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Features
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The Hitchhiker Bloke
Martin Freeman headlines the most quintessentially British film made by a Hollywood studio since the heyday of Peter Sellers. And he’s not quite sure what to make of it yet.
Friday, April 29, 2005
By Ian Spelling
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MartinFreeman.com
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An unlikely leading man
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While critics, moviegoers and fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will surely spend eons debating the merits - or lack thereof - of Garth Jennings’ big screen adaptation, the ultimate irony is that the film, produced by that most American of studios, Disney may get crucified for sticking so bloody close to its cheeky, satirical and very British source material.
“I don’t know,” says lead actor Martin Freeman during a recent interview with FilmStew in New York if the film’s Britishness could work against at the box office in the States. “I honestly don’t know. It’s funny with America because either too much credit is given or not enough credit is given. Do you know what I mean?”
“So either it’s the most important place in the world, and if you haven’t made it there, then you’re a bum, or they’re all stupid,” he continues. “And none of that is true for me. This is also the country that gives us Larry Sanders and also the country that gives us Curb Your Enthusiasm and Spinal Tap and lots of things that are way cleverer than a lot of things British people do, frankly.”
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Jeff Vespa/Wireimage.com
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Quirky actor Sam Rockwell
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Freeman is quick to point out that other than the presence of his countryman Alan Rickman as the voice of sad sack robot Marvin, the central players of this Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are all quirky American actors - Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel and John Malkovich. And he for one is more than willing to give U.S. audiences the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their receptiveness to sci-fi with a British twist.
“We had people who really cared about it, people who wanted to tell the story as honestly and as truthfully as possible,” he insists. “And here I’m not using truth as some biblical [reference]. I mean, Hitchhiker’s is not the Old Testament. It shouldn’t matter THAT much that, ‘Oh hang on, there’s this syllable different from…’”
“It should be funny and it should be entertaining and engaging,” Freeman asserts. “And then, what can you do but hope that people agree? Some people will, and some people won’t.”
For the uninitiated, Hitchhiker’s Guide follows the travails of Arthur Dent (Freeman), an average bloke leading an average life. He’s battling to save his home from a wrecking crew when an intergalactic wrecking crew sets about destroying Earth in order to make way for its own space bypass. Fortunately, Arthur’s best mate, Ford (Def) beams him off the planet just before it goes ka-blooey.
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Ron Galella/Wireimage.com
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Deschanel at the Oscars
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Turns out that Ford’s an alien, and now they’re on a wacky, farcical trek through the galaxy, one filled with outlandish aliens, strange planets and bizarre spaceships. Joining Arthur and Ford on their adventures are Trillian (Deschanel), a lovely and brilliant young lady; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, swaggering President of the Universe, who’s currently dating Trillian, whom Arthur once, for a moment, fancied; and the aforementioned deeply depressed android Marvin (with Warwick Davis inside the costume).
Freeman, best known on this side of the pond for his roles in The Office and Love Actually, is as even-keeled as possible about the prospect of headlining an early summer Hollywood blockbuster. He admits he finds the publicity process a little overwhelming and repetitive, but overall is a trouper, answering everything honestly and with biting wit. Though he’s not terribly Arthur-esque, he’s quick to point out that the film’s Arthur is far more proactive than the figure in the Adams book.
“I think that in the way that in life we’re all lots of different things at different times, it doesn’t mean that someone who is essentially back of the car can’t eventually take control and vice versa,” suggests Freeman. “I kind of like the fact that he does get a bit more involved. Also, from the literal point of view, I was English – I still am in many ways – and Sam, Mos and Zooey are American.”
“I didn’t write the script. I didn’t direct the film. So I was just slotting in. But it kind of appealed to my taste, having seen so many things.”
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Jeffrey Mayer/Wireimage.com
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Another singer turned actor
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Freeman jokes that the lot of the British is synonymous with tea and sexual repression, while the typical American makes themselves out to be another Elvis, or at deserving of accolades on American Idol. “Like it or not, any young, cool American is James Dean, riding in on a f*cking Harley,” he exclaims. “So I liked the fact that at some point Arthur does come in and kind of take control. I thought that was all right.”
“[But] he doesn’t all of a sudden turn into James Bond; he doesn’t all of a sudden turn into Brad Pitt,” Freeman explains. “He’s still very Arthur and doing it in his slightly crap, flawed way. There’s a bit of an extra thrust there in the [film] between Arthur and Trillian, which, as I understand it, [author] Douglas [Adams, who died in 2001] knew had to happen in order to get a film made.”
“For it not to be a succession of just ideas or sketches or vignettes, but for it to actually have a story.”
Chief among the proponents of a story-led film versus an ideas-led book series was writer Karey Kirkpatrick, who argued that the former does not necessarily make people want to stay in a movie theatre for an hour and a half. It is a philosophy that Freeman wholeheartedly endorses as a way to bring the three decades old literary franchise into the new cinematic millennium.
“ I go back to the book and I can’t believe [the romance] isn’t there, because it seems very natural to me that it’d be there,” he says. “Now, Martin doesn’t suddenly turn into Cary Grant, you know what I mean? He’s still essentially who he is, but he’s in love with somebody and he goes for it.”
Conversation then drifts to another British import, The Office, and its conversion into an American primetime series on NBC. Freeman, who co-starred with Ricky Gervais in the original, says he doesn’t care one way or the other that the new version is currently on the bubble as far as its renewal chances are concerned.
“To be honest, I have no opinion of it because I genuinely have nothing invested in that,” he says. “Whether the American one is good or whether it’s dreadful doesn’t affect the legacy of the British one. It has no effect.”
| “As it happens I’ve seen the pilot of the American one,” adds the actor. “I’ve not seen the rest, but I was lent a tape of the pilot a while ago and I thought it was really good. I thought it was a show that if I’d come across it on the television I’d watch it the next week. I thought it was so close to ours I wondered who would get the American one that didn’t get the British one. It’s very faithful; the pilot was anyway.”
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Come Monday morning, Freeman jokes, he could either be a major star here in the States or leave people wondering, ‘Martin who?’ And if it is the former, the actor has no hesitation about the questions that will follow about his personal preferences in the ears of sex, drugs and rock and roll.
“I am asked that already,” he says, appearing somewhat amazed. “I’m not particularly scared about it because I know what I will and won’t answer. The great liberating thing about being alive is that you realize, ‘I don’t have to do anything.’ Do you know what I mean? It’s great.”
“‘You’re going to have to move to Hollywood;’ ‘No, I’m not.’ ‘But you’re going to have to answer these questions;’ ‘No, I’m not.’”
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