV series and above all, the novels—had it taken over twenty-five years to get this movie made? It is a long story.

This afterword to the film tie-in edition of
The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy
is not an exhaustive account of the two and a half decades it took a senior Hollywood executive to finally say, “Yes, let’s make the
Hitchhiker’s
movie.” As Ed Victor, Douglas’s personal friend and literary agent since 1981, has said, “Many, many people nibbled at it, took a taste and rejected it.” To tell the full tale of all those nibbles would need a book in its own right. But as one of the executive producers, I can tell the story of how the movie finally came to be made, based on conversations with many of the key people involved.

I first met Douglas Adams in 1991 in his house in Islington, where he played Bach to me because there was a point he wanted to make about music and mathematics, and we talked about a television series on evolution he wanted to write and present. My overwhelming impression on that first meeting was of Douglas Adams’s powerful intellectual curiosity. We stayed in touch. He introduced me to sushi. We started a company together.
³
We saw a lot of movies and I was lucky that he became a friend as well as a colleague.

Douglas and I continued to be good friends over the years and so it was not surprising that ten years later, when my father died, Douglas was one of the first people I called on returning home from the hospital. He had been compassionate and gently supportive when my father was ill, and we talked at length about the kind of man my father had been. After a while we strayed onto our normal topics of conversation, including new ideas Douglas was hatching, and—for the umpteenth time—talked about our frustrations over the
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
movie, which was already well entrenched in Hollywood folklore for its seemingly endless stint in development hell.

The very next day, Friday 11 May 2001, I received a call from Ed Victor and, sitting in my favourite chair in the kitchen, where I had spoken to Douglas just the evening before, I heard the news that he had died of a heart attack less than an hour before in his gym in Montecito, California. I remember my wife calling out in shock as she heard me talking to Ed but I just felt numb and spent the evening fielding and making calls to friends and colleagues.

The outpouring of grief and affection for Douglas on the Web and in the press was a tribute to the enormous impact that
Hitchhiker’s
has had on people all over the world. Perhaps, sadly, Douglas’s tragically early death and the huge reaction it caused actually were the catalysts that finally got the movie-making process going. If so it is a very cruel irony. Ed Victor remarks on the frustration of trying to get the
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
movie made, saying, “I was always trying to sell
Hitchhiker’s.
Douglas always,
always
wanted a film made of this. Four times I sold
Hitchhiker’s
and I’ve described not seeing the movie made for so many years as the single most substantial professional frustration of my life. This was something I’d always felt so sure about. I’d seen the mailbags. I just knew there was an audience out there. I sold it to Don Tafner for ABC to make a TV series. I sold it to Columbia and Ivan Reitman. We did a joint venture deal with Michael Nesmith and finally we sold it to Disney and even then it took seven years to get the movie into production.”

My own relationship with Douglas doesn’t go back as far as Ed’s, but I have been involved in the film project since the negotiations to sell movie rights to Disney began in 1997 when, following the huge success of the first
Men in Black
film, it seemed that there was interest again in comedy and science fiction. Bob Bookman, Douglas’s film agent at the powerful Hollywood talent agency CAA (Creative Artists Agency), organized meetings for Douglas and me with a variety of potential producers. And as a result of those meetings two people really began to drive the
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
movie project forward. Roger Birnbaum at independent producer Caravan Pictures (which evolved into Spyglass Entertainment) had the “muscle” and enthusiasm to get Disney on board, and via Michael Nesmith, Douglas’s friend and former business partner on the movie, we had been introduced to Peter Safran, Nick Reed and Jimmy Miller, who together at that stage represented Jay Roach, then a hot new director coming off the back of his surprise summer hit,
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
Jay also had a strong relationship with Disney. Douglas and Jay struck up a warm creative relationship almost immediately and it looked like a winning triumvirate had been formed.

Hitchhiker’s
started as a radio series, became a famous novel “trilogy in five parts,” a stage play and a computer game and was at the time being turned into a “real” guide to the planet Earth by
The Digital Village.
The rights situation was thus highly complex and concluding a deal took an enormous amount of effort. Ken Kleinberg and Christine Cuddy became the attorneys for the negotiations with Disney. Even with their hard work, the enthusiasm and support of Roger Birnbaum and Jay Roach, and the teams at CAA, Ed Victor’s office and
The Digital Village
all working overtime, negotiations went on for almost eighteen months. The deal was finally done just before Christmas 1998, and stipulated that Douglas and I would be executive producers and that Douglas would write a new script.

Douglas had been working on
Hitchhiker
movie scripts for many years and so, with input from Jay and Shauna Robertson, his business partner at the time, he was quickly able to produce a draft that was full of his extraordinary wit and intelligence; new ideas jostled for space with favourite scenes and characters from the books and the radio series. This early 1999 draft was good but the difficulties of striking the right balance between the episodic nature of
Hitchhiker’s
and a narrative drive that made sense had not truly been solved. Indeed this was the issue that had vexed draft after draft of the movie over the years and it continued to be a huge stumbling block. Jay remembers his collaboration with Douglas with great affection but also reflects on the problems they faced.

“Even during the writing time and what became a hellishly frustrating development process, I don’t remember ever enjoying a collaboration more. The dinners and the long talks and his laughter. Even later, in the middle of saying ‘it’s not happening,’ we’d still be making jokes about the absurdity of it all. So the process was extremely pleasurable. It just didn’t get anywhere. There was a combination of things built into the struggle to get
Hitchhiker’s
made . . . there was always a mismatch between, on the one hand, people’s perception of it being a very high-budget sci-fi extravaganza with a lot of spectacle and, on the other, the recognition that it was smarter, more sophisticated, a little more English, a little more ironic than the big money-maker comedies here in the United States, and those things didn’t synch up, so it was hard to tap into Disney’s needs.”

On 19 April 1999, Douglas, frustrated with the pace of progress, sent a fax to David Vogel, then president of Production at Disney, suggesting a meeting. He wrote: “We seem to have gotten to a place where the problems appear to loom larger than the opportunities. I don’t know if I’m right in thinking this, but I only have silence to go on, which is always a poor source of information . . . the fact that we may have different perspectives should be a fertile source of debate and iterative problem solving. It’s not clear to me that a one-way traffic of written ‘notes’ interspersed with long dreadful silences is a good substitute for this. . . . Why don’t we meet and actually have a chat? I’ve appended a list of numbers you can reach me on. If you manage not to . . . I shall know you’re trying not to, very, very hard indeed.” With characteristic humour, he then provided dozens of contact numbers, including those for his own home and mobile, his nanny, his mother, his sister, his next-door neighbour (who he was “sure would take a message”), a couple of his favourite restaurants and even the number for Sainsbury’s, his local supermarket, where he was sure they would page him. It had the desired effect and shortly afterwards Douglas and I flew out to LA for a “summit” meeting. We talked for hours on that flight about what we both suspected was coming: Disney was going to suggest bringing in a new writer. Roger Birnbaum, who was at the meeting at Disney’s Studios in Bur-bank, remembers it well.

“I knew it would be tricky. I wanted him to know how much we respected him. I admired him a lot and did not want to compromise the material but I also thought that after so many years of working on so many drafts, Douglas was getting bogged down.”

Douglas was faced with an agonizing dilemma. The message was clear. Momentum, that most precious of Hollywood commodities, was slowing dangerously and if the movie was not to stall altogether—again—he was going to have to let another writer into the fold. Disney and Spyglass handled things with considerable tact and respect. In the meeting, David Vogel, a thoughtful man and a former Rabbinical scholar, likened Douglas to the designer of a cathedral, with the next step of the process being akin to hiring the master stone mason—not the man with the vision but a different kind of craftsman, concerned with making sure that the brilliance of the original conception had the right foundations.

An experienced writer was hired and wrote a new draft, which was completed in autumn 1999. There was not much collaborative work possible with Douglas and although it was by no means a bad script, it didn’t really move the process forward. More ominously it coincided with a regime change at the studio. David Vogel and Joe Roth, who had been in charge when Disney bought the rights, both moved on. Nina Jacobson, now president of Buena Vista Pictures, responsible for developing scripts and overseeing film production for Walt Disney Pictures, was now in charge. Her biggest concern was budget level and at that stage she was not sure that the material as it was could break out of its fan base to create a movie Disney could get behind.

Frustrated yet again, Douglas decided to write yet another draft and this he delivered in summer 2000. Disney were still not convinced, and in fact were increasingly unsure that this movie was for them. So, with their permission, the script was quietly sent to other studios. The project still had some very powerful supporters. Jay was by now an A-list comedy director and Roger Birnbaum and his partner Gary Barber at Spyglass were extremely influential. Nevertheless, all the studios and the key independents who were shown the new draft passed. One call in particular stands out in my mind as summing up everything that was so painful about this tantalizing period. Douglas phoned me from Santa Barbara while I was on a beach in Corsica with my family. He told me that Joe Roth, who was now at Revolution Studios, had passed. I remember the awful sinking feeling as I looked across to my family and saw my wife noticing the anxiety on my face. This call felt to me especially bad news as Joe was a close friend and colleague of Roger Birnbaum’s and had, behind the scenes, been very instrumental in bringing
Hitchhiker’s
to Disney when he was head of the studio. If he had no appetite for this, who would? Ed Victor also remembers this period all too well: “It fell into a black hole again. At one point we went to the bar next door to the office here, both ordered huge vodka martinis and Douglas said, ‘I estimate that I must have spent a total of five years of my professional life on this fucking film, Ed. Never let me do this again.’”

But of course Douglas never did really let go of the hope that one day there would be a movie of
Hitchhiker’s.

In spring 2001, with the film still stalled, Jay Roach came to feel that after working on the movie for several years maybe he was simply not the right person to take things further, and very sadly and reluctantly he decided to bow out as director, although as producer he remained as committed as ever. Spyglass too were still determined to find a way forward. Jon Glickman, president of Spyglass Entertainment, and Derek Evans, who had first brought
Hitchhiker’s
to the attention of Roger Birnbaum when he joined Spyglass as a development executive, had been two of the staunchest supporters of the movie.
⁴
Jon remembers seeing the need for realism about the budget and returning to their first instinct, which had been to find a director on the way up, as indeed Jay had been when we first met him back in 1997. But it was a pretty dispiriting time.