News broke recently about the death of Ivan Reitman, famous for directing Ghostbusters (1984),Twins (1988), Dave (1993) and Six Days Seven Nights(1998). Born in Czechoslovakia and raised he Canada, he had his first major hit as producer with Animal House (1978), followed by Kindergarten Cop(1990), Beethoven(1992), and Junior(1994), among many others. He died in his sleep at home in Montecito, California, aged 75.
For a short time in the early 1980s, Reitman entertained the notion of turning The Hitchhiker’s Guideinto a full-blown Hollywood movie. Joe Medjuck and Michael Gross were the two leg-men charged with the job of persuading Douglas Adams to consider selling his rights to Columbia for Reitman to produce. The two creatives personally clicked with the author and they developed the project over much convivial hospitality over long walks along the beach, or poolside in L.A.. Eventually, the author was convinced, a deal was done and Douglas began to write the script, re-cycling his radio/TV/novel material once more.
In Starlog Issue 85, dated August 1984, with two drafts done, Reitman said: “We’re at an early stage. The problem is trying to fit three books into a film form that won’t cost us $90m to do right.”
In Douglas’ archive is a memo from July 1983 from Reitman, listing his reaction to the first 150 pages of a massively overlong initial draft. Although he was maybe tryingto sound encouraging at times, praising some ideas (e.g. he liked Marvin), it reads as not entirely complimentary and displays a gaping schism between Reitman’s personal taste in screen comedy and everything that makes Douglas’ particular style so beloved by many. Precious one-liners and bits of classic Hitchhiker dialogue were ‘eighty-sixed’ by the Executive Producer, whom it appears, simply didn’t really ‘get’ it.
For example, in note 25 (out of a total of 45), Reitman is incredulous that a race of people who build planets would actually work for mice! This fact, coupled with the notion of a ship powered by improbability tips him over the edge and he reckons the audience will give up caring about the plot or any of the characters’ motivations.
Note 35 suggests Arthur joking about Slartibartfast’s name is akin to a poor Mel Brooks gag.
Note 36 shows Reitman’s patience with the story has been exhausted by the concept that dolphins are clever, seen as a step towardsrevealing the how smart the mice are.
Note 41 contains the oft-quoted (by Douglas) cracker of a comment though, when Reitman lays into the reveal that the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is merely ‘42’. This iconic joke at the heart of Hitchhiker, he feels, would leave the average cinema audience feeling pretty “jerked off”.
Years later, on the TV chat show of his friend Clive Anderson, Douglas would ruefully reflect: “Here is a guy who’s just bought two gallons of chocolate chip ice-cream and he’s complaining about all the little black lumps in it.”
In an interview we filmed at his home in Islington in May 1985, Douglas told me: “They made Ghostbusters actually after we weren’t able to agree about the screenplay of Hitchhiker’s, so it was obviously a beneficial argument for somebody!”
For his excellent 2003 book Hitchhiker, a biography of Douglas Adams, M.J. Simpson spoke with Gross about the debacle: “One of the problems, the reason it never got made by us, is Ivan is a structurally conservative film-maker. He really believes in the three acts, he really believes in motivation, ticking clock, characters that develop. That’s not what The Hitchhiker’s Guide is, period.”
So, Douglas spent 7 months in the Los Angeles sunshine and returned home with the movie project unfulfilled. Soon afterwards, I had asked him whether the experience had failed to live up to his expectations. “I’m not a fan of Southern California, to be honest,” he grinned, “I’m not superficial enough, I’m sorry Kevin. You know, I try to be.”
The irony was he eventually emigrated there permanently in 1999 to work on a fresh attempt at the long hoped-for film. Two years later, with the project once again in development hell, Douglas tragically died aged 49, after a workout at his local private gym, coincidentally also in Montecito.
KJD, Feb 2022.