An Interview With Director Garth Jennings

If you’re a first-time director, you have to hustle. Scrape. You peddle scripts to studios and hope, pray, and beg for financing. Unless, of course, you happen to be Garth Jennings. Part of the “Hammer & Tongs” production team, the British director had made slick videos for Blur, R.E.M., and Badly Drawn Boy. He had not, however, made a movie.

Two years ago, the rookie was given a chance. A shot at his first movie. Not just a movie, a blockbuster. And not just a blockbuster, but “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” a beloved book, a franchise, even a Bible. (Gulp.)

Speaking with him in New York’s Regency hotel, it’s easy to see why the studios took the gamble. He’s chipper. He’s likable. He speaks with a relaxed, charming bubbliness, nodding his head, always on the verge of laughter. Jennings is the kind of guy you would follow blindly. With an upbeat British accent, he talks about the making of “Hitchhiker’s,” translating the book to the screen, and even some goodies that we can expect from the DVD.

There are millions of nit-picking geeks out there. And millions of people who have never read the book. How do you satisfy both audiences?

Garth Jennings: Well, I was reluctant to do the job at first, because I was a fan. And I heard the script was coming from Hollywood. And they didn’t tell me that Douglas had written the script. I thought, they won’t have gotten it right, because I loved it growing up.

And after I read it and got onboard, I realized that it was this wonderful thing: Douglas had completely attacked it as a new genre. He’d done the radio series one way. The tv series another way. And you can see what he’d done with the script is already approach this differently, for a movie. And I thought, as long as we stick to his guidelines, and the spirit to this material, and we make something that celebrates “Hitchhiker’s” rather than gets bogged down with absolutely every word—that was the main thing.

And having his family very close to production, and having people that worked him very close to it, meant that we could always bounce things off people and make sure we weren’t going in the wrong direction, or do anything that would be an “un-Douglasy thing.”

Give an example of an “un-Douglasy thing.”

Garth Jennings: I guess it would be like if Arthur Dent had burst through the door to save Trillian with a laser gun and shot the place to pieces and said, “Give me the girl!”

[Laughter.]

And actually, we did shoot that as a DVD extra. It’s in the “deleted-deleted” scenes. It was so funny—the fans were so worried that that was the kind of thing we were going to do. I said, “We’ve got to shoot that.” We have Martin with his dressing gown, in black, going, “DO Panic!” [Makes machine-gun noises, laughs.] It was a great relief, because basically we felt that what we were doing was making a movie that would hopefully appeal to as many people as the books appeal to.

What other plans do you have for the DVD?

Garth Jennings: [Laughs.] We kind of shot an awful lot. We had a secret schedule running parallel with our shoot. Which meant that we didn’t get home ‘till very late. But it’s just lots of very strange bits and pieces that wouldn’t have ever worked in the film. Would have just taken you out of it completely and ruined the fun of it. But things that were so lovely in the books, or in the radio series.

What were the toughest parts of the book to bring to the screen?

Garth Jennings: Trying to get the pacing right—allowing us to dip in and out of the Guidebook, or go and watch a whale drop out of the sky while it comes to terms with his existence. And yet still feel like we’re going somewhere. It was important that if we’re going to see this as a movie, then all these wonderful things can happen, but if there’s no real sense of us moving along, then it becomes very, very tiresome. And you don’t get to enjoy it as much. It’s not as thrilling. So it was really just making sure that we had the pace right. It was a tricky balance.

For the movie, you chose to hide Zaphod’s second head beneath his neck. Why the change?

Garth Jennings: It was already decided. When I read the script, Douglas and Jay Roach had already worked that concept out. They wanted to make it more of a character, that had a presence, rather than just an appendage. It had to be something that did something. And I loved that. The one thing that I didn’t like in the tv series was that the head sort of kept falling off.

Where did the dolphin song lyrics come from? Were those in the portion of the script that Douglas wrote?

Garth Jennings: No, it’s a Guide entry that Douglas wrote. That was something that we added when we came onboard in the early days. Just because we wanted to set that tone for the rest of the movie. We ended up recording it with a 90-piece orchestra, and people singing their hearts out. It was really, really lovely. So I wrote the words for it, but basically lifted every idea from the Guide entry that preceded it.

When did you decide to go with Jim Hensen’s creature shop, as opposed to strictly with CGI? And why did you choose that?

Garth Jennings: I’d worked with Hensen’s a few times—I’ve done music videos with them in the past. And I really loved the way they work. Part of the reason why we did the job is that we felt it was a good time to make something that was more about being inventive than being flashy. CGI stuff is brilliant, it’s the best tool you can have, but it is a tool. “Hitchhiker’s” was never about showing off, or competing with the other things. It was very much its own thing. We wanted to make something that was very funny and very inventive.

When most people think about the character Ford Prefect, Mos Def isn’t the first guy that comes to mind. Was he your first choice?

Garth Jennings: He wasn’t at all, actually, no. My casting director said you’ve got to meet this guy. Now, I had his records. And I thought, I don’t really want someone in the film when I’ve got their records. I went to meet Sam Rockwell one day, and I met him for the part of Ford Prefect, and realized, no, this is a complete waste of time, I realized that this guy needs to play the president. It was glorious—just as easy as that.

So the spot of Ford opened up again…

Garth Jennings: A few hours later, I met Mos and his mother. We sat down and started chatting and it was just really delightful. He struck me as having all the qualities of the character. I just loved the idea—we sat on the plane going home, literally hours after meeting—thinking just the idea of them in this little pub, Martin Freedman and Mos Def, and Mos turning and saying, “What would you say if I really wasn’t from Gilford?” I loved all that. It’s just completely wrong. But perfect, in a way. Once we met him it was easy. There were never any other candidates after you meet people like that.

The Guide entries are terrific. Can you talk about making them?

Garth Jennings: We just worked on hundreds of different designs, and realized that we wanted it to not compete with the “Matrix” style of technology, or not to try to outdo anything that’s currently available. Because it would just date immediately. So we decided that instead of the Guide being a new Nokia phone, it should be more like a Swiss army knife, something that’s universal and classic and would last forever.

And the animation sequences?

Garth Jennings: The same went for the animation. The idea of “Don’t Panic”—it just seemed like something simple and colorful and basic should be used as the color palette and the design. Then the humor should come from what’s being said. Then our animators, of course, had a field day designing the parties and the scientists banging on the ceiling, and milking a cow, and finding out that the cow is really rather enjoying it. They took that simplicity and always added another thing on top of it. I always loved getting their storyboards in.

And luckily their ideas fit with Douglas’s …

Garth Jennings: Yeah, I mean, everyone was a huge fan—all those animators were. And they actually lived next door to the guy who was the original Zaphod. He used to bang on their door and come see what they were doing. Everyone—the composer was a huge “Hitchhiker’s” buff. It was lovely, actually.

The movie is only an hour and forty minutes, so why not cram some more Douglas Adams into it?

Garth Jennings: I hate long films. You know, I really enjoyed the “Lord of the Rings” stuff. But once they put the crown on his head I was like, “Yeah!” But then half an hour later, they’re still having beer!

So you initially had a longer version of “Hitchhiker’s?”

Garth Jennings: My first cut was two and a half hours long. And I thought, there’s no way they’re shaving this down. This is it. And then once you start working with it, you realize that this is a comedy, first and foremost. It always was a comedy. I don’t know how to sustain a three hour comedy. There’s no real clear plot that you could stretch to that length.

What are your plans for the sequel?

Garth Jennings: I have no plans. We only finished it 10 days ago. And I had a baby the day afterwards.

Congratulations!

Garth Jennings: Thank you. So I’m kind of a bit wind-swept, really. I don’t really know what the plans are. We left it open.

I assume you want to do another one, though?

Garth Jennings: Yeah. If there was another one, yeah. At the moment, I just want to go back to bed. But yes. I do love the idea of seeing “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.” There’s a lot of lovely things in that. It’s a great title, as well. [Laughs.] It’s a funny thing to see on the street.

What’s next for you?

Garth Jennings: I don’t know. We’re going to take a bit of a break. And after that, I hope to go back to making a film that I was originally making before this one.

What’s it called?

Garth Jennings: It was something that I wrote myself, working with my producer Nick, called “Son of Rambo.” A very serious film. [Laughs.] Two kids in the 1980’s when video-cameras first came on the market, and they make their own sequel to “Rambo.”

“HITCHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY” HITS THEATERS ON FRIDAY, April 29th

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at jeff@latinoreview.com.