Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome and Forgotten Hollywood, your podcasts and
Speaker 1: memories of yesteryear. My name is doug Hess and for
Speaker 1: Tuna and Forgotten Hollywood for the first time. What I
Speaker 1: do on this podcast is take you on a journey
Speaker 1: back in time and share with you pieces of Hollywood
Speaker 1: that you may or may not know about. And this
Speaker 1: episode we have Tom Schabella back on and he is
Speaker 1: here to talk about his latest book, King Kong Versus Godzilla,
Speaker 1: the most colossal conflict the screen has ever known. Tom,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Forgotten Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it. When this
Speaker 2: book was out and I started going through potential podcasts
Speaker 2: to do and to do again, you know, obviously you're
Speaker 2: at one of the top of my lists, so you
Speaker 2: know it was. It was a lot of fun last time.
Speaker 2: So and obviously it's a topic that I love talking about.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, thank you for thinking of us. And like
Speaker 1: I said, welcome back. And you know, as we do,
Speaker 1: we always like to ask the author to kind of
Speaker 1: give his own words of what this book is about.
Speaker 2: Sure, so just a little bit of backstory on writing
Speaker 2: the book. My original idea was to talk about well,
Speaker 2: number one, I wanted to talk about monster movies. You know,
Speaker 2: I have two books out, one Primetime nineteen sixty six
Speaker 2: sixty seven, which is about the first season every show
Speaker 2: is in color on primetime television, and then James Bond
Speaker 2: in the sixty Spy Craze, which talked about James Bond
Speaker 2: films of the sixties and all the subsequent knockoffs and
Speaker 2: spoofs and everything in between. And I'm a big monster
Speaker 2: movie fan. I'm just a giant monster movie fan, and
Speaker 2: that's really my main focus of a lot of times.
Speaker 2: And people always say to me, well, why didn't you
Speaker 2: write a monster movie book? Why didn't write a book
Speaker 2: about monster movies? And the first two it just didn't
Speaker 2: work out that way. And I couldn't really think of
Speaker 2: anything that hadn't been discussed to death. So I thought
Speaker 2: monster rally films, so where multiple monsters are in the
Speaker 2: same film, so Frankanstein meets the Wolfman, things like that,
Speaker 2: and I started writing it and actually wrote quite a bit,
Speaker 2: and I got to the Godzilla franchise and I got
Speaker 2: to writing about King Kong and Godzilla, and I realized
Speaker 2: it was taking up the majority of what I was doing,
Speaker 2: so I quickly abandoned ship on that and I used
Speaker 2: a I wound up using a lot of that previous
Speaker 2: book in this one. But again, I just I just
Speaker 2: need this. This was a story that needed to be
Speaker 2: talked about. I think that it's something that certainly everybody
Speaker 2: in some way, shape or form, they know maybe something
Speaker 2: about the film. They at least know the characters, They
Speaker 2: at least know at least they've heard of Godzilla, They've
Speaker 2: at least heard of King Kong. So all the characters
Speaker 2: in the film are I think have a gigantic Q score.
Speaker 2: But maybe you've never seen the film, maybe you've never
Speaker 2: really dove into it. And I also wanted to talk
Speaker 2: about a singular topic, just one film, And much to
Speaker 2: my surprise, there's never been a book written about just
Speaker 2: specifically this film.
Speaker 1: So here I am, which is kind of hard to
Speaker 1: believe as long as King Kong and Godzilla has been
Speaker 1: around and has really been a staple in movie history
Speaker 1: or cinema, that it really hasn't been studied or really
Speaker 1: talked about in such a format. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously there's there's magazine articles. There were
Speaker 2: even the Crestwood House books that I grew up with
Speaker 2: where talked about monster movies and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was never anything specific written about this off again
Speaker 2: YouTube videos and essays and things like that, but never
Speaker 2: a dedicated book.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, it's also kind of interesting, you know you
Speaker 1: talk about King Kong and Gonzela and how it's or
Speaker 1: how it's evolved over the years, you know, from the
Speaker 1: silent movies up to here regionally in the two thousands,
Speaker 1: and the impact that it's had on culture.
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, and that's one of the things that I
Speaker 2: absolutely had to get into. I'm somebody, as just demonstrated,
Speaker 2: I'm somebody that just can't tell you just the facts
Speaker 2: of the story. I have to give you the prehistory
Speaker 2: from the beginning of time till right now. Like I
Speaker 2: have to say, well, there was a man named Thomas
Speaker 2: Edison who invented now and so you know, I had
Speaker 2: to get into that history of King Kong. That King Kong,
Speaker 2: you know, was this Great Depression era monster and actually
Speaker 2: signaled coming out of the Great Depression. It's it's signaled
Speaker 2: that people started going to movies again, that that movies
Speaker 2: could be these gala events once again, that that they
Speaker 2: were not in the last you know, several years and
Speaker 2: actually King Kong was released around the same time as
Speaker 2: the inauguration of President Roosevelt, so you know, there was
Speaker 2: kind of a good feeling around the time. And then
Speaker 2: getting into Godzilla, I felt like I needed to really
Speaker 2: talk about that prehistory and the effects that the Japanese
Speaker 2: were still feeling post war and tensions of the Cold
Speaker 2: War and things like that, So I really had to
Speaker 2: get into that. And also, again they're histories are just
Speaker 2: strangely intertwined. Both movies well, obviously they got the Godzilla
Speaker 2: creators were inspired by Kong, but both movies had a
Speaker 2: very very quick turnaround for a sequel that it wasn't
Speaker 2: that great. And again, these two just just as as
Speaker 2: I said multiple times in the book and on the
Speaker 2: back and everything I said, you know, they were introduced
Speaker 2: decades apart, two decades apart, two different continents, two different studios,
Speaker 2: but you know these two were on a collision course
Speaker 2: in history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you know, for me, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing the original King Kong and the cem of the
Speaker 1: cinema history, you know, climbing up the skyscraper and the
Speaker 1: airplanes around it, and then you fast forward to Jessica
Speaker 1: Ling's version in the seventies and how King Kong in
Speaker 1: particular has changed, but it hasn't really changed, if that
Speaker 1: makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know, and certainly in all those years,
Speaker 2: it again, Kong is something that it's an iconic character.
Speaker 2: He's a New York You can't go to New York
Speaker 2: without thinking, well, you know, okay, he was there. He
Speaker 2: was on the Empire State Building. A few weeks ago.
Speaker 2: I was in the city and I passed an elevated
Speaker 2: train and I thought, maybe that's it. Maybe that's where
Speaker 2: he came through. I'm not sure, or even with the
Speaker 2: seventy sixth movie, you know, I don't I've never actually
Speaker 2: been to Shea Stadium, but I was in that neighborhood,
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of years ago, and I thought, wow,
Speaker 2: well King Colin was the area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're right. I mean, it's whether you're in
Speaker 1: your nineties or if you're a teenager today, you know,
Speaker 1: King Kong and Godzilla. It really just kind of speaks
Speaker 1: to every generation. Every generation's kind of had their own
Speaker 1: version of King Cong or Godzilla if you will, for
Speaker 1: the most part. And it's just really interesting how after
Speaker 1: all these years it's still an icon and something that
Speaker 1: we can all relate to. I just hear that name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And it's something that even those older films,
Speaker 2: growing up watching them on TV or renting them or
Speaker 2: whatever ever, I didn't care what year they were, right,
Speaker 2: you know, they're they're they're they're they're cool giant monsters
Speaker 2: that uh, they you can watch. So you can watch
Speaker 2: them on a lot of levels too. You can watch
Speaker 2: it on a level of especially the early ones, especially
Speaker 2: the early Godzilla is you can watch it as some
Speaker 2: kind of political commentary or you could you just have
Speaker 2: a lot of fun with them. So I think that
Speaker 2: that's certainly an age thing that that helps with with
Speaker 2: certainly the Godzilla films and King Kong. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them are products of their time.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't say a lot of them. Definitely, the thirty
Speaker 2: three King Kong is a product of its time. You
Speaker 2: could spot out things that are again New York or
Speaker 2: great depression that that you could isolate. And then the
Speaker 2: seventy six you know that that certainly has it has
Speaker 2: a different feel to it now. And and also and
Speaker 2: even Constole Island I thought was a cool movie, and
Speaker 2: even though it was a period piece. They said it
Speaker 2: during the Vietnam War, right, you know, you could still
Speaker 2: make some correlations to modern day, you know, and the
Speaker 2: Peter Jackson film was also a period piece and a remake.
Speaker 1: But sure. Yeah, it's just really fascinating how it still
Speaker 1: talks to us or we still have this interest in
Speaker 1: it all these years later and it keeps coming back
Speaker 1: up into our culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And when I I think it's really interesting when
Speaker 2: I tell somebody that I wrote this book or it's
Speaker 2: published or whatever, just the amount of people that, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm buying it for Christmas from my uncle
Speaker 2: who really likes it. Just just you know, everybody has
Speaker 2: somebody in their family that really loves these movies that
Speaker 2: would find them interesting. And you know, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 2: really the cool thing about it, you know, where I
Speaker 2: think it has this class iconic lineage where you people
Speaker 2: just and they're they're they're interesting films uh to uh
Speaker 2: to talk about, and interesting films too, and certainly interesting
Speaker 2: films to read about. And the one thing that uh,
Speaker 2: I've said a couple of times so far, you know,
Speaker 2: in any interview that I've done, I said, you know,
Speaker 2: at one point, I I at one point I was
Speaker 2: writing this book, and I thought, well, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to talk about the fact that people
Speaker 2: believe that there are two endings of this movie. It's
Speaker 2: been done to death. It's it's people have talked about
Speaker 2: it for one hundred years and or you know, one
Speaker 2: hundred years. Yeah, you know city however long and it
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna maybe blaze over it really quick. And
Speaker 2: anytime I was telling somebody I was writing this book, oh,
Speaker 2: you're you going to talk about the two endings? Are
Speaker 2: there really two endings? Are there two endings of this movie?
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, oh, okay, well I guess I
Speaker 2: have to. And I certainly remember renting this movie and thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: I wonder, I wonder what ending I'm going to get,
Speaker 2: not realizing I'm watching a movie in English. But but yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and and so long story short, there's not
Speaker 2: but uh somewhat, in the American version you hear both wars.
Speaker 2: In the Japanese version you do only hear Godzilla. However,
Speaker 2: the other thing that I found pretty interesting about that
Speaker 2: oftentimes it's compare. It's brought up that the the suit
Speaker 2: actors who played King Kong Godzilla watched professional wrestling beforehand
Speaker 2: and said, okay, well we can kind of do something
Speaker 2: like this. We could, we could do this. And there's
Speaker 2: often been things written about the movie that says, well,
Speaker 2: King Kong is this, you know, represents America and Godzilla
Speaker 2: represents Japan in the film. And but if you watch it,
Speaker 2: even the Japanese version, if you watch it with Japanese subtitles,
Speaker 2: if you know Japanese, which I don't, Godzilla is clearly
Speaker 2: the bad guy. Clearly, clearly the bad guy. There's anybody
Speaker 2: who's ever written that has no idea what they're talking about.
Speaker 2: And Japanese Japanese professional wrestling, which I happen to be
Speaker 2: also a fan of.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: There's a trope called the guid Gin and it's an
Speaker 2: outside America, like a big American that comes in so
Speaker 2: in the late seventies, early eighties, like hul Cogan before
Speaker 2: he got to be you know, big, was the guidge it.
Speaker 2: He was the evil foreigner coming in. And they still
Speaker 2: do it to this day. There's evil foreigners who come
Speaker 2: in every single day to take out you know, that's
Speaker 2: not the formula. In this movie. King Kong is there
Speaker 2: to defend against Godzilla, which later Godzilla kind of becomes
Speaker 2: the national monster of Japan, which which I thought was
Speaker 2: really interesting, and I really dive into this whole thing
Speaker 2: and again and on both continents, this movie is sold
Speaker 2: as a big fight. You know, come see the big fight.
Speaker 2: That's a it's a heavyweight fight. So I thought that
Speaker 2: that was really cool in the marketing, and one of
Speaker 2: the things that I really liked diving into with this book,
Speaker 2: and one thing that I really dove into was the
Speaker 2: marketing films that it was paired with at times. So
Speaker 2: pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You've kind of hinted about this already, but just going
Speaker 1: to elaborate a little bit more. What surprised you during
Speaker 1: the writing and the research of this book.
Speaker 2: Uh, certainly that the amount of and again and and
Speaker 2: it's something that I never really paid attention to when
Speaker 2: when watching the film versus reading things. I kind of said, yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, Godzilla's this ah national monster of Japan, and
Speaker 2: it clearly was not at the time. How long it
Speaker 2: played I thought was really interesting. Just how long it played,
Speaker 2: it well into the seventies, it played a drive ins
Speaker 2: and kitty matinees and things like that. Just how well
Speaker 2: it was received, you know, by by audiences for ten
Speaker 2: plus years. You know, I thought was extremely interesting. How
Speaker 2: the movie really influenced future Godzilla movies, I thought was
Speaker 2: extremely interesting. And in the book, I have an inter
Speaker 2: interview with Linda Miller, who she played in the movie
Speaker 2: King Kong Escapes, which was the second Toho Studios King
Speaker 2: Kong movie, which has nothing to do with King congresus Godzilla.
Speaker 2: They made a five year agreement with r KO to
Speaker 2: make King Kong movies and they only made two, which
Speaker 2: doesn't make any sense to me. If you told me, hey,
Speaker 2: you can make Godzilla movies for five or King Kong
Speaker 2: movies for five years, I'd be making every type of
Speaker 2: King Kong movie. I can positive King Kong Go's to space,
Speaker 2: King Kong underwater, I don't know King Congress is whoever.
Speaker 2: I'd be making him fight everybody for five years. But
Speaker 2: they only made me. And I was nineteen fifty sixty seven,
Speaker 2: and you know, she's lived in the United States and
Speaker 2: for decades had zero idea that people were a looking
Speaker 2: for her, b had any interest in this movie. She
Speaker 2: was completely oblivious to any of this, and then fairly
Speaker 2: recently was contacted and asked to come to conventions and
Speaker 2: things like that. And so she gave me a really
Speaker 2: great interview. She was talked to me for a couple
Speaker 2: hours wow, and just talked about her career and things
Speaker 2: like that. But the reason why I included her in
Speaker 2: the book was because that she could really give some
Speaker 2: insight to how things worked at Toho Studios. So, you know,
Speaker 2: she's one of the few actresses in Hollywood to say
Speaker 2: that they were the King Kong's Desire long story short,
Speaker 2: you know, the she she was held in King Kong's hand.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So, uh so I thought that that was was really
Speaker 2: really really cool to talk about, and again that that
Speaker 2: gave me some some really cool insight. And uh, I
Speaker 2: never did an interview for a book before. I've done
Speaker 2: it for magazine articles and things like that, but never
Speaker 2: never in a book. And I thought that this was
Speaker 2: a important thing to include because I had the resource there,
Speaker 2: you know. And everybody said, no, she's great, she's plug
Speaker 2: and play. She'll just you know, she'll she'll answer any
Speaker 2: questions and and and you know, and she was in
Speaker 2: uh she has speaking roles in one movie that she
Speaker 2: was in, The Green Slime, And then she was on
Speaker 2: a show in Japan and an episode of My Three Sons,
Speaker 2: So her acting career is not where well, you know,
Speaker 2: she could kind of get confused of which set she
Speaker 2: was on, right, you know.
Speaker 1: It's gonna get hard to confuse.
Speaker 2: Those right, Yeah, she was low but yeah it was
Speaker 2: The Green Slam was a real low budget movie. You know,
Speaker 2: Tellho is a big budget movie. King Kong for Christ's
Speaker 2: Sake and My Three Sons, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, well, Tom, I know we're getting closer on time.
Speaker 1: But one last question before we let you go was,
Speaker 1: you know, here we are in twenty twenty five, maybe
Speaker 1: looking your crystal ball, where do you think this King
Speaker 1: cong versus Godzilla? Do you think we'll see more remakes
Speaker 1: in the futures or yeah, why do you think this
Speaker 1: franchise goes?
Speaker 2: I think there's definitely going to be more into in
Speaker 2: the legendary franchise. I I don't see Kong in the
Speaker 2: Japanese side of things, even though they probably could. I
Speaker 2: think that I don't see it. I see them kind
Speaker 2: of going a different direction with with their style of films.
Speaker 2: It seems to be a little bit more serious, I
Speaker 2: guess for lack of a better term, but you know again,
Speaker 2: that could change, you know, they could have could decide
Speaker 2: to make some type of monster rally film. I see
Speaker 2: right now, I see a lot of rumors swirling of
Speaker 2: does Godzilla fight another monster in h I think it's
Speaker 2: called Godzilla minus zero. I think it's the new film.
Speaker 2: You know, I've heard King Adora, I've heard the Smog Monster.
Speaker 2: I've heard Oh Mathra, heard a lot of of Meca Godzilla.
Speaker 2: I've I've heard a lot of of rumors. Uh. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody knows, but you know those those
Speaker 2: are the rumors going on right now as we speak.
Speaker 2: So uh yeah, I mean I definitely see a lot
Speaker 2: of remakes. There's definitely a lot of room. And it's
Speaker 2: it's you know, criminal to me that it took them
Speaker 2: then that long to make it. Uh so you know,
Speaker 2: finally we're we're here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the way with you know AI and the
Speaker 1: green screens and all the visual effects. I can only
Speaker 1: see it getting more intense and better when it comes
Speaker 1: to that, which will probably bring out more audience members
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: The one thing that I do note in my book
Speaker 2: also with those films versus you know, this current film,
Speaker 2: I think it was. Leonard Malton pointed out at one point,
Speaker 2: even though something computer generated, you it looks real, but
Speaker 2: you know it's fake. Where a man in a suit
Speaker 2: it looks fake, but you know it's real. I know
Speaker 2: I can go and touch that monster. The Also, these
Speaker 2: films I think bring us and King Kong and Godzilla
Speaker 2: has done this time and time again where the worst
Speaker 2: times in history, they have certainly helped you. Like I said,
Speaker 2: King Kong coming out of the depression, Godzilla in Japan
Speaker 2: coming out of World War two, King Congress. Godzilla was
Speaker 2: was released in the United States shortly after the Kennedy assassination,
Speaker 2: and we saw King Kong versus Godzilla or Godzilla versus
Speaker 2: King Kong released. You know, it was the first movie
Speaker 2: I saw post COVID. You know, it was the first
Speaker 2: movie I saw in the theater. You know, this was
Speaker 2: that was the first time it was you know, people
Speaker 2: kind of said, well, it may be safe to go
Speaker 2: to the theater. So it was certainly time and time
Speaker 2: again when we're given some type of tragedy in life
Speaker 2: or anything like that, a national tragedy and national uh
Speaker 2: something to overcome. King Kong and Godzilla have been there
Speaker 2: for us.
Speaker 1: Which is kind of weird to think that's com pretty right. Well, Tom,
Speaker 1: as always, thank you so much for coming on and
Speaker 1: spending some time with us. To our listeners, please go
Speaker 1: either go to your local bookstore or go on wherever
Speaker 1: you purchase your books and get a copy of King
Speaker 1: Coong Versus Godzilla, The most colossal conflict the screen is
Speaker 1: ever known. We just touched the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 1: And if you're into monster movies or horror films, et cetera,
Speaker 1: this book is going to be right up your alley
Speaker 1: and so we strongly recommend that you go out and
Speaker 1: get a copy of this book. And again, Tom, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on spending some time with
Speaker 1: us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you. And again, yeah, wherever find books are sold,
Speaker 2: it's available everywhere.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well. Again, thank you for listening to this episode
Speaker 1: of Forgot in Hollywood. Just search for dougcast forgott in Hollywood.
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