The Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy - The Hexagonal Phase

[Mark Saunders]

IMHO Duel was a brilliant film based on a rather ho-hum short story. However it's the only example I can immediately think of where the film is better than the written word.

Harry Potter!

[Ian J.]

IMHO Duel was a brilliant film based on a rather ho-hum short story. However it's the only example I can immediately think of where the film is better than the written word.

 

As far as I can remember, most of Alfred Hitchcock's films were based on novellas that probably weren't that great, but he made arguably great films out of some of them.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

I much prefer books to films, in fact I can't think of a single film that realises, never mind improves on, any book that I have read...

 And in considering the original HHGTTG, we must remember that the radio play (script) performance predated the book by a year. What the sequence is thereafter, radio broadcast of scripts vs published books; too many intervening pangalactic gargleblasters to recall.

 

Films that improve on novellas, quite a number. Essentially taking a sketch and elaborating on it; plenty of scope for the film's writer, director, actors to flesh out the bare bones of a plot, without too severely trampling on what the reader may have imagined. (Spectacularly so with the adaption of PK Dick's 'The Minority Report' which for my money gets inside PKD's idiom in the range from good to superb effect; definitely peaks with Dr Iris Hineman and Agatha, magical performances.)

 

When it comes to novels with carefully drawn characters and ambitious descriptive writing, much more problematic. Endless opportunities for the film get it wrong. Tolkien's  LOTR which was the iconic fantasy novel of my youth has had the most magnificent film production, with generally thoughtful characterisation and sympathetic reference to the underlying history of middle earth, BUT! I can sort of squint my way past the clear cut forest visible in the background of Rohan, and forgive the omission of the trippy drugs scene (what were the Dons smoking at Oxford?) : however to totally omit the whole scouring of the Shire element is a disaster. That's what the whole work is about, an allegory for the end of the age of innocence for the common man. Presumably Jackson and his collaborators saw it as a ripping yarn of superhuman conflict alone...

[Reorte]

 

and forgive the omission of the trippy drugs scene (what were the Dons smoking at Oxford?)

I'm struggling to recall a trippy drugs scene in the book, unless that's an interpretation of Tom Bombadil.

[SHMD]

IMHO Duel was a brilliant film based on a rather ho-hum short story. However it's the only example I can immediately think of where the film is better than the written word.

 

Forest Gump.

The film is miles and miles better than the book. Although the story line is completely different, the far fetched concepts, are the same.

(Although I accept that most don't like either.)

 

 

Back to Hitch Hiking - I can't get it here in China and it's been ages since I've heard the radio version or watched the TV series.

The Film ends the story short and doesn't have the humour as before.

 

 

Kev.

[Pacific231G]

 Very much so. A specific example:

I heard and read that as a metaphor: the person who has two directly conflicting personas: radical revolutionary hero opposed to the oppressive old order, and simultaneously fabulously wealthy and irresponsible scion of that old order abusing that privilege in every way possible; who never gets called out on it. Breezes in, sweeps the rather attractive girl away - and you know he is going to be carelessly unkind to her - and bugger me with a brick sideways! - he actually has got a 'spaceship' too!

 

It's all about DA's discontent with the way life was playing out, and still feeling like a teenager when he was the twice the age at which that is generally acceptable.

Have you been listening to Vogon poetry again ?

 

I only met Douglas Adams a couple of times when we were considering his house as a location (we ended up using Jane Belson's flat and my living room instead) and he didn't strike me as being particularly discontented, That was twelve years before his tragically early death but life was actually going rather well for him so I think it was more his take on the human condition generally.

 

I actually enjoyed the TV series marginally more than the radio version (though I did miss the "shoe event horizon") and I enjoyed the film as well but rather less the novelisation. I think with adaptations  it's important to judge them as works in their own right in their own medium rather than comparing them across media. For example I always thought the movie version of the Time Machine conveyed much of the story more strongly than H.G.Wells' novel. For HHGG I simply thought that radio, TV and Film all told the same story well but in different ways. 

Edited April 20, 2018 by Pacific231G

[10000]

I enjoyed the original radio broadcast the TV shows , film and of course the books.

 

At all times you need to keep in mind a comment from Adams himself where he explains that the history of HHGG is so complicated that every time he tells it he contradicts himself, and whenever he does get it right he is misquoted. Also that each time it has appeared in some form the story lines differ from the previous release.

[Dick Turpin]

Sorry to say that I gave up on this Hexagonal Phase series after a fairly promising start. Adams' humour has punctuated many aspect of my earlier life, and still resonates fairly often even now. I particularly loved his Dr Who stories, and consider it a diabolical travesty that Shada was scuppered by industrial action of the time! Quote - ...I've got a memory like a, what's one of those things you use for straining rice'... brilliance. Taken from us far too early!

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...I only met Douglas Adams a couple of times when we were considering his house as a location (we ended up using Jane Belson's flat and my living room instead) and he didn't strike me as being particularly discontented, That was twelve years before his tragically early death but life was actually going rather well for him so I think it was more his take on the human condition generally....

 But that's ten years after he hit the jackpot. Hitchhikers is all his angst from before he made it, and was having to take any job going to stay afloat.

[Black Marlin]

I remember really enjoying the film, but on reflection I think that's because I went to see it on a first date that ended spectacularly well...

The books are the thing, though. They're unutterably brilliant.