Godzilla week

Several years ago I interviewed Godzilla. That link just linked, that’s the interview, which I re-posted a half-a-year ago or so. I hope you’ll read the whole interview so that you can get a good idea of what makes the Big Guy tick before going to the theater to see him act. I found him incredibly candid and much more open than his reputation suggests. He could get prickly, but he’s been through a lot Here’s a short excerpt from the interview:

Whether or not deserved, you mentioned you prima donna reputation. Where do you think that comes from.

(Sighs) Oh, a number of things. Most of them should be pretty obvious. I win all my fights. Hey, it’s in the script, you know? Plus a lot of the actors I’ve worked with over the years, God bless them all, seemed to have this little thing in the back of their head where it was, you know, real. So they’re like thinking if they can beat me, and I mean really upstage me, in a fight scene, then they’ll be the next Godzilla. I blame The Method.

You mean “method acting?”

Yeh. I mean I’m not totally dismissing The Method, I’m just saying that there’s getting into a fight, and there’s getting into a fight, and for too many it was the latter. You know that King Kong broke one of my teeth, no, it was two of my teeth, shoving a tree, a freaking ginormous-ass tree down my throat when we did our thing? That was not in the script. I came this close to walking, but we only had a few more days of shooting left and he got all weepy and apologetic afterwards, so I let it go. Anyway, The Method kind of takes egos and ramps them up a few notches. Seems to me. But that’s the thing, I’m the one who gets walloped on and yet I’m the “prima donna.”

Well, you did hurt a lot, how many thousands? during your career.

Hey, nobody got hurt that didn’t get in my way first. Let’s get that straight.

So what did you think about the American-made 1998 Godzilla, the one staring Mathew Broderick?

If you think you’re going to get a rise out of me, you’re wrong. I thought it was a joke. Sure, I didn’t and don’t appreciate them using my name. And my lawyers won’t let me talk about all that. But I know who I am and everybody who inflicted that movie upon themselves knew that that wasn’t Godzilla. I tried to watch it. Hand to God, I tried. But I couldn’t sit through it. Couldn’t decide if that was CGI or Adam Sandler in a rubber suit. Either way it sucked.