Stephen Fry is our Guide!

Any H2G2 fans out there?

The movie we've been waiting years and years to see will be released in May. I'm keeping my calendar open!

Yes, fellow Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fanatics, it's finally happening. And this morning I learned that Stephen Fry has signed on to provide the voice of The Guide. I just can't imagine a more appropriate choice.

Many of you PBS watchers will remember Fry's spot-on portrayal of the P. G. Wodehouse character "Jeeves", that incomparable manservant employed by the bumbling Bertie Wooster. If you don't already realize, you'll understand in a minute why this particular actor is uniquely suited to reveal to us the secrets of Adams' wacky universe.

"Being asked to do the voice of The Guide is like having
your birthday on Christmas Day, discovering a winning
lottery ticket in your stocking and having chocolate
poured all over you," said Fry, a self-confessed fan of
the book.

The film's executive producer Robbie Stamp said that
Adams, who died in 2001, would have been "delighted"
with the choice of Fry for the role.

Delighted and then some, would be my guess.

I had the great pleasure of corresponding briefly with Douglas Adams a couple of years before his death. I wish now that I had kept those e-mails, but alas, I'm not the kind of person who gets star-struck and I'm not a pack rat. Still, I wish I had those messages, because the details have faded in my mind and I'd just like to read again what Adams wrote to me.

Not really expecting a reply, I had asked him a couple of questions. One of them was whether my guess that he admired and had been greatly influenced by Wodehouse was correct. Absolutely, he replied, and then he went on to discuss Wodehouse's work at some length. Later I was a bit embarrassed to learn that Adams had never been shy about admitting Wodehouse had profoundly influenced his writing. But while I must have been about the 307,379th person to pose that question to him, his reply was not only gracious, but quite lengthy, articulate, and funny. Vintage Adams, I was to learn. The man who dreamed up the befuddled Arthur Dent was on the internet long before the internet was cool, and he was an indefatigable correspondent. I was a mere raindrop in the vast sea of people Adams traded jokes and ideas with; he wrote to everyone.

So the movie (for which Adams wrote the screenplay ages ago) is in production, and I'm tickled that Stephen Fry is going to be our Guide. I believe this film is going to be wildly successful.

What a shame Adams didn't live to see this.

Run over to BBC News (which I quoted above) for a photo of Adams and a few more details about the upcoming film. Then check out the official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Website, where you can view a "teaser".


By the way, you may have noticed that I titled Tuesday's post Life, the Universe, and Everything. It was intended as a private joke, sort of a secret sign to my fellow H2G2 lovers. Also, I blogged about P. G. Wodehouse last week.