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GODZILLA: THE SERIES INTERVIEW

THE CREATIVE MINDS BEHIND THE GODZILLA ANIMATED SERIES TALK ABOUT CONTINUING THE STORYLINE FROM THE MOVIE AND IT'S INCREDIBLE POPULARITY ON FOX'S SATURDAY MORNING LINE-UP

By JEFF BOND
December 4, 1998

With the Centropolis GODZILLA feature making waves on video and DVD, it’s easy to forget that there’s yet another incarnation of the big green dude intruding in our homes on a far more regular basis: the Fox Kids Saturday morning GODZILLA cartoon, which is currently the number one animated program for boys ages 2 through 11. The animated series was always intended to be launched in conjunction with the movie, and was under development well before the movie’s release in May.

One of the creative personnel shepherding the show to its debut was Sony Vice President of Creative Affairs for Children’s Programming Bob Higgins, who worked closely with Centropolis head honchos Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich on the development of the series.

"Dean had very specific ideas of what they wanted the series to be in terms of the look and tone of the show," Higgins acknowledges. "And so throughout the initial development process as we were putting the pilot script and the bible together they were very involved in how the characters interacted, which characters we were using, designing the characters. Patrick Tatapolous, who designed Godzilla for the movie, came in and worked with our design guys in designing the characters to make sure that they had a distinct look. So they were extraordinarily involved at the beginning and then throughout they reviewed all the scripts and storyboards."

The show picks up almost exactly where the movie left off, with Godzilla expert Nick Tatapolous forming a team of Godzilla experts to track a new Godzilla creature, which appears in New York City along with a host of new monstrosities week after week. Virtually all of the principal characters from the movie are involved in the series, including Nick’s would-be girlfriend, reporter Audrey, her cameraman Animal and others. Conspicuous by his frequent absence is the Jean Reno character, French government operative Philippe; replacing him as a regular on the series is a female French operative named Monique. "Philippe is in the show on a periodic basis," Higgins explains. "We keep him very mysterious like he was in the movie. He is not necessarily the type that would publicly join up with this group. He’s an underground type of guy and Monique is someone that he sent."

Continuing the characters from their movie incarnations even extended to hiring some of the same actors from the film to provide voices for the series.

We have Malcolm Denair, who is the Mendel Craven character; he’s the scientist with the goatee and the blond hair," says Higgins. "In the original script of the movie he had a greater presence than he did in the final movie— we developed the series based on the script. And then Major Hicks is played by Kevin Dunne, and the mayor by Michael Lerner. We approached the rest of the cast, but most of those people like Matthew Broderick or Hank Azaria have very active prime-time or movie careers, and we needed people on a weekly basis because we have to do 40 episodes."

Getting the animated series produced while the Godzilla movie and creature were still shrouded in secrecy provided a challenge to the show’s personnel. "We had to keep anything and everything that had a picture or any type of likeness of Godzilla in a locked room, and the designers worked in that room and it was locked when they left and nothing left that room. We did not ship anything overseas until the movie came out. It made it less than ideal but it wasn’t something that was ever going to put the show in jeopardy."

The show’s success with children may be one of the reason’s the movie’s highly-publicized toy line has managed to show surprising staying power. "I think the movie was rated PG-13 so a lot of the younger kids couldn’t see it, but they’re eating up the show so they’re kind of being introduced to Godzilla for the first time," says Higgins. "I think when they go into the toy stores and see the Godzilla toys they’re probably seeing them more in terms of the series than the movie."

The Sony animation branch also produces programs like MEN IN BLACK, JUMANJI and EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS, as well as the upcoming DILBERT for UPN. Dealing in children’s programming means obeying certain ground rules, even for a marauding super-monster like Godzilla who gets into more than his share of block-smashing battles with other immense creatures on the show.

"The basic rule of thumb is that nothing is killed: they’re ‘destroyed,’" Higgins notes. "You want to stay away from that if something is a sentient being that you’re killing it. If you try to keep it without a lot of character it’s easier to show Godzilla kill it. Once you work in kid’s programming for a while you know what you can and can’t get away with and the issue never really even comes up; there’s always an issue of responsibility with children’s programming."

Episode scribe Steve Melching is a veteran of animated series like THE X-MEN, EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS and YOUNG HERCULES; he also joined the GODZILLA team early on and wrote three of the series’ episodes.

"I got involved because I’d written scripts for EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS for Robert Skir, who was developing and was one of the story editors on the GODZILLA series," says Melching. "He’d liked the stuff I’d done for GHOSTBUSTERS and so had Sony, so I got to be involved very early in the development of the series."

For Melching, working on the show meant a combination of expanding on outlines provided by the story editors and pitching his own ideas for the series.

"Of the three episodes I wrote, I was given storylines to two of them and the third one was a pitch," says Melching. "The first one I did was called ‘Cat and Mouse.’ That was given to me by Bob and his partner Marty, and we fleshed that out together. The second one I wrote was the second part of a trilogy called ‘Monster War’ which brings back many of the monsters seen in the early episodes of the series in one big giant apocalyptic type story. And since that was a three-part storyline devised by Bob and Marty they gave me a page-and-a-half outline of what they wanted to happen in the second episode. So for that one I was really following their storyline because it was important that it was the middle part of a three-parter and it had to fit into the third part. The third one was a pitch that was originally going to involve them finding another Godzilla, the same kind of mutation from the same place. I know they’re hermaphrodites but this one was sort of a female and it was mating and going into heat. And Godzilla could sense that and it went off and the team followed Godzilla to the island and found the second Godzilla. But they didn’t want to do another Godzilla so it just became another giant lizard. I haven’t actually seen the finished episode but it turned out that I wrote it like a Komodo Dragon...I think I called it Komodothrax, and its power was that it could absorb Godzilla’s heat breath and kind of project it back at him...although I have no idea how they’re going to do that in the animation."

Melching also notes how closely the cartoon follows the characters and situations left from the movie.

"I think they wanted to make it a direct spin-off of the movie, and there were some decent characters in the movie, they just didn’t have a lot to do on screen," notes Melching. "Bob and Marty and I were able to flesh out the characters more since we had forty half-hours to play with. And it was very important to Sony that each episode have a storyline that involved the characters in an emotional way, in a way that affects or changes the characters. It was not just supposed to be action."

Part of the ongoing plotlines is a MELROSE PLACE-like tangle of romantic relationships. "There’s sort of a love quadrangle where Nick Tatopolous is trying to have a relationship with the reporter, Audrey, and the scientist Elsie Chapman is pining after Nick, but Mendel Craven, the hypochondriac is pining after her," observes Melching.

Melching thinks the story sophistication of today’s animation far outstrips its predecessors from ten or twenty years ago.

"I think we look back at the animation of the ‘70s with sort of rose-colored glasses," says Melching. "We had SCOOBY DOO and the Sid and Marty Krofft shows...to me that was kind of a dark age. For this show we’ve really never been asked to tone down anything, and we were really asked to pursue these kind of soapy relationships and allow them to evolve over the course of the show."

For Melching, the experience has been unusually rewarding.

"It’s been doing well and there’s a lot of passion behind it," he says. "I had fun working on this particular show because everyone involved in it was really excited about it. I got invited to the voice recording session and participate to a certain extent, and they even asked me if I had any notes on the line readings. So it was really nice to be included that way and to meet the directors and producers and voice actors. That made it easier to write subsequent episodes after meeting all these people, especially the actors, because then I could put a face to the voice and see them interacting with each other in the booth and talking in character; it really made the characters come alive and made writing the characters that much easier."