SATURDAY NIGHT CENTREPIECE | WORLD PREMIERE
Author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, polymath Douglas Adams was a pioneer of science fiction, comedy, technology and environmental activism. Campaigning for endangered species and climate change, he was ahead of his time. Featuring interviews with family and friends including John Lloyd, Stephen Fry, Griff Rhys-Jones, Mary Allen and Jon Canter, Todd Austin’s documentary enters the mind and world of a true visionary, and shows us the power of ideas.
POST FILM DISCUSSION
Chair: Jon Canter is a scriptwriter, novelist and playwright who lives in Aldeburgh. In the 70s and 80s, he shared flats in Holloway and Highbury with Douglas, an experience he explored in a Radio 4 programme I Was Douglas Adams’ Flatmate, which is available on BBC Sounds. He is a Trustee of Aldeburgh Cinema.
Director Todd Austin is a BAFTA and Royal Television Society award winning filmmaker and co-founder of Bohemia, an independent British production company that specialises in documentary films.
Todd has directed a number of highly acclaimed documentaries including, The Festival That Rocked the World, a film that marked the 50th anniversary of the legendary Woodstock festival. His other films include: Woody Guthrie: Three Chords and the Truth and John Lee Hooker: The Boogie Man
Mary Allen
Mary met Douglas at Cambridge where she acted in many of the sketches he wrote for the Footlights. They shared flats in London and during one memorable holiday in Corfu she listened to him read out the opening ten thousand words of the first Hitchhiker book about thirty times…
John Lloyd was at university with Douglas Adams. Afterwards, they became close friends, sharing a flat and writing jokes in the evenings. When Douglas got stuck on the original radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, John helped him finish the last two episodes, and was then unceremoniously fired. He claims it was the best thing that ever happened to him because he went on to produce Not The Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder, and QI, and present 17 series of Radio 4’s The Museum of Curiosity. John and Douglas patched it up pretty quickly and wrote The Meaning of Liff. Curiously, though John’s name has equal billing on the cover, people rarely notice it…
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