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You’re listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I’m Eric Molinsky.

When I was a kid, I used to watch something called the Creature Double Feature on Channel 56 every weekend afternoon. They were black and white monster movies from the ‘50s. The funny thing is, I didn’t really like them, but there was nothing else to watch in those days. The ones that used to freak me out the most were the movies about giant insects like “Them.”

CLIP: THEM

Usually on this show, I delve into genres that mean a lot to me. But I’m equally fascinated by the stuff that other people obsessed over. It adds another layer of mystery for me – like what is the cult following about? And in this case, I’m not talking about giant insects or the 50-foot woman or . There’s only one monster that matters.

CLIP:

DS: It was on Ch. 9, which is a local station in NY tri-state area, and my brother had been watching it, as with all things because I looked up to him, I started watching it, and it was like a real living dinosaur, which I also loved because I was 4 by the way who could shoot fire, I’m 43 and my feelings are still strong about this, who shot fire and destroy cities it was the best thing of all time.

That’s my friend Dave Serchuck, who’s a journalist in Louisville. Dave was so excited to talk about Godzilla, he called me hours before our interview was scheduled because he couldn't wait!

DS: Godzilla is exciting for children because Godzilla doesn’t need impulse control, Godzilla has the essence of a massive toddler inside him, if Godzilla gets pissed off at something or better yet someone or giant animal or being, Godzilla acts and attacks back and that is extremely gratifying.

That makes sense: Godzilla is like a giant toddler, knocking over buildings in a massive temper tantrum. And he’s not human, so it’s okay.

DS: He’s an animal and the more they try to spell out why Godzilla does what he does, and the more they try to make it clear what Godzilla’s agenda is, the worse the movies 2 are, but in the beginning, yeah Godzilla is mysterious, he comes from sea and he goes back to the sea –somehow they can’t ever track him, he comes and goes when he does, he’s a force of nature and I don’t think Godzilla even knows why he does what he does.

And one more thing:

DS: The second I hear it, I’m 5 years old again, it doesn’t matter how many times I hear it, because in a given Godzilla movie, you’re going go hear it a lot -- I love it, every single time.

It sounds like the thing you love is simplicity, there’s no cannon, you don’t have to watch Godzilla and then go watch spin off movies of other main characters, if you haven’t watched, don’t know what’s going on, there’s purity and simplicity to him.

DS: There is, you don’t have to watch them in order. It’s a simple thing. There’s a problem and Godzilla either is the problem or he solves problem.

And that’s where Godzilla becomes intriguing because we created him. He’s our problem – our collective guilt for building a nuclear bomb, or trashing the environment.

DS: Yeah, Godzilla is like if you’re feeling sadistic and down on humanity on a given day, he’s there to make you feel, well we had it coming! And that’s the way a lot of us who care about thee issues feel, you know?

But I think ultimate appeal of Godzilla is the suit itself. The costume walks a fine line that separates humans and animals.

The funny thing is, an actor can stand upright in a Godzilla suit because his design reflect how people thought a T-Rex would move in the 1950s, before scientists discovered that dinosaurs walked with their heads forward and their tails balancing in the back.

DS: Godzilla is a complete bastardization of three dinosaurs, he’s like a stegosaurus backed T-Rex with some weird green raison skin somewhat like a Brontosaurus had, so Godzilla is like the ultimate fantasy dinosaur.

There’s a video on YouTube of Haruo Nakajima, the actor who played Godzilla in the old films, trying on the Godzilla suit one last time, years 3 after he retired. It’s fascinating to watch him rediscover that inner monster through pure movement.

The only thing I liked about the 2014 Godzilla movie was that the digital Godzilla walked on two feet like there a person was inside him. He wasn’t a Jurassic Park-type dinosaur, like in the 1997 Godzilla film.

JF: If you were back in 1954, those guys in Japan, wanted to do clamation saw King Kong and they were like oh my gosh, this is the most amazing thing ever, they tried but they couldn’t it wasn’t practical, they couldn’t do it correctly, it didn’t work, the next best thing is let’s put a guy in a suit, if they had access to CG back then, absolutely they would’ve done that, they would’ve used the best possible method at that time that was available to them.

Jim Fazar. Is part of a subculture of fans that make Godzilla suits from scratch. His introduction to the big guy was almost identical to Dave Serchuck and me. Jim was watching UHF stations as a kid with his older brother, Ron.

RF: Things changed for us getting into the late ‘70s, our parents split up, and in some ways had more latitude to do what we wanted to do, and I think that’s when I pulled Jimmy into Godzilla.

Jim and Ron grew up in Rochester, NY.

RF: I was falling in love with baseball, our mom after the divorce, would let me fall asleep watching Yankees, she didn’t know anything about monster movies or sci-fi, things like that in fact, to this day she has a disdain for it, whenever we talk about it, she acts like we have three heads each. (laughs) She would never put that on, we would have to find that stuff on our own, but on weekends, Sundays with our father, we’d put on whatever we want.

Ron outgrew Godzilla but his little brother never did. So he set out to make a Godzilla suit for Halloween.

JF: I’m a web designer so everything I design and put heart into, after a month or week someone come around and destroy website and its gone, but if I build something with hands, feel it, touch it, as long as I take care of it, it’s going to stay exactly the same until the day I die.

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JF: I even took a week off work to start building thing in September thinking two months would be plenty of time. That first week was rough starting something that massive and having no idea where to being once started, you just go. So I worked night and I was staying up until 3 in morning, going to work at 8, driving to brother’s house huge basement work again, and do it again, get there at 5, work til 2-3 morning, and just continue.

RF: Then as the days and weeks passed, night after night, see different supplies showing up, chicken wire, glue, all different kinds of glues, foam rubber!

JF: It’s so much foam, fabric, I have cardboard in there, I have chicken wire in there, I have speakers inside the chest so if I tap my right hand, my palm little button that makes one roar, classic roar, and if you tap the other palm, it makes a smaller roar. So adding those special effects was kind of fun.

I know Godzilla changes from movie to movie, did you choose a particular Godzilla?

JF: I was aiming towards ‘70s Godzilla like Godzilla vs. Gaigan or Megalon, that kind of era because something about him, my brother and I used to call him Disco Godzilla because he’d do that little dance, and it’s like he knew what was going on. I would take pictures and blow them up in Photoshop. I used a projector to put on wall and I got it to be the exact height to fit in and I drew out the exact shape of every spine or spike which is, there’s about 40 of them including little ones down the side and the big ones, so the shape is dead on, I think.

Jim was so consumed with building Godzilla -- his girlfriend broke up with him during that time. But after a while, she showed up at Ron’s house where Jim was still working on the costume.

JF: And she came over to mend Godzilla and mend our relationship at the time.

It worked out – they got married. But the costume was more difficult.

JF: I even had friends help out with a minor details at the end, but we couldn’t get it finished and I was very depressed that Halloween, I was so close to getting it done. Ugh!

Jim sunk into a funk until he decided he was going to finish the costume the next Halloween. He started worked on it over the summer, so he made sure it was ready in time. He was so excited; he filmed himself walking around the neighborhood before Halloween 5

CLIP

JF: It’s hot! It’s claustrophobic, it’s hot, there’s a weight and it’s hard to move but no overly because it’s still all foam, so you try to make these walking motions like you’re trying to pretend to be slow and sloth like, I don’t know if I’m good I try to act it out. It’s an art form.

And after all that work, using the costume just to trick-or-treat felt anti- climactic. So he set out to win the biggest costume contest in town. Prize was a thousand-dollars, would more than cover the cost of building the suit.

JF: My brother came with me because you need a handler, you need someone to put you in the costume to help walk around – things like that.

JF: Remember I got into the Godzilla costume inside the parking garage.

RF: Yeah, we did it in the parking garage.

JF: A couple people were like what the heck was that?!

RF: The reaction was extremely positive before we even got to the front door. It was clear just approaching the place, we were going to make a big splash.

JF: When we got there and got inside, there were some girls with clipboards, and I don’t know what you guys talked about.

RF: I can’t remember if we actually gave them your real name but we were like yeah, Godzilla’s on the list. Godzilla’s is in the contest.

JF: Godzilla’s in the hizzouse!

RF: Godzilla in the contest. Sign us up, we’ll be ready to go when the contest starts.

The place was huge. So they didn’t notice when the costume contest started. Also:

RF: Jimmy was overheating in the costume.

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JF: Oh yeah!

RF: Probably had a garbage plate the night before, or the day of, something that wasn’t a great idea, and he was overheating and had to go to the bathroom.

A “garbage plate” is a local Rochester specialty.

JF: Hot dogs, baked beans and home fries with hot sauce spread with onions and mustard thrown on top and looks like plate of garbage.

You need to be young and healthy to digest that thing -- even then.

JF: Ronnie’s like I’m going to watch the suit, don’t worry about and I finally come back that horrific stuff happened in bathroom that I don’t want to talk about to anybody, I come back and Ronnie’s in the suit.

RF: I was worried I wasn’t sure what was going on with contest, I knew there was stuff going on at the time, you could hear noise and stuff, so he’s getting out of suit, and when he finally came back from the bathroom, I was ready to go.

JF: And that’s when I hear, all right, we’re going to bring up finalist. And I was like WTF! Oh my god! And I said Ron, don’t’ worry, I ran to the judges, and I jumped on stage, and I was like what the hell are you doing? There’s Godzilla here! How did you not see them? In their faces they seemed unique and serious and authentic, what are you talking about? I don’t know how long they’d been there, we’d been there four hours, and they said they never saw me, and they never saw us and there was nothing they could do, had finalists up there getting applause, it’s not like they could do a re-judging, there’s like a thousand drunk people.

RF: And they were lame, the lamest finalists. We got…screwed.

JF: Screwed (overlap)

RF: Jimmy may disagree but I don’t think they really lost us. I have a feeling the fix was in. The people that ran the club, I think they had friends there who they had full intension of awarding prize to before it began and I think they did not in their wildest dreams expect to see Godzilla walk in, in all his glory, It think they were blown away, I think they knew if they put him on stage, if they put Jimmy on stage in the Godzilla costume -- it was basically from applause, and if he’d gotten up there on main stage, there’s no way, he completely brings the house down, he wins in a landslide, undeniably the victor. 7

So he says in retrospect. In that moment when Ron realized his brother had gotten screwed. Ron busted through the crowd, towards the stage -- wearing the costume. Jim had been watching his brother’s Godzilla obsession with detached amusement for the past 14 months. Not any longer.

JF: He hulked out! He literally turned green on the inside!

RF: I plotted and plowed my way towards the stage, we couldn't get on main stage with him.

Because that’s what Godzilla does!

JF: Yeah, it was like he really was Godzilla, so he just he took off, we’re getting out of here. He doesn’t go to bars, that wasn’t his scene, he was doing it for me, for Godzilla, for fandom to see us win. That was rough, I had to talk him off a ledge after that.

RF: You know I feel good about the fact that we knocked some people out of the way.

JF: To me from the outside watching my brother do this, I had this pride, it was overwhelming, I felt bad for the people he hit, but after such a long time of being disappointed and stuff, it was almost surreal.

They never got to compete in the contest, so they left. Ron took off the costume but he couldn’t calm down.

JF: He was fuming! Just fuming! I was worried about our safety. You were driving, right?

RF: I was angry of how much I knew he put into it, you know, his heart, his soul, his money, his time, I saw this thing go from just a glimmer in his eye to the actual finished product.

Jim decided he couldn’t let Halloween ruin his pride over his hard work again. So he created a site called Becoming Godzilla that detailed the history of how he created the costume – using the pictures Ron had taken when he was working in his brother’s basement.

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JF: I wanted to build something for others so they’d have easier time building their own costume than I did. It was me trying to do something for Godzilla fandom. I’ve gotten a dozen Godzilla builds, 12 different ways someone did it, some follow similar patterns, some do different things, and this guy does claws, he does porcelain, does molds, pops them out and paints them. I use hot glue over foam, and people do all sorts of different ways.

A dozen people contacted Jim from around the country. They wanted to follow his lead or were already making their own costumes and wanted a place to document their process.

Finally, they all met at G-Fest -- a mega Godzilla convention in Chicago. Jim even got to parade his costume around for the crowd – people who gave these costumes the appreciation they deserved.

CLIP

Jim went back for years and helped build up the G-fest costume contest. Then he got an email from a German video production company asking if they could buy his Godzilla costume. He said, no, right? Not for sale?

JF: I have 2 little kids, and I have no room in my house, I threw out number see what happens, I said $3000, they said sure, you pay for shipping, they said sure. I was like okay. You send me a check and I’ll be happy to send it to you. And then I went out and I had to purchase a lot of different large boxes, I had to hot glue and duct tape this thing together, and I spent one night 3 or 4 hours slowly bagging this thing up, plastic and little peanuts and stuff, four guys sent them 10,000 peanuts, I spent a lot of time, it was a little sad, I spent so much time, it was almost like a family member in a way, I was saying goodbye to, but real family members that take precedence could use money, I had taken it to fullest extent, and it was also nice to know maybe it would go do something more than I could, it was almost like having a kid, you want them to be more than you are, go off and do other things, that’s what the Godzilla was for me.

Did you have any second thoughts about it?

JF: Oh yeah, I definitely considered it a few hours. Yeah, I had to make a decision quick. I was choking up a couple times, so many hours, and so much time, and so much, not blood, well a little blood, don’t use chicken wire on your costumes everybody! bad idea. Tetanus shots. Um, my wife was completely surprised, she didn’t think I would, she said she couldn't done it if it was her, because she knew how much time I sent on it. 9

You know in Japan, they never stopped making Godzilla movies starring a guy in a rubber suit stomping on a model city, with minimal digital effects. It’s kind of fascinating because when they cut back to normal people in Japan – it’s contemporary. Warner Brothers is planning a bunch of sequels to their totally digital Godzilla, including a match up where he fights King Kong in 2020.

I know hardcore fans want the franchise to go on forever – and I get that. Personally, I prefer watching Godzilla in an analog era, where it was normal and even awe-inspiring to see a man in a rubber suit stomp on a model city. We’ve been awash in disaster films for so long now. We’ve seen our cities destroyed over and over again by every kind of digital monstrous menace. I feel like we’ve lost our sense of wonder and revulsion.

DS: Godzilla is most charismatic giant monster that’s ever been created. He is the most charismatic giant monster that ever will be created.

Dave Serchuck says, if James Bond can reinvent himself just enough to keep going strong after the Cold War, then Godzilla has a long life ahead of him.

DS: King Kong is a fascinating character but he’s doomed to that one plotline – he is trapped to be monster escaped to big city and dies. Godzilla is not trapped, Godzilla is open ended monster who can have as many plot lines as you can imagine, so if it’s going to work with giant monster, would you invest in a new monster like Cloverfield? If you’re going to it a shot of course you’re going to give it a shot with Godzilla, and they have – the last Godzilla movie did well enough to say there is an audience here. It’s not American phenomenon although it might be made in America, not Japanese any more which is sad bit of cultural appropriation, he kind of belongs to the world and he is in essence getting restarted. Because the first one they created bad guys for Godzilla to fight, I would say he was good guy, but where was ? Where was King Gidra? Where was ? They weren’t there but they could be in future. There’s a lot there, they created a big universe in the ‘60s from which to draw.

Although I get the feeling Godzilla himself would be happy to just chill out under the sea. We keep drawing him out. In a way, we need him more than he needs us.

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Well, that’s it for this week, thanks for listening. Special thanks Jim Fazar, Ron Fazar and Dave Serchuck.

DS: Over time he becomes friendlier looking and more recognizably if not human, at least human—ish and as weird as sound, and I know this sounds weird I thought he looked a little and this is deliberate like Muhammad Ali.

When? What era?

DS: Toward late ‘60s Ali was as famous in real as Godzilla would be in these movies, they didn’t’ look like each other, I think they patterned Godzilla on Ali, he would like box, he would throw punches and stuff, he started getting into that, just because boxing was at its height and Ali beloved figure, he even had expressive eyebrows that would raise up and down and I don’t think early monster had those capabilities.

He floats like a dinosaur and stings like a radioactive bee.

You can like the show on Facebook, I tweet at emolinsky. The show’s website is imaginary worlds podcast dot org. Next episode – a co- production with the podcast Here Be Monsters. It’s going to be a head-trip.