final word on Hitchhiker's, the movie

[acroyear]

if you don't like the differences between the movie and the "original" (whether your original is the radio show, the records, the tv series, or the book), blame douglas.  aside from one or two scenes, every major change is in douglas's final script prior to his death, and most of the ideas were in the earliest drafts and discussions with Jay Roach prior to his leaving the project.  This includes the (significant) trimming of "act 1", the entire "act 2" with john malcovitch and the rescue trillian subplot (douglas felt that the original never had an act 2 as such, and magrathea was always act 3), the p.o.v. gun, and the romance triangle and resolution between arthur and trillian.  douglas wrote it all, knowing he was writing a "movie based on..." and not just rehashing the original scripts.

but i don't want to hear anymore about "the changes they made to what i always knew/loved" -- douglas made the changes first.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, the question had alwasy been "what was the source?".

up until the dvd commentary came out, there was a lot of question as to how much of what was on screen was douglas's and how much was the result of work done by the director and the replacement scriptwriter after douglas's death. in other words, is there a "hollywood" to blame for the differences as they just ran with it and shoved in and/or discarded whatever they felt like (plenty of adaptations go through that when the original author is not involved).

the answer was "no", except as much as "hollywood" influenced douglas into trying to write a "movie" knowing it wasn't radio/tv/novel. but until listening to the commentary on the dvds, that question was unanswered and people's love for "douglas" had pushed the blame to a "them" that didn't exist.

hence, my rant.