AS ANY FAN OF THE CHERISHED sci-fi comedy by Douglas Adams, whether in its radio, novel or TV form, will know, the back of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy carries the instruction: "Don’t Panic".
"What can you do?" shrugs Goldsmith, 34, tanned, balding and very much the producer of the partnership. "For the last two years we’ve been in our own little bubble, making the film. It’s just been us and that’s it. There have been expectations, but t
hey’ve all been outside of the bubble. Now, we’re all laid bare to the world." Jennings, a boyish-looking director at 32, chips in: "With Hitchhiker’s, it’s gigantic as far as its expectations go. But it was nice to realise that it’s what we’ve been doing for the last 12 years, just on a larger scale."
While The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is their feature film debut, Jennings and Goldsmith - under the moniker of Hammer and Tongs - are one of the most sought-after teams in the world of commercials and music videos. Highlights include Blur’s Coffee and TV video (featuring a walking milk carton), putting Joan Collins in a bathtub for Badly Drawn Boy’s Spitting In the Wind and the ITV Digital campaign with Johnny Vegas and "Monkey". As it turns out, it was Spike Jonze, who went from promos to making Being John Malkovich, who recommended the pair to the studio as potential directors.
When their US agent called, telling them he had a script of Hitchhiker’s, they were reluctant even to read a Hollywood-authorised effort, for fear it would have lost what Goldsmith calls "the sense of humour that was quintessentially English". It was sent, anyway, and after a fortnight Goldsmith got around to perusing it "and was pleasantly surprised". What they didn’t know was that Adams himself had had a big hand in the script before he died in 2001.
"Almost from the time it became a successful book, Douglas desperately wanted it to be a movie," says Robbie Stamp, the film’s executive producer and a close friend of Adams.
"Although there were aspects of the TV show that he liked, it fell so short of what he had in his mind. Douglas had this attitude that he created this thing which he believed could breathe and live in different media. And he knew there were things that would be possible on film that he wasn’t able to do in any other medium."
With its wry story of the bewildered middle-class Englishman Arthur Dent, stranded in space after the Earth is blown up, Hitchhiker’s may be a gilt-edged property with a cult audience. But it’s still taken over one-quarter of a century, since the first radio broadcast in 1978, to bring it to the big screen. Not for want of effort, mind. Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman tried and failed. More recently, Jay Roach, the director of the Austin Powers films, set out to do the same; he stepped aside for Jennings and Goldsmith, though remains on board as producer.
By this point, Karey Kirkpatrick - who wrote the script for Chicken Run - had been brought in to beef up Adams’s last draft. "By Douglas’s own admission, Hitchhiker’s was very episodic," says Stamp, a former TV producer who set up the company Digital Village with Adams in the early 1990s. "In a way, it was always the ideas and the invention - that was what really interested Douglas. Getting something that had a satisfying beginning, middle and end was probably one of the reasons why it took as long as it did."
TAKING THE FIRST VOLUME OF the four-book series as the basic narrative arc, the film carves out a storyline while incorporating new material that Adams wrote for the movie. Additions include a "point of view" gun (which prompts targets to speak their mind); a planet with paddles that spring from the surface to face-slap anyone having an original thought; and the development of Humma Kavula (played by a legless John Malkovich), only briefly referenced in the books.
In brainstorming sessions with Kirkpatrick, Jennings and Goldsmith set about applying Adams’s ideas to a story - notably Arthur (Martin Freeman) leading the charge to rescue space-girl Trillion (Zooey Deschanel) from the dreaded Vogons.
"All we were doing was trying to amp those moments to make it as cinematic as possible," says Jennings. "As soon as we solved that, all the Guide entries are really enjoyable, because you have this lovely skeleton to hang it all off. It would become quite laborious if it was just one mad thing after another - which it still is, but at least it’s chaos that moves you forward.
"One of the problems this project may have had before we came on board was objectivity - people not being able to throw things out." Neither were they worried about introducing the odd thing - notably a Jennings-penned song that opens the film, inspired by the immortal line (and title of the fourth book), "So long and thanks for all the fish".
Judging by the cast, it’s evident how faithful Jennings and Goldsmith have been to the spirit of Adams’s work. Who better than Tim from The Office to play Arthur? Or for Alan Rickman, with his depressed tones, to voice Marvin the Paranoid Android? Even the surprise choice - US rapper-turned-actor Mos Def as Ford Prefect, Arthur’s extra-terrestrial friend - works in the film’s favour. "I always felt it needed to be cast along The Lord of the Rings lines," says Stamp, "where the title is the star."
One of the most spot-on pieces of casting must be Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide, though he was not the first choice despite having been a friend of Adams. Originally, Jennings and Goldsmith had hoped to find the master copies of the recordings made by the late Peter Jones - the voice of the Guide in both the radio and TV shows. "There were loads of typical Hitchhiker back-stories to things going missing and producers who owned it being in prison," laughs Goldsmith. "We got Stephen in for a test and then it just seemed obvious," he adds, noting that Fry is - like the Guide - encyclopaedic.
Going back to the books for the look of the film, they set out to avoid using CGI where possible. They claim to have only undertaken four days of blue-screen effects work at the end of the four-month shoot, remarkable for a modern science fiction film. "We always wanted real sets, real characters and real creatures," says Jennings. "It was a comedy, first and foremost, and it had to be funny on set. We wanted to see the Vogons and have them there, meet them for breakfast." The Vogon puppets were provided by the Jim Henson Creature Shop, the late Muppet creator’s company, just a short walk away in London’s Camden Lock. "Those puppeteers are real actors themselves," says Jennings. "They respond to you just like actors do, whereas it’s very difficult to direct a computer."
Goldsmith and Jennings also recruited friends at Shynola - a fellow promo company, responsible for Radiohead’s Pyramid Song video - to create the graphics for the Guide, the one element Adams really liked in the original TV show. Jennings knew that anything flash would date instantly, so a limited palette and basic graphics were chosen. "The Guide has sold to everyone in the galaxy, so we had to make it as universal as possible," he says.
With cameos from Adams’s mother, sister and daughter, it’s evident the remaining family are happy with this version, perhaps because it has a homespun feel, lovingly crafted by either friends of Adams or those who share his sense of humour. "It’s not just something that’s been lightly tossed off by a Hollywood studio," says Stamp. "This is something people have worked on with a lot of respect for the original material. I think we have come up with something that is a worthy addition to the body of work that is Hitchhiker’s." Wherever he is, Douglas Adams would surely agree.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is released on 28 April
