Douglas Adams has been quoted as saying that, for a film, Arthur Dent has to be British, but everyone else’s ethnicity could be whatever best suited the movie.
As for Trillian, I’ll just nitpick and point out that she did have a career in American television journalism in some alternate timestream of the last Hitchhikers’ book.
Actually, (in the book) Arthur met Zaphod at a fancy dress party with Zaphod’s 2nd head hiding under a birdcage. The 2nd head occasionally made parrot noises to keep everyone wondering.
From what I understand, the worst parts of the movie have to do with tacked on romances. Don’t see much evidence of that here, but if so… that’s sort of depressing. Adams didn’t write conventional romance plots for a reason: they’re boring as hell. Fenchurch and Thor’s girl is about as close as he gets, and neither of those are exactly… normal.
And that romance was awful, too.
Nothing plays. Oh well–guess I’ll have to catch it in a theater.
There is no book.
The TV series is only a nasty rumour.
There was a fantastic radio series and a c64 text adventure, as I recall. 
Actually, in “Mostly Harmless”, she was in New York trying to interview for a TV anchor position there – as it would be a good career move. (This was the alternate reality “Tricia McMillan”, rather than our “Trillian”).
She was a TV anchor in the U.K. She got her company to send her to New York, under the pretext of interviewing Gail Andrews (astrologer), but in reality, she was there to interview for a position in NY.
But she didn’t get the job, because she didn’t go back for her bag (the supposed lesson she learned when she – the alternate Tricia – went back for her bag and missed the chance to run off into outer space with Zaphod), which contained her contact lenses, without which she couldn’t read the script or autocue at the audition.
She did have a career in journalism with the Grebulons after that, though.
In her conversation with Gail Andrews, there was this:
So I think Tricia is British, although for a movie version, I don’t think it would matter too much for her.
Me, gosh darned it to heck!
If I can take a lightsaber and duel with my friend in the first row at Star Wars, I can carry a towel for this one. 
I thought it looked pretty badass. I could never visualize the Heart of Gold, but I like what they came up with. Likewise with Marvin. The Vogon demolition ships were pretty cool too. Did anyone else get an ID4 vibe from the way they moved into position?
And this Humma Kavula of whom you speak, would that be that guy who was mounted on a bunch of tiny metal legs from the chest down? 'Cause I was wondering who the hell that was supposed to be. I also wondered what was up with that scene where they were all getting smacked by a bunch of flyswatters. That struck me as odd.
It’s entirely possible that Adams tacked them on, although I don’t know if we’ll ever know that. Doesn’t mean it’ll be good, but hey.
When I saw the trailer last night, I realized I won’t be able to see it opening night (I’ll be in Denmark). If they hadn’t moved it up… whatever, I’ll still bring a towel.
Wait, the Ford joke was that he thought cars were the dominate species?
Ohhhh… I’ve read the series 3 times over and I never caught on to that. I always thought that to blend in and seem normal he chose two random words as a name, which turned out to be the name of a car. And being named after a car was bound to draw attention thus defeating the goal of choosing an inconspicous name.
The trailer looked fine to me. My expectations aren’t to high though. My first expereience with HHG was with the BBC miniseries. And as long as its better than that (which it looks to be) I’ll be happy.
Ohhh, I hope this is going to be good. D.A. deserves one last hurrah.
I wonder if there are/were any plans to bring the Dirk Gently stories to the screen? Just curious.
BTW, I will definitely have my towel there, you can bet.
counting down the days till May 5th
Well if the Hitchiker movie were to spark an interest in DNA’s Dirk Gently series, they’d first have to sell the darn books. I don’t know about you guy’s but only one book store around my parts sells The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, and it took me years to find Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency without restorting to ordering it online.
I don’t care too much for Gently myself, but I do hope that stores will sell, if only for a little while, the original radio show on CD. I really dislike buying things online.
IIRC, it wasn’t spelled out in the books. The books just said something like…wait, why paraphrase? I have it on my hard drive. Hang on…
That’s all it says in the book about his name.
I never picked up on that gag either. Ford Prefect is funny by itself, but that’s clever.
Really? I got both at the used bookstore here. Seems everytime I go in I see one or both.
I’m still not convinced by this interpretation. I thought he picked up some British magazines for research and figured Ford was a common surname, and that Prefect seems to be the most common name paired up with Ford.
Anyway, isn’t the Heart of Gold supposed to look like a sleek running shoe? And Marvin is supposed to look more sleek, I agree. But still a huge improvement over the Marvin in the TV series.
The film Marvin looks like Doraemon.
I had to turn off ZoneAlarm to get it to finally work.
The Ford Prefect joke was not just a joke that would go over the heads of Americans - - as Douglas realised once it got big there - - but also people like me who read the book for the first time over a decade after it was written - -
I haven’t got the book in front of me - - and I’m not sure where he says it - - but somewhere I read DNA saying something like this…
“Ford’s research lead him to pick Ford Prefect as an inconspicuous name ( as this is a make of car made only in England this joke went over the heads of Americans who initially thought it was a mispelling of Perfect )” - - that’s not exactly it - - but close enough…
When I first read HHGTG - - I read it as Perfect - - didn’t even notice it was Prefect until after I read the quote above - - after that I assumed it was something like what a Ford Escort would have been had he written it in the 80’s… or Ford Focus now…
As for the trailer - - I have only seen it really small - - so it’s kind of hard to make out some of the details - - but one thing… the Pub scene looks EXACTLY the way I imagine it from reading the book - - right down to the relative positions of Ford and Arthur… the windows behind them - -and I think there’s even a pillar in there which I imagined too… Excellent…
I have no problem with Moses Definitely (to give him his full name) playing Ford - - but when I read the books I always picture him as Robert Llewelyn (Kryten from Red Dwarf - without the make-up )