Like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people come into a room and breathe on it.

They're making a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, and I'm not happy about it.

I knew this was coming, of course; the film’s been in negotiation for twenty years, with a quagmire of legal issues and a lack of interest holding up the project. In the early nineties things started moving with Ivan Reitman at the helm, but his unwillingness to let Douglas Adams have creative control (!) saw him to the door. Once again, progress on the Hitchhiker movie languished as production companies claimed that science fiction and comedy just didn’t mix well in film. Then in 1997, Men In Black came out. “Hmph,” said Everybody. “Maybe they do mix after all. But it doesn’t matter because American audiences don’t find British humour entertaining.” Then Austin Powers came out. “Hmph,” said Everybody again. “Look at the egg on our faces.” And so people started to show a little more interest. But it’s really only been since Adams’ death three years ago that anybody in Tinseltown actually cared to look into Hitchhiker again, after envying Peter Jackson’s LOTR ubiquity and wishing for a piece of that geekpie. Once a wry exec realized that Hitchhiker too has legions of smug uberfans who’d see the thing twenty times in the theatres and buy both the theatre release and extended versions of any DVD six and ten months afterwards, it was only a matter of time before they started filming. The cherry on top of the excessive marketing sundae was no doubt the fact that that pesky author was well out of the way, trapped in that big airplane in the sky, awaiting lemon-soaked napkins for all eternity. Bring on the Happy Meals, the stuffed-toy Zaphod and my very own Sony-made Marvin the Paranoid Android. My Globe and Mail assures me that the thing has a “hip and interesting cast,” and that “John Malkovitch has a cameo.” Oh, bliss. Somebody pass me a lemon-soaked napkin to catch my tears of joy.

Tsk, tsk. So not an issue in the grand scheme of things, really. Why must I dump on everything, anyway, right? What’s wrong with there being a movie? If I don’t like it, I just shouldn’t see it, right? If what you’re griping about is that people will only see the movie and not read the books, then that’s stupid, because look how Tolkien has been in print since the LOTR movies came out! Or Harry Potter! See??? Now stop fretting about adaptations, Sarah, and be happy that the movies will “encourage more people to read.”

Bah. I urge such sympathizers to consider that people should read for reasons other than “I saw this on TV,” but that is a discussion for another day. Let us consider this particular text, the first of the trilogy in five parts that we are discussing:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a small paperback book; as such, it is lightweight, composed of processed wood fiber (like other small, paperback books), fits comfortably in one’s housecoat pocket, provides practically no nutrients or vitamins if one happens to chew on a corner, and is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a towel. Any of its 150 or so pages can be immediately accessed by opening the front cover (so) and turning the pages in either a backwards or forwards manner (thus) and gleaning information from the small black marks which are superimposed on the processed wood fiber. This is not a particularly difficult process, especially after one has been instructed in the gleaning information method, useful for so many other processed-wood-viewing purposes. This action, known as reading, is an entirely different sensory experience than what one gets from allowing a multinational corporation with zero sense of humour to tyrannize our imaginations for 90 minutes, informing us at several subtle points that our lives would be oh-so-much better if only we had more Reese’s Pieces, or an Omega watch, or perhaps this lovely BMW. What’s that? No, never fret, darling. We’ve maintained that quaint “Britishness” as a marketing ploy – now you and I both may have tea (just like the British! Just like Arthur Dent!) that “tastes almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.” ™

And such is my problem. I despair less that I will be forced to share my joy of Hitchhiker with the world than that the corporate world will assume ownership of my joy and try to sell it back to me. No doubt the Hitchhiker movie will have its clever moments, and its champions amongst the faithful “fanbase” (a fiction created by brilliant film promoters to claim legitimacy by stroking the egos of those who run web forums devoted to an author’s work) will claim that it is “true to the book” whether it actually is or not, simply because somebody with a byline asked them to. A major blockbuster version of a much-loved book is always welcomed by its fans, whether it is a good adaptation or not. Making it so is besides the point for a production company – the faithful will see it regardless, and the money will come flowing in.

So yeah, I think it’s time to panic.

Comments

[Mr. Kong]

Should it be faithful to the book? One of the things Mr. Adams liked most about his monstrous child was that none of its incarnations were faithful to each other.

I'm with you on everything else you said, though now that the movie is close to release, the previews are somewhat promising.