Here's the first part of an extensive Question and Answer series with Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith:
GARTH JENNINGS AND NICK GOLDSMITH Q&A, PART 1:
How did Jennings, a director with no Hollywood experience, end up helming one of the most anticipated films of 2005?
GARTH: Good question!!! The short answer is that Nick and I came up with a big, fresh way to make the film that got everyone very excited, and we could do it for less than half of what it would normally have cost to make in Hollywood.
Slightly longer answer: Nick and I have been making videos, commercials and short films together since we left art school. It was through making all this stuff that we met Spike Jonze. Jay Roach had sent the script to Spike but he passed and sent him our showreel as an alternative suggestion (we are forever in his debt!) Spyglass liked our reel too and sent us the script. Nick and I downed tools on a movie we had just written and spent the next 8 months working flat out on the HHGG script and the visuals. I also storyboarded about half of the film. 3 drafts, over 2000 drawings and ten million packets of Hob-Nobs later we had it all worked out. We had shot Zaphod head tests, made models of space ships and Vogons etc and burned all of it onto a nice little presentation DVD. The guys at Spyglass really liked what we had done so Nick and I flew out to L.A and presented it to Disney. The presentation, especially the storyboards, went down really well, so well in fact that they green lit the movie then and there. The stuff of dreams!
When Hitchhiker's Guide was first being written, computer technology and more importantly PCs were very new and primitive and so the science fiction element of the story was very potent; it was a novel idea but something that simply couldn't be done. Nowadays we have all kinds of technologies and mobile devices: mobile phones, PDAs and other such gadgets. In this climate, how do you feel a modern Hitchhiker's Guide fits in, and do you feel the level of the 'fantastic' it once had will be subdued for a modern audience?
GARTH: I think the Guide will always be a fantastic device for an audience because it’s got such a unique personality and hilarious view of the universe. But you’re right, technology has caught up with the original ideas but the technical side of the book isn’t really that important. It’s not about the buttons or the interface or how quickly it can stream audio. It’s Douglas’ take on life, and that will always fit in, even when they have invented the silliest and smallest of gadgets.
NICK: The modern Hitchhikers Guide now pretty much exists, but it almost has left itself behind, because now it can have whatever voice you want to give it. What Douglas did, and Garth has pointed out, is how in the film The Guide is clearly a character with its own very distinct opinions and thus in a way in today’s world, is almost more fantastic than it used to be but for very different reasons.
I don't know if it's a good point but in my mind your work is close to the movies/ads/music videos made by some guys like the French Michel Gondry ("Human Nature," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") and the American Spike Jonze ("Being John Malkovitch"). Do you feel somewhat similar to them?
GARTH: High praise indeed. It strikes me that the thing we seem to have in common with those directors is that we are all very lucky to be able to make things the way we want to make them. We’re all very privileged that studios have been willing to employ us to tell stories in our own, personal way.
How does it feel that a project like this, with so many fans, was you first actual movie? What made you say yes?
GARTH: Our first reaction was to reject the script before it had even popped through the letter box. “They’ll have ruined it!” we said to each other. But they hadn’t ruined it. In fact, the script was fantastic and after some pacing about, we said yes. We aren’t daunted by what the fans think because we are fans ourselves – and so are the people we were working with. We’re all really proud of what we’ve done. The fact that it is our first feature film meant that we probably worked even harder than more established people to get the film ready to shoot.
NICK: The fact that our first film had so many fans already attracted to it, at times can be incredibly daunting, because there is such high expectation. But then you think about it from the point that you are making a film, which already has an audience, and how lucky you are. How could we not say yes?
