A sobering thought about A Hard Day's Night

After the 1 pm Thursday screening of A Hard Day's Night at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, I am going to host a brief dialogue with high school students (and anyone else who wants to stick around after the closing credits). And I can't help thinking: If someone had shown me a 50-year-old film when I was a high school student -- it would have been a silent movie.

Like this one, with Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle:


Or this one, with Mary Pickford:


Or this one, with Charlie Chaplin (and a musical score later added by Chaplin himself):

Radio Active: Talking Princess Bride Wednesday on KUHF

I'll be talking about the enduring enchantment of The Princess Bride Wednesday on KUHF-FM's Houston Matters show. The program airs at 12 noon and 7 pm CT -- you can listen to it here -- and will be available as downstreaming audio here from Wednesday evening onward. Hope you enjoy it. And remember: People in masks cannot be trusted.

Sharing the love from readers of my review of D'Souza's America

Evidently, my Variety review of America: Imagine the World Without Her, the latest  feature from conservative commentator and author Dinesh D'Souza, has upset some people. Even a few who, judging from their comments on Variety.com, have not actually seen the movie yet. These are a few of my favorite postings, reprinted here verbatim ala cut and paste.

well we can’t tell that you’re not from Hollywood and so left almost Jane Fonda like. ask for me I was born and raised in California & I have been alive for 63 years I have seen my state being torn apart by third world country mentality and the left hatred of our country where is the tolerant hippies of the 60′s what happened to you ate too many mushrooms you are just so hateful the left so intolerant you have to have everything your way wah wah wah wah just sickening I just want to enjoy this movie and lets you just leave your hate filled comments to yourself nobody wants to hear your crap it’s just more crap from Hollywood Hollywood is a tank for Obama and the left and everybody knows it thats why nobody goes to show anymore hello wanna make a page check then put something on there we want to watch case in point films that have meaning and purpose like this 1 4 God’s not dead hello we’re out here we do spend money and you’re not a favorite of mine

The movie addresses the wrongs done. But puts them in context. I think you should stop thinking.

Seems to me as the reviewer is so duped by his educators and leftist elitist mentality he cannot receive the message D’Souza has brought historical fact to back it….obviously the reviewer doesn’t know or just refuses to accept the facts of history…..mainly because he can’t accept the God of the Bible and His interest in the affairs of man when man endeavors to honor Him

Joe Leydon, why do you hate America so much? And if you do hate her so much, why stay, why not surrender your U.S. Citizenship, and move to Cuba, China, or maybe Russia?

Caution! This film refutes the fraudulent leftist narrative that has been promulgated by our schools, media and radical leftist politicos like Obama who’ve been educated by Saul Alinsky and Cloward& Piven & who have overtaken the Democrat Party. 100 Tomatoes! This film is a wonderful history lesson that should be seen by everyone and especially children! Note the disparity in the film’s tomato meter score between the lemming like unthinking socialist critics who post here and the Audience. The leftists don’t want anything that criticizes the big lie socialist narrative which melts under the slightest scrutiny to have wide exposure with an audience. The feeble minded unthinking leftist critics who post here reveal that they’re merely Obama butt boys doing their job and giving a negative review to anything critical of their hollow idol or any expose & critique of Obama’s socialist and cultural Marxist values. If this were a gay themed movie they’d give it 100 Tomatoes before seeing it. This is an excellent thought provoking film by a deep thinking analyst of the contemporary state of socialism and how it’s achieving it’s ends in America. It’s a very precise intelligent critique of the socialist driven narrative that has been perverting, polluting our society for the past 50 years. And in case you haven’t noticed: the socialists are winning!

Of course 81% of the movie goers liked the film, I am certain out of ever 100 people who saw this film 90 of them were conservative. Most leftists aren’t going to waste their money to go watch a movie in which a conservative ex-con white washes history books. It isn’t that most critics are liberal, it is that lefty critics are the only lefties who are probably watching this tripe.

You know, I think that last guy may be on to something.

My 1979 chat with George Harrison (thanks to 2 Pythons)

George Harrison (left) and some other famous guy
So there I was, seated with Eric Idle and Michael Palin, lunching at a posh Manhattan eatery in the fall of 1979. Warner Bros. had taken over the place for an entire day, so ink-stained wretches like myself could have quality time with assorted members of the Monty Python ensemble prior to the national release of Life of Brian.

And I’m not going to lie: I was feeling pretty damn good about myself, since it was only me seated at the table with Idle and Palin. (Remember: This was 1979, back when print journalists -- even print journalists from Flyover Country -- got to enjoy lengthy hobnobs with the stars during junkets.) And I felt even better when one of the Life of Brian producers strolled into the restaurant, ambled over our table, and asked: “Do you mind if I join you?”

The producer was George Harrison.

(Years later, when I reminded Eric Idle of this episode, he quipped: “Yeah, what we should have told him was, ‘Aw, piss off, George. We’re trying to talk here.’” That Eric. Always the kidder.)

What follows is a slightly revised excerpt from a piece I wrote a few weeks after my close encounter with the late, great former Beatle. Please understand: I’m recycling the article not to show off – well, OK, not only to show off – but rather because some of what Harrison had to say strikes me as especially relevant while A Hard Day’s Night takes a 50th anniversary victory lap though venues nationwide this week.

At first, Harrison – then 36 – was understandably eager to join Idle and Palin in discussing Life of Brian, which already was generating outrage among the easily affronted. (A true story: Just a few days after my return to Dallas, where we were living at the time, my wife and I had to struggle to keep from laughing out loud during a Sunday mass while the presiding priest, obviously inflamed by hearsay, devoted most of his sermon to condemning the not-yet-released Python picture.) Once that topic of conversation was exhausted, however, the talk turned to his often frenetic days with The Fab Four.

Did he miss that eventful era? “Well, yeah,” Harrison conceded as the waiter cleared the table. “When you’re in a group, you have problems, you know, conflicts. But at the same time, you would have good moments. You’ve got some pals to hang around with, and you’ve got some more strength in a way.

“You can draw strength, and you can also get some feedback, from each other, when you’re writing and recording together. I miss all that side of it…

“You know, when we first started out, it was fun just being in a band. We weren’t trying to be rich, we were just having fun. I miss all that side.

“Fame is the thing that screwed it all up, really, as far as I’m concerned. We wound up going around the world singing the same old tunes, just to different people.”

Even so, Harrison recalled with a smile, the Beatles tours were not without random pleasures. “The only thing that spoiled the tour was that we had to go and play at the end of the day. If we just toured the cities of the world, checking into hotels and all that, it would have been okay.

“We had great fun in the bathrooms of all the hotels of the world, because that was the only place we could go, with all the crowds everywhere else.”

Harrison would not definitely rule out a Beatles reunion, but he was not holding his breath while waiting for it to happen. And he was not particularly pleased by the efforts of moviemakers and theatrical producers to keep the Beatles legend alive. (Though he had not yet seen either the movie I Wanna Hold Your Hand or the Broadway show Beatlemania at the time of our 1979 encounter, he dismissed both as “a lot of junk… I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole.”)

As far as Harrison was concerned on that afternoon all those years ago, his stint as a Beatle was something rapidly receding into the distant past. He didn’t seem to mind if it stayed there.

“It was like another lifetime, you know? Some previous incarnation. It’s been a long time. It’s been 10 years since we split up – and we were splitting up for five years before that.

“In actual fact, we’ve been split up longer than we were together. We were only together a short time, really. I mean, in the length of my life, the Beatles was just a very little part of it.”

A part, Harrison claimed, that many people already were forgetting – or never knew about in the first place.

“You know, they asked kids in England – mind you, they asked 6-year-olds – but they gave them our names and they asked them if they knew who we were.” The result of the inquiry? “They said, ‘Oh, yeah, wasn’t he a famous doctor?’ Or something like that. ‘George Harrison, wasn’t he a famous doctor?’ Ringo Starr? ‘He was one of the Muppets, wasn’t he?’”

(Postscript: As Paul Harvey might say, here’s the rest of the story. At one point in our discussion of Life of Brian, I blithely began a question with, “I know you guys don’t have any sacred cows…” And Harrison, with a perfectly straight face, interrupted by saying: “But I do.” It shames me to say that, even after he, Idle and Palin began chuckling, it took me about five seconds to remember that Harrison had converted to Hinduism years earlier. But what the hell: I can honestly say that, even if had to make myself the butt of the joke, I got a good laugh out of a Beatle and two Pythons, all at the same time.)

From me and Bill Pullman: Happy Independence Day!

I am an immigrant's son, and I get paid to go to the movies. Truly, this is the land of opportunity. And so, to celebrate the birthday of our great nation, I once again give you the ridiculously corny yet tremendously affecting speech given by a beleaguered U.S. President (potently played by Bill Pullman) to rally a final push against invading extraterrestrials in Independence Day. Let freedom ring.

One mo' time: Celebrate Independence Day with 1776

Seven years ago this week, I rediscovered 1776 on Turner Classic Movies. At 1:30 ET/12:30 CT Friday afternoon, you, too, can re-evaluate (or see for the very first time) on TCM a restored version of the movie -- one of the last Old Hollywood adaptations of a hit Broadway musical. And take it from me: Even if, like me, you were none too impressed by it back in the day, you'll find it was substantially improved by the restoration of scenes and songs that had been deleted by producer  Jack Warner  before its ’72 theatrical release. (According to Hollywood legend, no less a notable than then-President Richard Nixon "requested" the deletion of a tune that tweaked conservatives.)

As I noted in 2007: "1776 still is something less than an unadulterated masterwork. (Although director Peter H. Hunt manages some impressive wide-screen compositions, he’s a tad too literal-minded in some aspects of his stage-to-screen translation.) Taken as a whole, however, the movie is wonderfully entertaining – and, better still, undeniably inspiring -- as it offers an intelligently yet playfully romanticized account of events leading to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But wait, there’s more: The cast includes most of the major players from the original 1969 Broadway ensemble – including William Daniels (John Adams), Howard Da Silva (Benjamin Franklin) and Ken Howard (Thomas Jefferson), all at their finest – along with an absolutely luminescent Blythe Danner (who was pregnant with Gwyneth Paltrow during filming) as Martha Jefferson. And the heated debates over individual rights and tyrannical rulers are, alas, every bit as relevant today as in 1776 or 1972." Or 2014.

Flashback: Richard Lester on A Hard Day's Night

Note: Back in October 1985, director Richard Lester -- the bloke being poked by John Lennon in the above photo -- came to Houston for a retrospective of his films at the Rice University Media Center. I had the pleasure of interviewing him before he arrived in H-Town -- and the privilege of conducting a Q&A with him after the Media Center screening of A Hard Day's Night. We talked a lot about that seminal cinematic treat -- and its influence on a then-trendy phenomenon known as MTV. Starting July 4, several venues nationwide will celebrate the 50th anniversary of A Hard Day's Night by screening a newly spiffed-up version of Lester's merry masterwork. So I thought it might be a good time to recycle my 1985 feature story about the man behind the merriment.

If A Hard Day's Night didn't exist, someone at MTV might have tried to invent it by now. But it does exist, thank heaven, and it remains as vibrantly fresh as ever, more inventive and exhilarating than 99.9 percent of the music clips introduced by cable VJs. The larky musical-comedy showcasing The Beatles will be on view at the Rice Media Center as part of a two-week retrospective tribute to its director, Richard Lester. After the screening, Lester will be on hand to answer questions about his life, his films -- and his work with The Fab Four.

Earlier this week, Lester laughed politely at the suggestion he created the world's first, and longest, music video when he directed A Hard Day's Night.

''Fortunately,'' he said, ''I didn't know I was doing that. I plead total innocence. But I must say, it was very kind of the MTV people: Apparently, I was their first inaugural Hall of Fame member.

''Of course, I didn't really know there was a Hall of Fame for MTV.''

Lester, a Philadelphia native, had only two features to his credit when producer Walter Shenson tapped him to direct A Hard Day's Night in 1963. At that point, The Beatles were only slightly less obscure than Lester in the United States. By the time the film opened, however, the boys from Liverpool had already launched their first assault on America. Most film critics of the time expected the worst from A Hard Day's Night, which threatened to be just another quickie rock-music exploitation film. But the reviewers were pleasantly surprised. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the movie ''a whale of a comedy... much more sophisticated in theme and technique than its seemingly frivolous matter promises.''

Much of the credit for the film's success went to Lester, whom Crowther praised for directing the musical madness ''at such a brisk clip that it seems to come spontaneously.''

Almost overnight, Lester established himself as one of his generation's most innovative filmmakers, a wildly eclectic virtuoso who merged the gracefully zany farce of silent-movie comedy with state-of-the-art editing and cinematography techniques. Just as important, Lester -- who began his career as a director of live television programs, then worked his way into the quick-cut, hard-sell world of TV advertising -- somehow had devised the perfect visual style to accommodate the flashy, frantic ambiance of what was then being hyped as the era of Swinging England.

Modestly, Lester insists his stylistic approach to A Hard Day's Night sprang from necessity, not inspiration: ''Generally -- and I think this is true of almost everybody who tries to earn a crust of bread -- I was just trying to find solutions to problems. And the solutions came out of the set of circumstances given to me.''

In this case, Lester said, he was charged with making a film that would reflect the frenzy of Beatlemania, contrasted with the ironic calm of the four lads -- John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr -- who were generating all the excitement. To get a first-hand glimpse at the phenomenon, Lester accompanied the Beatles on a tour of Paris. He didn't see much in the way of glitz and glamour -- but he did notice The Beatles had to barricade themselves in hotel rooms to hide from zealous fans.

''That weekend,'' Lester remembered, ''the film wrote itself. John mentioned that they'd just come back from Sweden, so I said, 'Well, how did you like Stockholm?' And he said, 'It was a car and a room, and a room and a car.' Well, that was the film. The means of making the music continue the mood of the piece -- all that seemed to grow out of that weekend. Because I saw their behavior was musical, and their music was behavioral. It was easy.''

It was also, in many scenes, improvised.

Essentially plotless, A Hard Day's Night follows The Beatles as they hide from fans, travel by train, hide from fans, rehearse for a concert, hide from fans, perform in concert, and hide from fans some more. One of the film's best production numbers, ''Can't Buy Me Love,'' serves as a liberating break from the rigorous routine.

''All that page of the script said was, 'The boys escape by playing in the field.' So we ad-libbed on three different locations, each two hours long. The circumstances of some shots were dictated by the fact that Paul got drunk one night, and was very hung over -- and didn't show up for filming. So I put on a pair of his boots -- I happened to be wearing black trousers, anyway -- and hand-held the camera, and used my feet as the fourth member of the group. Otherwise, I think the brighter members of the audience might have noticed that 25 percent of the group was missing.

''Expediency does count a lot in art. I think anytime you ask an artist, 'Why that yellow?' he'll probably say, 'I'd run out of blue that day.'''

Ironically, the ''Can't Buy Me Love'' sequence often is excerpted and shown nowadays as a music video -- much to Lester's chagrin.

''Until that point in the film, the boys were in very confined spaces, and being told to go here, do that. They were managed and organized, pushed into this and that, told they should rehearse, go into this hotel room. And, no, you can't get out of the car because the crowd's here.

"So I wanted that scene to be an explosion of absolute exuberance, as they escape into open air. That piece of film works best when you have four reels before it with low ceilings. I don't take offense, but, really, taken out of context and just put on as a rock video, it has less impact emotionally than it would have in the movie.''

With A Hard Day's Night, Help! (another Beatle comedy, and in many ways a much better film) and The Knack, Lester almost single-handedly created in the mid-1960s a new cinematic syntax that was quickly and widely emulated -- most notably, by the producers of The Monkees -- but rarely used with the same kinetic imagination and giddy effervescence. He later polarized audiences and critics when he brought this same flamboyant visual flair to How I Won the War, a scathing anti-war satire, and The Bed-Sitting Room, an episodic black comedy about life after a nuclear holocaust.

Lester matched style and content perfectly, even brilliantly, in Petulia, an unexpectedly moving romantic comedy about two rational adults seeking love in a totally irrational '60s San Francisco. And his romantic streak appeared even more pronounced in his glorious Robin and Marian. In recent years, Lester has toned down the visual pyrotechnics. But his better films -- The Three Musketeers, Juggernaut, The Ritz -- reveal him as a moviemaker blessed with impudent wit, an iconoclastic disdain for genre conventions, and a fondness for inspired offbeat casting.

And, no, he's not interested in offers to direct music videos.

Joy

Whenever I feel blue, I can count on this clip of Joseph Gordon-Levitt from Marc Webb's (500) Days of Summer to lift my spirits. Go ahead: I dare you not to smile while you watch it.

'Rite of the Sitting Dead' -- or, Dead but enjoying it

Over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells posted a link to this New York Times article about funerals in my hometown of New Orleans and elsewhere that... that... well, as writers Campbell Robertson and Frances Robles note, "put the 'fun' in funeral."

The NYT piece begins by focusing on a wake at the Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home for Miriam Burbank (pictured above), "who died at 53 and spent her service sitting at a table amid miniature New Orleans Saints helmets, with a can of Busch beer at one hand and a menthol cigarette between her fingers, just as she had spent a good number of her living days." (Must admit: The strategically placed bottle of Jack Daniels in the background is the perfect touch.)

Not surprisingly, the chronically uptight Mr. Wells disapproved of such activity. Me? If I had any choice in the matter, I'd be displayed at my wake propped up in a movie theater-style seat, pen in one hand and a notepad in the other, while a DVD player ran continuous loops of The 400 Blows and In the Heat of the Night on a nearby big-screen TV. Laissez les bons temps rouler, dah-lins!

Your choice?

Hangin' with Kevin Hart

So I had to ask Kevin Hart: "Is that a Z shirt?" He said no -- but laughed, because he, too, loved the Saturday Night Live sketch. You can read my IndieWire Q&A with this weekend's box-office champ here.

Francois Truffaut, Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu & Richard Roud at 1980 New York Film Festival

While trying to bring order out of chaos in my ridiculously cluttered home office this afternoon, I happened upon a shoebox filled with old photos. And lo and behold: I found these pictures I took at the 1980 New York Film Festival press conference for The Last Metro. Then, as now, my skills as a shutterbug leave something to be desired. Still, these shots of François Truffaut, Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu and festival director Richard Roud bring back very happy memories.

(BTW: I am forever indebted to Philip Wuntch, my former colleague at the Dallas Morning News. Back in the day, Philip was the lead film critic and I was a lowly arts & entertainment staff writer. But he was impossibly decent to me, and signed off on my having some pretty sweet film-related assignments. Like... well, like covering the New York Film Festival.)

Keyboard Cat: The Sequel

And he's playing "96 Tears." Of course.

Trailer Park: Liam Neeson kicks ass -- again -- in A Walk Among the Tombstones

It's written and directed by Scott Frank, an ace scripter (Get Shorty, Minority Report, Out of Sight) whose debut effort as a multihyphenate, The Lookout, quite impressed me. And it's got Liam Neeson doing his moody badass thing -- which can be a lot of fun -- as novelist Lawrence Block's tarnished antihero, alcoholic ex-cop Matthew Scudder. A safe bet: Fans of the Block books likely will enjoy A Walk Among the Tombstones a lot more than the only other previous movie adaptation of a Scudder story, Hal Ashby's critically mauled 1986 thriller 8 Million Ways to Die.

Here's the trailer:

Maya Angelou? Yep, I discovered her, too!

Unfortunately, Maya Angelou never found time to direct more than one movie, despite the favorable Variety review I gave to her 1998 debut effort as a feature filmmaker, Down in the Delta.

Actually, I wasn't the only one who was impressed: Roger Ebert gave it a rave. Better still, he and Gene Siskel both gave it a thumbs-up on their TV show. (Take a look here -- their joint appraisal begins around the 4:15 mark.)

Despite all that praise, however, the late, great lady never made another movie. I guess she was too busy making history.

They're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore

MAD AS HELL from sean fahey on Vimeo.

The volcanically angry rant from Network gets a new spin in this attention-grabbing promo for Bailout 2 -- which, of course, is the sequel to Bailout.

Trailer Park: Into the Storm -- Cheese whiz!

Ironically, I saw this trailer before the new Godzilla. Ironically, I say, because the special effects on view here -- particularly in the final seconds -- appear to be no better than the miniature work in Toho-produced Zilla Thrillers of the 1960s.

Godzilla: A brief history of The Original Gangsta Lizard

Much like Madonna, Matthew McConaughey and Miley Cyrus, Godzilla illustrates a time-honored showbiz dictum: The best way to sustain your superstardom is to repeatedly reinvent yourself.

During six decades of Japanese-produced low-tech monster mashes and made-in-America CGI-stuffed spectacles, Big G has remained au courant through the miracle of image makeovers. From nuclear-age nightmare to doting single parent, from freelance global defender to butt-kicking tag-team wrestler, he has evolved and developed, evincing a versatility that might make Meryl Streep turn green – or, perhaps more appropriately, charcoal gray – with envy.

In Godzilla, slated to open this weekend at theaters and drive-ins everywhere, The Original Gangsta Lizard has a bit less spring to his step, and a tad more spread to his waistline. But never mind: Even as he approaches eligibility for Social Security, Big G remains ever ready to rumble, and authoritatively defends his title as King of the Monsters in this terrifically exciting flick.

Of course, it helps that he has in his corner Gareth Edwards, a filmmaker who, suitably enough, first attracted attention with a 2010 movie titled Monsters. Edwards’ latest creature feature benefits greatly from the director’s ability to pull off a tricky balancing act: While ingeniously reimagining the legend, he also respectfully acknowledges the tradition. In short, he lets Godzilla be Godzilla.

The mythos began in 1954, when the Toho Company of Japan introduced Big G as Gojira, a rudely reawakened dinosaur who developed toxic halitosis and an extremely bad attitude after exposure to H-bomb testing in the South Pacific. (The plot device of mutation through radiation was profoundly impactful on Japanese moviegoers less than a decade after the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) Growling and grouchy, the fire-breathing behemoth sauntered though Tokyo with a sumo-wrestler shamble while burning buildings, gobbling trains, stomping bit players, and generally making an epic nuisance of himself.

Two years later, legendary producer Joseph E. Levine and a group of associates renamed the movie and its eponymous star when they released Godzilla, King of the Monsters, a redubbed and re-edited version of picture designed for English-speaking audiences. Some of the Toho-produced footage was trimmed to allow for new scenes featuring Raymond Burr as a gravely serious journalist – named, no kidding, Steve Martin -- who provided the creature-feature equivalent of play-by-play commentary. (“A prehistoric monster just walked out of Tokyo Bay!” Geez, ya think?)

But none of these alterations dulled the movie's surprising power as a cautionary Cold War fable about the threat of nuclear annihilation. Keep messing with the forces of nature, Godzilla warned, and this could happen to you.

In the three sequels that followed, Godzilla continued to come across as a cranky bully who enjoyed nothing more than incinerating large portions of major urban areas. Whether he was trading punches with an ornery dude in a monkey suit (King Kong Vs. Godzilla) or trying to pluck the wings of an economy-size insect (Godzilla Vs. Mothra, a.k.a. Godzilla Vs. The Thing), Big G made The Incredible Hulk seem like a paragon of polite decorum.

But then, as though sensing audiences might be tiring of his anti-social tendencies, Godzilla transformed himself into a kinder, gentler creature. The rehabilitation process began in Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster (renamed Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster for U.S. release), a 1964 opus that introduced the infamous triple-headed beast who would go on to become Big G's most frequent foe. In the next 10 Zilla Thrillers, Big G solidified his antiheroic image as an international pop icon by repeatedly saving mankind from alien invaders and their mutant monster henchmen. In Son of Godzilla (1967), he actually became a bachelor father, adopting an orphan hatchling and teaching the Muppet-like critter how to breathe fire and stomp bad guys.

Most Zilla Thrillers of Big G's good-guy era received minimal theatrical exposure in North America. And with good reason: Badly dubbed, simplistically plotted and hopelessly cheesy, they were best suited as fodder for drive-in double bills and Saturday afternoon TV. But despite their exuberant tackiness — or maybe because of it — these are the movies that elevated Godzilla to folk-hero status among camp-savvy baby boomers and thrill-seeking Gen-Xers. Indeed, Godzilla was such a lovable cuss during the 1970s that he popped up as an animated adventurer in a TV cartoon series.

Nearly a decade after Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975), the last "good guy" Z-movie, the bigwigs at Toho decided it was time to let Godzilla again be as nasty as he wanted to be. So they reintroduced him as a fire-breathing fiend in The Return of Godzilla (1984). Once again, a U.S. distributor hired Raymond Burr for an Americanized edition, Godzilla 1985. (Trivia note: A poster for this flick appeared prominently in Roger Ebert’s office during the intro for the syndicated Siskel & Ebert TV show.) Oddly enough, however, this retrofitted version was a box-office disappointment. Maybe U.S. audiences were uncomfortable with the idea of a bad-to-the-bone Big G. Or maybe they simply preferred to see Godzilla shooting hoops with Charles Barkley in TV ads.

In any event, Toho continued to crank out sequels for domestic Japanese consumption – and sporadic home-video release in the US – until the 2004 production of Godzilla: Final Wars. They actually killed off Big G in 1995’s Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. But, of course, you can't keep a good monster down: By the end of the movie, a leaner and meaner Godzilla Jr. was ready to carry on the grand tradition of crushing innocent bystanders and blowtorching through Tokyo.

In sharp contrast to this born-again behemoth, the computer-generated creature of 1998’s American-made Godzilla was something of a wuss. Part of what has always made his Toho movies so popular is Big G’s badass, take-no-crap attitude. Even during his “good guy” phase, he was at his crowd-pleasing best whenever he was swatting buildings, flaming trains, and laughing out loud at heat-seeking missiles. But when Godzilla did Manhattan in director’s Roland Emmerich’s lavish but sluggish remake, the CGI weenie usually ran away from his attackers, and caused most of his damage by accident.

Rest assured, Gareth Edwards doesn’t make the same mistake in his new and improved Godzilla reboot. True, he mercilessly teases his audience during the first half of the film, giving us only sporadic glimpses at the title creature while employing the same delayed-gratification technique he used in Monsters. But when push comes to shove and the battle lines are drawn in the climactic Kaiju-vs.-Kaiju clash – yes, you guessed it, Godzilla isn’t the only monster in this particular mix --  Edwards’ Big G is bodaciously large and in charge, romping and stomping with a purposeful pugnacity that recalls both the whup-ass heroism of the ‘60s and ‘70s “good guy” Godzilla and the fearsome ferocity of the bad boy that razed Tokyo back in 1954.

Better still, this Godzilla – unlike Emmerich’s pretender – actually breathes fire. And let’s be honest: Isn’t  that what really makes a Godzilla movie a true Godzilla movie?  

ZILLA FACTOIDS    

If you want to pass as a diehard G-Fan, always remember: The Original Gangsta Lizard is charcoal gray, not green, in the overwhelming majority of his movies. And no, despite all the stories you’ve heard to the contrary, he doesn’t emerge victorious in the Japanese version of King Kong vs. Godzilla. To further enhance your ability to bluff, study the following factoids.

A.K.A. GODZILLA: The original Godzilla was such a smash in Japan that a sequel – Godzilla Raids Again – was rushed into production, and released domestically in 1955. Four years later, however, this follow-up was re-dubbed and restructured, and released by Warner Bros. as Gigantis, The Fire Monster. No kidding: Warners sold the movie as an original, not a sequel, featuring an entirely different creature with a completely different roar. Mothra got even less respect when Mothra vs. Godzilla (1965) was picked up for US release by American-International Pictures. That film was retitled Godzilla vs. The Thing, and sold with advertising art that depicted Godzilla fighting… a giant question mark.

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: Mothra had her hands full... er, her wings full... well, she had a pretty tough time of it while rehabilitating Godzilla in Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster (1964). When she initially approached Big G to join her and Rodan in a triple-team assault on Ghidrah (a.k.a. Ghidorah), Big G in effect bellowed: "Help those pesky humans? Fuhgedaboudit!" In the end, though, Godzilla fought the good fight because -- well, hey, a monster's got to do what a monster's got to do.

MADE IN USA: Raymond Burr appeared in scenes added to Godzilla and Godzilla 1985 by US distributors, but only one Western actor ever actually played a lead role in a Toho-produced Zilla Thriller. Monster Zero, a 1965 feature also known as Invasion of Astro-Monster, had ‘50s TV star Nick Adams (The Rebel) improbably cast as Astronaut Glenn -- no, not that Astronaut Glenn -- a blunt-spoken, two-fisted hero of the Tokyo-based World Space Authority. Rodan could flap his wings, and Godzilla might break into a victory dance, but only Adams could sneer at the evil extra-terrestrials and – in the English-language version, at least -- growl: “You rats! You stinkin’ rats!”

THE ORIGINAL SURVIVOR: During his “good guy” phase – roughly speaking, from Monster Zero to Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) – Big G sought R&R between battles on Monster Island, a sort of creature-friendly Club Med where he swapped war stories with Mothra, Rodan and other occasional allies. Fortunately for all parties involved, no one ever suggested a tribal council to expel any pariahs.

ZILLA SPEAKS: In 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan (a.k.a. Godzilla on Monster Island), Big G inexplicably gained the ability to speak. Mind you, he was limited to conversations with another rubbery beastie, the spiky Anguirus, and he remained a monster of few words. ("Something funny is going on! You better check!") But the effect was jarring enough to unsettle long-time G-Fans. So much so, in fact, that the gimmick was never repeated in subsequent Zilla Thrillers.

PAST IMPERFECT: Toho waited until 1991 before spilling the beans about Godzilla’s war record.  In Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, a densely plotted time-tripping melodrama, we learn that a pre-irradiated Big G made first contact with humankind as a long-necked dinosaur who, during World War II, helped Japanese soldiers repulse American invaders on a South Pacific island. Which, of course, may help explain why this picture never got a U.S. theatrical release.

Godzilla vs. Hitler (Major spoiler: Hitler loses)

Hitler thought King Ghidorah could beat Big G. Hitler thought wrong. (Yeah, I know: This is yet another Downfall mash-up. But, hey, I laughed.)

Godzilla, dammit!

First, I gave my students an introductory lecture about Gareth Edwards' Monsters, duly noting that Edwards had gone on to direct the new Godzilla.

Then, after I screened Monsters, ace publicist Jennifer Kane visited the class to give students passes for a Godzilla screening, Godzilla Frisbees, Godzilla dogtags and Godzilla buttons.

And then I gave the final exam, a multiple-choice test. One question: What summer blockbuster was directed by the director of Monsters: X-Men: Days of Future Past, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes or Godzilla?

And so help me God: A few students got the question wrong.

But here's the corker: I was wearing a freakin' Godzilla T-shirt the whole time. And I even showed them this video.

Maybe I'm not really cut out for this teaching stuff after all.

Barack Obama: "Orange really is the new black."

As I have said before: Once his current gig ends in January 2017, Barack Obama should be able -- strictly on the strength of his White House Correspondents' Dinner performances -- to find steady work doing stand-up in Las Vegas. No kidding.