Was There Any Pressure to Cast Big Names?: “You know, there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing to start with but in the end, certainly it was interesting. It was greenlit unconditionally. There was no [demands]. Just, ‘Make it. Go do it. Make it happen.’ And so if there was pressure, it was all resistible.”
On Handing Over the Reins of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” to Newcomers Nick Goldsmith and Garth Jennings: “I met Nick and Garth on their boat, which ironically is 10 minutes down the canal from where Douglas used to live in Islington. And from the first time I met them, I just thought these guys have got exactly the right mixture. I mean, you could see from their body of work that they were visually phenomenally creative. And you met them and they were just thoroughly decent people. They’re just sweethearts, both of them. Highly intelligent, smart, very creative, great guys. And so the whole shoot has been a delight. It’s been very, very egoless and everybody just focused on doing the best job that they can. And so I’ve been very confident, really from the first moment I met them. I sat and talked to them and drank tea and ate biscuits and things.”
Any Head-Butting with the Team of Goldsmith and Jennings Over the Vision for the Film?: “No. Once they were onboard, their sense of what it needed to look like visually was great. I think that one of the great… Very often they’d come up with a design which may not be what you thought but when you saw it you go, ‘Yeah! That’s great!’ You can see that Marvin’s just going to be this phenomenal iconic character that people are going to love. But he’s not the design that maybe people would have expected.”
The Process of Creating Marvin and the Other Characters: “Actually, interestingly, Garth drew Marvin almost straight-up. And with some characters, it took forever. They went through iteration after iteration after iteration. But Garth himself drew Marvin in the early stages. He pretty much knew what he wanted him to look like. I mean, he went through minor iterations but others, like the Heart of Gold for example, completely transformed from early design to where it ended up. The way Deep Thought looks, that changed quite a lot. But very often the kernel of the original idea stayed.“
Stamp’s Involvement With the Movie: “I was pretty hands on. I’ve been involved every step of the way in getting it made, helping to find Nick and Garth, working on the script, and then involved in helping them think through the casting. I was there on the set a lot. And now I work across the board with Disney on everything that they’re doing, whether it’s getting DVD marketing, making our tie-in books, merchandising, licensing. You name it. I’m plugged in as the executive producer to everything that they’re doing – so I keep tabs on them. I don’t have veto but they listen.”
Robbie Stamp on the Casting Process: “Well, I think the key thing is that I always felt very strongly that we shouldn’t cast big names, because I just thought that a number of things can happen when you do that. It is an ensemble piece and the risk is the gravitational pull of a big movie star. Either you cast all four as big movie stars… Arthur would be slightly odd to cast as a big movie star because he’s sort of an ordinary guy so, “Okay, we’ll cast Zaphod.” Then you think, “If Zaphod’s a big guy, then maybe the pressure will be on to make his part bigger.” And it just makes sense to me that it was an ensemble piece and to cast really good actors that work in an ensemble like that. That was, if you like, the philosophy. And also things come and go and people move in and out of the frame. You get excited and think that would be great and then for whatever reason it doesn’t work. And you end up with a fabulous cast of people, very often with the people you first thought of."
Continued on Page 2: Robbie Stamp on Casting Mos Def as Ford Prefect and the Concerns of Fans
