{"id":105,"date":"2006-01-10T19:55:53","date_gmt":"2006-01-11T00:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=105"},"modified":"2006-01-11T08:50:28","modified_gmt":"2006-01-11T13:50:28","slug":"hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=105","title":{"rendered":"Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m going to break the very first rule of Dream Cast<\/a> and propose a recently completed movie. Sue me.<\/p>\n

HHGTTG was a lackluster movie. The writing was the worst, but the casting didn’t excite me, either. Let’s re-cast the movie. I bet we can do way better. Let’s stipulate that Arthur and Trillian need to be brits, but the other characters – who are all from outer space – need not have Brittish accents. Let’s also stipulate that we have to replace the whole cast. This would be too lame to keep some actors from the movie, even if some of them were good choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nHugh Grant<\/a> as Arthur Dent. Martin Freeman was a perfect choice, but Hugh isn’t bad for the part, either. He’s made a career out of playing Perpetually Dumbfounded Englishmen and that’s what the role calls for. Sure, he’s too good-looking and a bit old for the part now, but I think he could still pull it off.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nJohnny Depp<\/a> as Ford Prefect. Ford is supposed to be a writer and a party animal. Sort of a young outer-space Hunter S. Thompson. Depp could pull off the quirky and eccentric Ford easily.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nHoward Stern<\/a> as Zaphod Beeblebrox. A perfect match. Look at him! He is<\/b> Zaphod Beeblebrox! Just give him a second head in CGI and let him ad-lib all his dialog. He wouldn’t even need to read the books, the script, or know what the hell the story is about.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nSteven Wright<\/a> as the voice of Marvin. Just imagine Steven’s voice doing Marvin’s dialog. It’s funny already.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nIan McKellen<\/a> as Slartibartfast. We’ve seen him play Gandalf, so I doubt playing Slartibartfast is much of a stretch from there. The fact that Sir<\/i> Ian McKellen is a serious Shakespearian-style actor would only reinforce the absurdity of Slartbartfast’s character and speech.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nKate Ashfield<\/a> as Trillian. Kate has made 34 appearances in her career, but the only thing she’s done that I’ve seen is Liz in the outstanding Shaun of the Dead<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Trillian is an odd character to nail down. She’s grounded enough to have something as dull as an astrophysics degree and acts as one of the most level-headed and sensible characters in the books, yet she runs off with Zaphod, the biggest party animal in a billion worlds. This means that amongst all of the outer-space wierdness we find ourselves with an all-too-familiar situation: why is this intelligent and capable woman hanging out with this self-destructive loser?<\/i> Kate Ashfield tackled a character a lot like this when she played Liz, and I think it would work here as well.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Think I’m screwing it all up again? Leave a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m going to break the very first rule of Dream Cast and propose a recently completed movie. Sue me. HHGTTG was a lackluster movie. The writing was the worst, but the casting didn’t excite me, either. Let’s re-cast the movie. I bet we can do way better. Let’s stipulate that Arthur and Trillian need to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream-cast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}