If you must fail, then do so with aplomb. It's a time of renewed interest in Douglas Adams and his work again, now that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the movie, is being released around the world; the reviews have been mixed (I haven't seen it myself). The producers should have been more careful: it's a text almost as sacred as JRR Tolkien's; and boy, that was playing with fire. But the fact that Tolkien's fans are more than merely zealous but were trained inthe same desert camps as fundamentalist terrorists ia outweighed by the fact that Douglas Adams passed away much more recently. I have a soft spot in my heart for him, incidentally; he was one of the few persons I know of (okay, the only one, come to think of it) who died of writer's block. (Yes, really; check out his biographies.) Another trait that endears him to me is that he, too, understood how dear the Mac Powerbook is to a creative individual. At the time of his death they were able to excavate basically an entire book's worth of unfinished stuff from his hard drive. There aren't many people who are able to produce something by not producing, if you know what I mean.
The ultimate triumh of creating something by not being able to create is Terry Gilliam's attempt to make a film of Don Quixote, starring Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis. It was Gilliam's dream project, but just about everything went wrong from day one; but he pushed on; and let's not stretch the Quixotic metaphor of his doing so too far. He finally gave up, but there was supposed to be a "Making of..." featurette (the kind they stick in the DVD version) which went on to become a kind of cult hit. It's by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe; and, honestly, reading between the lines and gleaning the sort of film that Gilliam was going to make, it seems only fitting that Lost in La Mancha came out and the film didn't, and I dare say the documentary is a lot funnier than what the film would have been. Productivity, I think, is overrated; as long as you're a genius, as Terry Gilliam and Douglas Adams are and were, you can produce even when you didn't.
But I'm going to dig up my copy of HHGG (as Hitchhiker's... is affectionately known) and listen to his original radio serialization before the film comes out. As someone who is in both industries I have a personal rule of never comparing the film to the book; I mean, I do, but never on the basis of faithfulness; one of the reasons I say this is because someone once made a god-awful film from one of my works without my permission; I decided not to sue: but it brought me to the rumination that if the film had been a runaway success I might have decided to. Then again, copyright law is is a bit murky here: an idea can be copyrighted; the expression of an idea can't. Anyway, my research in that area finally led me to the conclusion that anyone is welcome to make a film, kabuki opera, a monologue for five voices, or an installation piece, or whatever, from any of my works; just please have the courtesy to invite me to the opening, eh?
The collaboration that could've been but didn't happen was the Hitchhiker's Guide to La Mancha, and that work, which was was never produced, but in its own way was, is a work that definitely eases a lot of the pressure of everyone's back. Posterity, after all, occasionally is kind enough to judge you on what you didn't manage to do. So I'm going to open a chilled ginger ale and catch up on The West Wing, which is a lot more fun than sitting in front of my editing console.
www.douglasadams.com
The first inception of HHGG was on audio
2 comments:
I came across your blog as you're one of the six people, myself included, who said that 10,000 Maniacs were amongst their favourites. And then the Indigo Girls sealed it ... I had to take a quick look at your blog. And I really enjoyed reading it. I'm not so hot on the technological wizardry that is about these days, but I've got a friend who is a graphic designer who eats such things for breakfast, so I'll direct him to your spot.
I have a similar problem going to bed at night. I like to think of the line from the West Wing that says something like 'never fall in love with a genius, they never want to sleep' and this gives me a slightly pretentious consolation. And the 'Morning for the Living' latent with infinite possibilities was a lovely description.
You seem to be an editor. I like to write, but also take many by-ways before settling down to express myself, so I appreciated the idea of being creative in one's non-productiveness. Maybe blogs are a case in point. If so, I'm glad for it, and blogs like yours. Thanks.
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