Mar. 12, 2005

This is what the Guide has to say about Movie Trailers

There's a funny trailer for the soon-to-be-released film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy circulating the internet. It explains the concept of film trailers, much like the eponymous Guide in the film that advises travelers around the galaxy. It reminded me of the trailer the Jerry Seinfeld's 2002 film Comedian, which parodied the dialog and voice of the typical film trailers.

Click on these stills to see the QuickTime trailers for both films.

I first learned about Douglas Adams' science fiction comedy in the early eighties while working in the Yukon wilderness. For a short period we were in a spot that was on the ragged edge of radio reception. We'd fiddle with a little transistor radio in the evenings trying to tune in the (relatively) local CBC station to get some news of the outside world. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy started as a BBC radio series in 1977, and that first night just before the news we heard one of the episodes being broadcast in Canada. It was a serendipitous delight to hear such comic insight and imagination in a radio play. For the rest of that week we cut our days short so that we'd have time to tweak the radio enough to pick up the next episode.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has since been released on LP, as a five book "trilogy", an early computer game, a TV series, and now as a film. Each version took the material in a slightly different direction. It has also spawned it's own Star Trek-like legion of fans... Sadly, Douglas Adams died of a heart attack in 2001 at the age of 48.

Listening to: Forever Young by Alphaville from Forever Young.


  1. I've tried to get into The Hitchhikers Guide over the years via the book and movie, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't get into the groove.

  2. Well, there's something wrong with you, isn't there? :-) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy seems to be one of those "binary" things. People get it or they don't.

    Thinking about it from the other perspective, I see how the wild plot twists and convoluted asides could be distracting. The film will probably be a bit more linear though.