Evan's+Duo+Script

Below is the work in progress script for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have posted this so that my partner (that means you, Joseph) can get any updates to the script. And there will be a fair amount, because quite frankly this is the first time I've ever compiled a script and I'm not even sure if this is long enough yet. Hello, its Joey. Today i'm going to the library and I can get a copy of hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy if you need help with the script. It is Evan again. The script is no completed in all its (half-baked) glory, so anyone involved should print out the full edition (that means you, Joseph). It is somewhat lengthy, so if necessary we can cut out individual scenes later on. **__ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy __** A novel by Douglas Adams Script compiled by Evan Stewart This script is a duo interpretation, and thusly contains two actors, who for all intents and purposes in this script shall be known as Actor A and Actor B. For every line of dialogue, the actor shall be noted, along with the character he/she is playing (e.g. “A, Arthur”). Positions and gestures will be written throughout the script in italics. Scenes throughout the script shall be separated by three bold asterisks (its not a swear word, no) and labeled. If this script ends up being to lengthy, we can cut out individual scenes to shorten it.

// Both actors stand straight, facing the audience. // // Actors hold same pose. This section introduces the book. // // Both actors step apart slightly farther. // // Actor A turns away from Actor B and slumps slightly. // // Actor B turns away from Actor A, stands up straight with hands on hips. // // There is a pause here, in which both actors appear to be agitated. // // After a short pause, both actors stand straight and face the audience. // // Actor A turns away from Actor B and slumps slightly; Actor B turns away from Actor A and pretends to place his hand in his pocket. // // Actor B pretends to walk away, while Actor A assumes the part of Prosser. // // Actor A takes the part of Arthur again. // // Actor B makes a shushing noise, and Actor A takes the part of Prosser again. // // Actor B turns slightly as if addressing someone else. // // Actor A takes the part of Arthur again and pretends to get up. Actor B crosses his arms. // // Actor A takes the part of Prosser again and pretends to lie down. // // Actor A takes the part of Arthur again. Both actors pretend to walk. There is a slight pause before the next line of dialogue. // // Actor A stands and pretends to wipe off a glass, Actor B pretends to walk up to him. // // Actor A stops and glances away from his pretend glass. He pretends to push his glasses up. // // Actor A pauses, Actor B does not respond. // // Actor A pretends to place something on an imaginary counter. // // Actor B also places something on the counter. // // Actor A takes the role of Arthur again. He looks around nervously. // // There is a short pause. // // Actor A shrugs. // // There is a pause. // // Actor B makes an impatient clicking noise with his tongue. // // Actor A pretends to choke and leap up. // // Actor A looks around frantically. // // Actor A pretends to run and wave his arms. // // Actor B turns away. // // Actor A pretends to set something on the counter after a pause. // // Actor B places something on the counter. Actor A pauses for a time. // // Actor B waves and begins to run. Actor A pauses again, then clears his throat. // // Actor A pretends to be running again. // // Actor B pretends to be running again. // // Actor A trips and falls, twisting over backwards so that he is looking upwards. He then points to the sky. // // A short pause. // // A short pause. // // Another short pause. // // Yet another short pause. //
 * ***Introduction **
 * A, Narrator: ** Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.
 * B, Narrator: ** Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
 * A, Narrator: ** This planet has-or rather had-a problem, which is this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
 * B, Narrator: ** And so he problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
 * A, Narrator: ** And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place.
 * B, Narrator: ** This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
 * A, Narrator: ** Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.
 * B, Narrator: ** This is not her story.
 * A, Narrator: ** But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.
 * B, Narrator: ** It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy-not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.
 * A, Narrator: ** Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
 * B, Narrator: ** Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one. In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already replaced the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal-
 * A, Narrator: ** -Or at least wildly inaccurate-
 * B, Narrator: ** -It scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
 * A, Narrator: ** First, it is slightly cheaper-
 * B, Narrator: ** -And second, it has the words “DON’T PANIC” inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
 * A, Narrator: ** But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday-
 * B, Narrator: ** -The story of its extraordinary consequences-
 * A, Narrator: ** -And the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertwined with this remarkable book begins very simply.
 * B, Narrator: ** It begins with a house.
 * ***Title **
 * A: ** You may think you’ve had bad days.
 * B: ** Really, really, awful days.
 * A: ** And some of them might have been Thursdays, too.
 * B: ** But mostly likely, your bad days never involved the end of the world.
 * A: ** Douglas Adam’s __The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy__, tells about the worst Thursday ever,
 * B: - ** it’s consequences,
 * A: ** -it’s survivors,
 * B: ** -and a lot of other strange things which may or may not be relevant in any way.
 * ***”This man wants to knock my house down!” **
 * B, Narrator: ** The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village. Not a remarkable house by any means-it was about thirty years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye.
 * A, Narrator: ** The only person for whom the house was any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in.
 * B, Narrator: ** On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the lane was wet and muddy, but the Thursday morning sun was bright and clear is it shone on Arthur Dent’s house for what was to be the last time.
 * A, Narrator: ** It hadn’t properly registered yet with Arthur that the council wanted to knock it down and build a bypass instead.
 * B, Narrator: ** Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life from descended from an ape. Curiously enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan. He was by no means a great warrior; in fact, he was a nervous, worried man. Today he was particularly nervous and worried because something had gone seriously wrong with his job, which was to see that Arthur Dent’s house got cleared out of the way before the day was out.
 * B, Prosser: ** Come off it, Mr. Dent. You can’t win, you know. You can’t lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely.
 * A, Arthur: ** I’m game. We’ll see who rusts first.
 * B, Prosser: ** I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it. This bypass has got to be built and it’s going to be built!
 * A, Arthur: ** First I’ve heard of it. Why’s it got to be built?
 * B, Prosser: ** What do you mean, why’s it got to be built? It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses. You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know.
 * A, Arthur: ** Appropriate time? Appropriate time? The first I knew about was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no, he’d come to demolish the house. He didn’t tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.
 * B, Prosser: ** But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.
 * A, Arthur: ** Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.
 * B, Prosser: ** But the plans were on display…
 * A, Arthur: ** On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.
 * B, Prosser: ** That’s the display department.
 * A, Arthur: ** With a flashlight.
 * B, Prosser: ** Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.
 * A, Arthur: ** So had the stairs.
 * B, Prosser: ** But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?
 * A, Arthur: ** Yes, yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”.
 * B, Prosser: ** It’s not as if it’s a particularly nice house.
 * A, Arthur: ** I’m sorry, but I happen to like it.
 * B, Prosser: ** You’ll like the bypass.
 * A, Arthur: ** Oh, shut up. Shut up and go away and take your bloody bypass with you. You haven’t got a leg to stand on and you know it.
 * B, Prosser: ** Mr. Dent.
 * A, Arthur: ** Hello? Yes?
 * B Prosser: ** Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?
 * A, Arthur: ** How much?
 * B, Prosser: ** None at all.
 * ***Ford Prefect **
 * A, Narrator: ** By a curious coincidence, “None at all” is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelguese and not from Guildford as he usually claimed.
 * B, Narrator: ** Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.
 * A, Narrator: ** This friend of his had first arrived on the planet Earth some fifteen Earth years previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself into Earth society-with, it must be said, some success.
 * B, Narrator: ** He had made one careless blunder, though, because he had skimped a bit on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered had led him to choose the name “Ford Prefect” as being nicely inconspicuous.
 * A, Narrator: ** He struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an eccentric, but a harmless one, though not without some oddish habits.
 * B, Narrator: ** Sometimes he would get seized up with oddly distracted moods and stare into the sky as if hypnotized until someone asked him what he was doing.
 * A, Narrator: ** Then he would start guiltily for a moment, relax, and grin.
 * B, Narrator: ** “Oh, just looking for flying saucers,” he would joke, and everyone would laugh and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was looking for.
 * A, Narrator: ** “Green ones!” he would reply with a wicked grin, and then laugh wildly for a moment.
 * B, Narrator: ** The reason he said green was that green was the traditional space livery of the Betelgeuse trading scouts.
 * A, Narrator: ** Ford Prefect was desperate that any flying saucer at all would arrive soon because fifteen years was a long time to get stranded anywhere, particularly somewhere as mind-bogglingly dull as the Earth.
 * B, Narrator: ** Ford wished that a flying saucer would arrive soon because he knew how to flag flying saucers down and get lifts from them. He knew how to see the Marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairian dollars a day.
 * A, Narrator: ** In fact, Ford Prefect was a roving researcher for that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
 * B, Ford: ** Hello Arthur.
 * A, Arthur: ** Ford! Hello, how are you?
 * B, Ford: ** Fine. Look, are you busy?
 * A, Arthur: ** Am I busy? Well, I’ve just all these bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they’ll knock my house down if I don’t, but other than that… Well, no, not especially. Why?
 * B, Ford: ** Good, is there anywhere we can talk?
 * A, Arthur: ** What?
 * B, Ford: ** We’ve got to talk.
 * A, Arthur: ** Fine. Talk.
 * B, Ford: ** And drink. It’s vitally important that we talk and drink. Now. We’ll go to the pub in the village.
 * A, Arthur: ** Look, don’t you understand? That man wants to knock my house down!
 * B, Ford: ** Well, he can do it while you’re away, can’t he?
 * A, Arthur: ** But I don’t want him to!
 * B, Ford: ** Ah.
 * A, Arthur: ** Look, what’s the matter with you, Ford?
 * B, Ford: ** Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Listen to me-I’ve got to tell you the most important thing you’ve ever heard. I’ve got to tell you now, and I’ve got to tell you in the saloon bar of the Horse and Groom.
 * A, Arthur: ** But why?
 * B, Ford: ** Because you’re going to need a very stiff drink.
 * A, Arthur: ** But what about my house…?
 * B, Ford: ** He wants to knock your house down?
 * A, Arthur: ** Yes, he wants to build…
 * B, Ford: ** But he can’t because you’re lying in front of his bulldozer?
 * A, Arthur: ** Yes, and…
 * B, Ford: ** I’m sure we can come to some arrangement. Excuse me!
 * A, Prosser: ** Yes? Hello? Has Mr. Dent come to his senses yet?
 * B, Ford: ** Can we for the moment assume that he hasn’t?
 * A, Prosser: ** Well?
 * B, Ford: ** And can we also assume that he’s going to be staying here all day?
 * A, Prosser: ** So?
 * B, Ford: ** So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing nothing?
 * A, Prosser: ** Could be, could be…
 * B, Ford: ** Well, if you’re resigned to doing that anyway, you don’t actually need him to lie here all the time, do you?
 * A, Prosser: ** What?
 * B, Ford: ** You don’t actually need him here.
 * A, Prosser: ** Well, no, not as such… Not exactly need…
 * B, Ford: ** So if you would just like to take it as read that he’s actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub for half an hour. How does that sound?
 * A, Prosser: ** That sounds perfectly reasonable…
 * B, Ford: ** And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on we can always cover for you in return.
 * A, Prosser: ** Thank you very much. Thank you very much, yes, that’s very kind…
 * B, Ford: ** So, if you would just like to come over here and lie down…
 * A, Prosser: ** What?
 * B, Ford: ** Ah, I’m sorry. Perhaps I hadn’t made myself fully clear. Somebody’s got to lie in front of the bulldozers, haven’t they? Or there won’t be anything to stop them driving into Mr. Dent’s house, will there?
 * A, Prosser: ** What?
 * B, Ford: ** It’s very simple. My client, Mr. Dent, says that he will stop lying here in the mud on the sole condition that you come and take over for him.
 * A, Arthur: ** What are you talking about?
 * A, Prosser: ** You want me to come and lie there…
 * B, Ford: ** Yes.
 * A, Prosser: ** In front of the bulldozer.
 * B, Ford: ** Yes.
 * A, Prosser: ** Instead of Mr. Dent.
 * B, Ford: ** Yes.
 * A, Prosser: ** In the mud.
 * B, Ford: ** In, as you say, the mud.
 * A, Prosser: ** In return for which you will take Mr. Dent with you down to the pub?
 * B, Ford: ** That’s it. That’s exactly it.
 * A, Prosser: ** Promise?
 * B, Ford: ** Promise.
 * B, Ford: ** Come on. Get up and let the man lie down.
 * B, Ford: ** And no sneaky knocking Mr. Dent’s house down while he’s away, all right?
 * A, Prosser: ** The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.
 * A, Arthur: ** But can we trust him?
 * B, Ford: ** Myself, I’d trust him to the end of the Earth.
 * A, Arthur: ** Oh yes. And how far’s that?
 * B, Ford: ** About twelve minutes away. Come on. I need a drink.
 * ***Apocalypse at the Horse and Groom **
 * B, Ford: ** Six pints of bitter. And quickly please, the world’s about to end.
 * A, Bartender: ** Oh, yes? Nice weather for it.
 * A, Bartender: ** Going to watch the match this afternoon then?
 * B, Ford: ** No, no point.
 * A, Bartender: ** What’s that, foregone conclusion then, you reckon, sir? Arsenal without a chance?
 * B, Ford: ** No no, it’s just that the world’s about to end.
 * A, Bartender: ** Oh yes, sir, so you said. Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did.
 * B, Ford: ** No, not really.
 * A, Bartender: ** There you are, sir, six pints.
 * B, Ford: ** Keep the change.
 * A, Bartender: ** From a fiver? Thank you, sir.
 * B, Ford: ** You’ve got ten minutes left to spend it.
 * A, Arthur: ** Ford, would you please tell me what the heck is going on?
 * B, Ford: ** Drink up. You’ve got three pints to get through.
 * A, Arthur: ** Three pints? At lunchtime?
 * B, Ford: ** Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
 * A, Arthur: ** Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader’s Digest. They’ve got a page for people like you.
 * B, Ford: ** Drink up.
 * A, Arthur: ** Why three pints all of a sudden?
 * B, Ford: ** Muscle relaxant, you’ll need it.
 * A, Arthur: ** Muscle relaxant?
 * B, Ford: ** Muscle relaxant.
 * A, Arthur: ** Did I do anything wrong today, or has the world always been like this and I’ve been too wrapped up in myself to notice?
 * B, Ford: ** All right, I’ll try to explain. How long have we known each other?
 * A, Arthur: ** How long? Er, about five years, maybe six. Most of it seemed to make some kind of sense at the time.
 * B, Ford: ** All right. How would you react if I said that I’m not really from Guildford at all, but a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?
 * A, Arthur: ** I don’t know. Why? Do you think it’s the sort of thing you’re likely to say?
 * B, Ford: ** Drink up. The world’s about to end.
 * A, Arthur: ** This must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
 * ***Vogons **
 * A, Narrator: ** On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet.
 * B, Narrator: ** Several somethings, in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slab like somethings, huge as office blocks, silent as birds.
 * A, Narrator: ** They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic rays from the star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing.
 * B, Narrator: ** The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious to their presence, which was exactly how they wanted it for the moment.
 * A, Narrator: ** The yellow something went unnoticed at Goonhilly,
 * B, Narrator: ** -they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip,
 * A, Narrator: ** -Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them, which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they’d been looking for all these years.
 * B, Narrator: ** The only place they registered at all was on a small black device called a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic, which winked quietly to itself.
 * ***Vandals and Home-Wreckers **
 * A, Narrator: ** It nestled in the darkness inside a leather satchel which Ford Prefect habitually wore slung around his neck.
 * B, Ford: ** You’ve got a towel with you?
 * A, Arthur: ** Why? What, no… Should I have?
 * B, Ford: ** Drink up.
 * B, Narrator: ** At that moment, the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside filtered through the low mummer of the pub.
 * A, Arthur: ** What’s that?
 * B, Ford: ** Don’t worry. They haven’t started yet.
 * A, Arthur: ** Thank goodness for that.
 * B, Ford: ** It’s probably just your house being knocked down.
 * A, Arthur: ** What?
 * A, Arthur: ** My god, they are! They’re knocking my house down. What the heck am I doing in this pub, Ford?
 * B, Ford: ** It hardly makes any difference at this stage. Let them have their fun.
 * A, Arthur: ** Fun? Fun! Curse their fun!
 * A, Arthur: ** Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers! You half-crazed Visigoths, stop, will you!
 * B, Ford: ** Four packets of peanuts, please.
 * A, Bartender: ** There you are, sir. Twenty-eight pence if you’d be so kind.
 * A, Bartender: ** Are you serious, sir? You think the world’s going to end?
 * B, Ford: ** Yes.
 * A, Bartender: ** But, this afternoon.
 * B, Ford: ** Yes. In less than two minutes, I would estimate.
 * A, Bartender: ** Is there anything we can do about it, then?
 * B, Ford: ** No, nothing. Excuse me, I’ve got to go.
 * A, Bartender: ** Last orders, please.
 * ***Apocalypse **
 * B, Narrator: ** The huge yellow machines began to downward and move faster.
 * A, Narrator: ** Ford knew they were there. This wasn’t the way he wanted it.
 * A, Arthur: ** You barbarians! I’ll sue the council for every penny it’s got. I’ll have you hung, drawn, and quartered! And whipped! And boiled… until… until… Until you’ve had enough!
 * A, Arthur: ** And then I will do it again! And when I’ve finished, I will take all the little bits, and I will //jump// on them! And I will carry on jumping on them until I get blisters, or I can think of anything more unpleasant to do, and then…
 * A, Arthur: ** What the heck’s that?
 * B, Narrator: ** Whatever it was raced across the sky in its monstrous yellowness, toe the sky apart with mind boggling noise, and leaped off into the distance, leaving the gaping air to shut behind it with a bang that drove your ears six feet into your skull.
 * A, Narrator: ** Another followed and did exactly the same thing, only louder.
 * B, Narrator: ** Only one man stood and watched the sky, stood with terrible sadness in his eyes and rubber bungs in his ears.
 * A, Narrator: ** He knew exactly what was happening, and had known ever since his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic had started winking in the dead of night beside his pillow and wakened him with a start.
 * B, Narrator: ** It was what he had been waiting for all these years, but when he had deciphered the signal pattern sitting alone in his small, dark room, a coldness had gripped him and squeezed his heart.
 * A, Narrator: ** Of all the races in all of the Galaxy who could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, didn’t it just have to be the Vogons.
 * B, Narrator: ** Still, he knew what he had to do. Everything was ready. Everything was prepared.
 * A, Narrator: ** He knew where his towel was.
 * A, Narrator: ** A sudden silence hit the Earth. If anything it was worse than the noise. For a while, nothing happened.
 * B, Narrator: ** Then there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of ambient sound.
 * A, Narrator: ** Before the Earth passed away, it was going t be treated to the very ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address system ever built. But there was no concert, no fanfare, just a simple message.
 * B, Jeltz: ** People of Earth, your attention please. This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace planning council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.
 * B, Jeltz: ** There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning chats and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge a formal complaint, and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.
 * B, Jeltz: ** What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light-years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.
 * B, Jeltz: ** I don’t know. Apathetic bloody planet, I’ve no sympathy at all.
 * A, Narrator: ** The PA fell silent, and its echo drifted off across the land.
 * B, Narrator: ** There was a terrible ghastly silence.
 * A, Narrator: ** There was a terrible ghastly noise.
 * B, Narrator: ** There was a terrible ghastly silence.
 * A, Narrator: ** The Vogon Constructor Fleet coasted away into the inky starry void.
 * FIN. **