h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had heard something about this movie, but didn't know what it was really about. After reading your "pieces of the witch" page, I'm now really interested in seeing the movie. It was tempting to look at your other Blair Witch pages, but I'll wait......

The directors themselves have revealed certain "truths" about this film, but some individuals are noticably upset when they hear certain things prior to seeing the movie. Personally, I don't think it really should hinder one's appreciation for the film itself. Knowing the truth didn't affect my enjoyment of it. It's a very dicey situation to be in. I've done other work here in h2g2.com discussing "spoilers." You might want to check out the basic concept of spoilers while you wait to be able to see the movie. I understand Blair Witch won't hit Europe until later this year, but it plays in theaters throughout the country on July 30th.

Spoilers discussion
(in general. No Blair Witch info at the following URL)
http://www.h2g2.com/A84232

Ha! The spoilers page was great. I sent you a few. Think I'll put a link up to it as well....

Ok, I finally saw Blair Witch. Wow. I'll go post some thoughts one one of your secondary pages, so as not to give anything away......

Feel free to speak your mind! I mean with Heather Donahue making appearances on Jay Leno, Craig Kilborn and MTV, you'd have to be a hermit in the woods not to know the truth by now. LOL!

It's still a great movie though isn't it? Even after you learn it's not true. In fact it's a happy ending. A horror movie with a happy ending. "And then Heather and Joshua and Michael left that basement and moved to Hollywood and they lived happily ever after."

Anyone who's read this far in these pages has seen all the links and everything has already seen the film. I hope. If not, they have no place to gripe at this point.

All I know is that when I found out the truth, which was AFTER I saw the movie, I was really disappointed. It took the excitement out of it. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED the movie, and I thought it was a good scare. My husband was downright irritated when I told him the truth. We were all taken in by the hype.

Now, I have a young coworker teasing me because I believed the legend, or at least part of it, was true. I told him I will pay him back. I think I'm going to make some stick figures and leave them on his desk? Any other suggestions?

Cover his stuff in weird goo. Put a rock pile in his chair. Contrive to lock him in the building at night with a tape of children laughing and screaming playing.

Sorry to hear that learning the truth ruined it for you. It only made the film better for me because it's like looking under the hood of a car and marvelling at the construction... Okay. I have no idea what that's like cuz I hate cars. It's uhm... Like seeing a water fountain and then finding out how plumbing works.. Uhm.. maybe that wasn't a good example either.

Personally I'm a movie fanatic, and unlike some movies, this one shows you how it was constructed. If you look at enough of the interviews and stuff out there you can piece together what they did to make this film work. It's not like hearing about how much money was put into the building of a robotic shark for that jaws wanna be movie that also hit the theaters in america this summer. The behind the scenes part of this film is as much a part of the story to me as the fictitious tale they told. There's just so much to like about this film even after you peer inside and see the engine.

I finally saw TBWP on 29th October, its official UK release date. No-one in this country could have avoided finding out it wasn't a true story as all the usual 'preview' bores had used their usual positions in the TV, press etc. to point this out. Still, I think it's a pretty powerful movie. I sat in a cinema with an audience of teenagers who were laughing all the way through it, until about twenty minutes before the end when Heather unwraps the 'present'.
Then this kind of hush descended and everyone shut up. This was remarkable because the whole point of so many kid's nights out at the cinema is to sit taking the piss out of a film and chatting.

In the wider world this is a wake up call to all the studio moguls who are happy to chop up movies due to 'test' screenings or pay a hundred times more for CGI effects and actor salaries than for a decent script. It could be this generation's 'Easy Rider'. It acknowledges the power that independents can have these days.

Having said that, I wonder if TV studios are pooping themselves too. All this time they've had the means to make drama and TV films with maybe a hundred times the budget of TBWP and what do we usually get - candy.

I did a degree course with a large element of film and video work within it. Everyone was being told it was pretty unrealistic to think about making films, you have to go out there and do local TV work or something, any crap until you get a break. But TBWP could have been made by any of the students for a final year project. Why didn't we? Because we didn't have the balls? maybe. A bigger part of it was that there were no precedents that something on a low budget could make it. Bottom of the bill at the Sundance festival was as high as you could go and you'd have to spend more time licking ass than making the movie. Until now.
TBWP is gonna do for young film-makers what The Sex Pistols did for music. This is Punk cinema. Cut out all the 'Titanic' and 'Phantom Menace' gloss and pare it down to the three-chord fury of a story idea, some people and some cameras. There will be a hell of a lot of copyist crud, but there will be beauty. And cheap beauty at that.

I believe TBWP may be flawed, its premise may have been ruined by overhyping, but it has a visceral energy I haven't felt since I saw "Man Bites Dog". If you've got shares in a film studio I'd sell them now and put your money into camcorders. It's great to see someone put Art back in film and now I care even less that Bond is back.
-TWF

It's the trend not only of movie-making, but everything. And it's both exciting and frightening at the same time.

Less than half a decade ago, people began freaking out because anyone who wanted to could become a publisher for one tenth the cost of major magazine or newspaper companies. LESS even. All you needed was a computer with a printer, some word processor software, maybe some clipart graphics, and access to a QuickCopy printing place. Maybe you'd have to shell out fifty bucks for the paper.

Now, with the increasing popularity of MP3 files and other media, people can be not only home-based publishers, but also musicians and record companies. It's becoming almost as easy to make one's own CD today as it was to start one's own fanzine about Douglas Adams five years ago.

And the next step is video. It's an amazing time to be alive. A technological revolution. Those who can't adapt to the changing times will crumble to dust.

Our grandchildren might be asking us, "What was Hollywood?"

The scariest thing about that to my mind is that it's yet another area where marketing and promotion becomes the predominant factor. If 'prospective audience' X doesn't know about 'creator' Y's product then it takes 'marketeer' Z to tell X all about it. Which would be all well and good if we didn't know that Z would sell their own mother to market their new home-style apple pie to the masses

It looks like the power of 'hype' will be even bigger in the next Millennium. My biggest wish for next year is that the Millennium Bug really does happen and we spend a year having to care more about the world on our own doorstep rather than what colour clothes to wear 'this season'.

The 'channel guide' mechanisms for the latest thousands-of-channels digital TV technology is being put forward as being able to be programmed to understand our 'tastes' and extrapolate from there to provide us with 'what we want'.
What amazes me about that is that:-
(a) people are buying in to a myth that the choices presented to us will be what they really want to see and not what the investors want them to see
,and,
(b) my 'taste' in stuff (like most people's) tends to be evolutionary. It worries me that if my TV knew I liked films about pirates when I was five, I'd still be watching mainly pirate-oriented stuff today.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a *total* cynic. But I do sometimes wish that when God or whatever was handing out the blinkers to all and sundry that I got a pair.

Cheers Zach,

Keep railing - even when I don't agree with you (50/50 btw) it cheers me up to know there's intelligent life out there. And soon wearing a funky new T-shirt too...which will be helping to promote...?!? it doesn't bloody end does it?
Here's to the dust we will all become

Now I must write out 1000 times, "For the rest of the day I *will* be happy".

- TWF

I have to agree with TWF that it was a tremendous success for marketing. I've just seen Blair Witch not more than two hours ago, and it was the most boring two hours I've ever spent (and I've done court reporting!) I'm pretty sure the rest of the theatre was in agreement with me. ("Ten bucks!" someone behind me complained)

I actually found the prerequisite television mockumentary more interesting to watch, not to mention easier on the eyes.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea and the concept. There's a rich heritage of spooky ghost stories and mystery in New England, but Blair Witch just didn't do it for me. For me the film was about three idiots from the city who get lost camping and deserve everything that's coming to them.

It might have been just that bit more spookier if they'd managed to catch a glimpse, a single, fuzzy, blurred shot of whatever-it-was on film. The it would have been more in the vein of "In Search Of..." docos. They always made me think "F@@k, well maybe there is something supernatural out there...". They had a supernatural premise but there was nothing here that transcended the everyday or mundane, and certainly nothing that made me think "F@@k, well maybe there is a Blair witch out there..."

Remember, killers with strange religious beliefs (pagan or otherwise) are VERY much part of the real world.