MovieChat Forums > The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1982) Discussion > Forty-two, et. al.

Forty-two, et. al.

posted 18 years ago by LeFoxEyes
4 replies | jump to latest

There's been a good deal of discussion about the answer to the ultimate question. I'd rather not beat a dead horse, but I recall that in "The Diaries of Adam and Eve" by Mark Twain there is a similar "creative" math answer. With Douglas Adams' proclivity towards paraphrasing other pieces of literature (the Queen's claim to believe in six impossible things before breakfast from "Alice in Wonderland" as the advertising tag-line for Milliway's, for example), I've wondered if forty-two wasn't "borrowed" from another source.

Any ideas? Comments? Abusive replys? And, please, go a little beyond reminding me what forty-two is in Base 13.

[–] FrizzKWest 18 years ago

On the DVD it says that they were trying to find what the funniest number was. Adams said that it was 42. I don't think it was barrowed.

____
Life is far too important a thing to ever talk seriously about it. - Oscar Wilde

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] sedriss-1 18 years ago

I remember seeing somewhere an interview with adams where he said that he got it from an old un-aired monty python skit.
He had seen the skit (or if he was involved in it.. dont remember), and when he wrote hitchhiker, he wanted the most harmless and boring number he could think of, so he thought back to the skit, and picked 42.

__________
Ahoy me proud beauty! Want to know why me Roger is so Jolly?

[–] Merc_2k 18 years ago

You might be thinking of the Ian Johnston interview (I've got a mp3 of it handy and I'm just bored enough to transcribe a bit, heh). Douglas Adams said he had been working as a "prop borrower" on one of John Cleese's video arts films and remembered some discussion over a funny number Cleese's bank teller character could have arrived at while adding up some figures. Adams wasn't sure he had remembered it correctly, but he felt it fit all the criteria he was looking for.