After almost 30 years of bouncing around the images of Douglas Adams’ words in our heads, we finally get to see if they match up with the big screen. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is in theaters everywhere.
For the circles I frequent, a reading of the classic comedy romp through space seemed almost by invitation only. A friend, an acquaintance here or there, would mention it in a passing, almost flippant way. And like a thousand other books I hadn’t read, I had never heard of it.
Once I finally picked it up, it became attached to my hand, a new (and heavy) limb extension that had me laughing at the most inappropriate times as I wandered through the meandering and irreverent sentence structures of a mad man.
No, really. It was that much fun.
Even better, I found words to live by, and the sardonic Brit could have saved me the verbiage of a thousand pages or so by leaving it, simply, at “DON’T PANIC” written in large comforting letters on the front. Not panicking, it would seem, is the divine admonition and author’s intent.
Adams, sadly, won’t see the final version. In 2001, he dropped dead on a treadmill in California while working on the screenplay at the age of 49.
Rumor has it, he had just found the question and answer to everything, and was about to make a phone call and tell everyone about it.
The treadmill apologized for the inconvenience.
At least, I’m sure he would have appreciated the irony of having a heart attack at the gym.
Hitchhiker’s Guide stars Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent and Mos Def as Ford Prefect. It runs for 110 minutes.
