Douglas Adams - The Salmon of Doubt

was terrific, and it’s being very good to me. I had a conversation a little while ago with Pete Townshend of The Who, and I think at that point I was saying, “Oh God, hope I’m not just remembered as the person who wrote Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” And he kind of reprimanded me a little bit. He said, “Look, I have the same thing with Tommy, and for a while I thought like that. The thing is, when you’ve got something like that in your history, it opens an awful lot of doors. It allows you to do a lot of other things. People remember that. It’s something one should be grateful for.” And I thought that was quite right.

Have you put Dirk Gently aside?

D.A. Well, I started to write another Dirk Gently book, and just lost it. For some reason I couldn’t get it going, so I had put it aside. I didn’t know what to do with it. I looked at the material again about a year later, and suddenly thoug “Actually, the reason is that the ideas and the character don’t match. I’ve tried to go for the wrong kind of ideas, and these ideas would actually fit much better in a Hitchhiker book, but I don’t want to write another Hitchhiker book at the moment. So I sort of put them on one side. And maybe one day I will write another Hitchhiker book, because there’s an awful lot of material sitting around waiting to go in it. But going back to Dirk Gently, I sort of put Dirk aside, really. There was a student production of Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective in Oxford two or three months ago, so I went along to see it. And it’s an enormously complicated plot ... Part of the complexity is there to disguise the fact that the plot doesn’t really quite work ... It was funny watching it on stage, because I suddenly began to think about it again, and think, “Well, they did this well, but what they should have done was this, and they should’ve done that.” You know, it starts the whole ball rolling in your head. What was also interesting to me was that while I was sitting there being quite critical of the production, I was astonished by how much the audience was enjoying it. It was rather sort of a peculiar situation. I suddenly thought,

“I would love to see this happen as a film, because I can now see, having thought about it freshly in this context, what kind of a movie it could be, and it could be great.” So maybe, once the Hitchhiker movie has gotten to the stage where I can turn my attention to other things as well, that’s what I’d like to do next. And with that movie under way, I hope more doors will open as far as filmmaking is concerned. I would love to do movies, but this is a man saying this innocently who’s never done one.

Interview conducted with Keith Phipps, 1998

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April 14, 1999

David Vogel Dear David, I’ve tried to reach you by phone a couple of times. Perhaps it would have helped if I’d explained why I was calling: I was in the States for a few days and thought it might be helpful if I came across to L.A. so that you and I could have a meeting. I didn’t hear from you, so I’m on a plane back to England, where I’m typing this.

We seem to have gotten to a place where the problems appear to loom larger than the opportunities. I don’t know if I’m right in thinking this, but I only have silence to go on, which is always a poor source of information. It seems to me that we can either slip into the traditional stereotypes—you’re the studio executive who has a million real-world problems to worry about, and I’m the writer who only cares about seeing his vision realised and hang the cost and consequences—or we can recognise that we both share the same goal, which is to make the most successful movie we possibly can. The fact that we may have different perspectives on how this can best be achieved should be a fertile source of debate and iterative problem solving. It’s not clear to me that a one-way traffic of written “notes” interspersed with long, dreadful silences is a good substitute for this.

You have a great deal of experience nursing major motion pictures into existence. I have a great deal of experience of nursing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy into existence in every medium other than motion pictures. I’m sure you must feel frustrated that I don’t seem to understand the range of problems you have to contend with, just as I feel frustrated that I haven’t had any real creative dialogue with Disney about this project yet. I have a suggestion to make: Why don’t we actually meet and have a chat? I could be in L.A. for next Monday (4/19) or early the following week. I would invite Disney to bear the cost of this extra trip over. I’ve appended a list of numbers you can reach me on. If you manage not to reach me, I shall know you’re trying not to, very, very hard indeed.

Best wishes, Douglas Adams Email:dna@tdv.com Assistant (Sophie Astin) (and voicemail): 555 171 555 1700

(between 10 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. British Summertime)

Office fax: 555 171 555 1701

Home (no voicemail): 555 171 555 3632

Home fax: 555 171 555 5601

UK cell phone (and voicemail): 555 410 555 098

US cellphone (and voicemail): (310) 555 555 6769

Other home. (France): 555 4 90 72 39 23

Jane Belson (wife) (office): 555 171 555 4715

Film agent (US) Bob Bookman: (310) 5554545

Book agent (UK) Ed Victor (office): 555 171 555 4100

(UK office hours)

Book agent (UK) Ed Victor (office): 555 171 555 4112

Book agent (UK) Ed Victor (home): 555 171 555 3030

Producer: Roger Birnbaum: (818) 555 2637

Director: Jay Roach (Everyman Pictures): (323) 555 3585

Jay Roach (home): (310) 555 5903

Jay Roach (cellphone): (310) 555 0279

Shauna Robertson (Everyman Pictures): (323) 555 3585

Shauna Robertson, home: (310) 555 7352

Shauna Robertson, cellphone: (310) 555 8357

Robbie Stamp, Executive Producer (UK) (office): 555 171 555 1707

Robbie Stamp, Executive Producer (UK) (home): 555 181 555 1672

Robbie Stamp, Executive Producer (UK) (cell phone): 555 7885 55 8397

Janet Thrift (mother) (UK): 555 19555 62527

Jane Garnier (sister) (UK) (work): 555 1300 555 684

Jane Garnier (sister) (UK) (home): 555 1305 555 034

Jakki Kelloway (daughter’s nanny) (UK): 555 171 555 5602

Angus Deayton & Lise Meyer Home: 555 (171) 555 0855

Restaurants I might conceivably be at: The Ivy (UK): 555 171 555 4751

The Groucho Club (UK): 555 171 555 4685

Granita (UK): 555 171 555 3222

Sainsbury’s (supermarket where I shop; they can always page me): 555 171 555 1789

Website forumwww. Douglasadams.com/forum

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[Editor’s Note: This letter had the desired effect. David Vogel responded, resulting in a productive meeting that pushed the movie forward.]

A large flying craft moved swiftly across the surface of an astoundingly beautiful sea. From mid-morning onwards it plied back and forth in great widening arcs, and at last attracted the attention of the local islanders, a peaceful, sea-food loving people who gathered on the beach and squinted up into the blinding sun, trying to see what was there.

Any sophisticated knowledgeable person, who had knocked about, seen a few things, would probably have remarked on how much the craft looked like a filing cabinet—a large and recently burgled filing cabinet lying on its back with its drawers in the air and flying.

The islanders, whose experience was of a different kind, were instead struck by how little it looked like a lobster.

They chattered excitedly about its total lack of claws, its stiff unbendy back, and the fact that it seemed to experience the greatest difficulty staying on the ground. This last feature seemed particularly funny to them. They jumped up and down on the spot a lot to demonstrate to the stupid thing that they themselves found staying on the ground the easiest thing in the world. But soon this entertainment began to pall for them. After all, since it was perfectly clear to them that the thing was not a lobster, and since their world was blessed with an abundance of things that were lobsters (a good half a dozen of which were now marching succulently up the beach towards them) they saw no reason to waste any more time on the thing but decided instead to adjourn immediately for a late lobster lunch.