"I'm a Rubber Suit Guy." - George Romero

For a good example of everything wrong with American movies compare the novel "Forrest Gump" to the movie Hollywood made out of it. No, no, Kate Hudson's not in it or anything as trivial as that - The book has a sequence in which Forrest goes to Hollywood and gets a job wearing the rubber monster suit in a "Creature From The Black Lagoon" movie that is so crazy and kooky they decided it was too undignified for Mister Academy Award Winning Big Shot Tom Hanks and threw it out in favor of a lotta socially relevant horseshit that ain't even in the book! What the hell kind of a movie director would pass up on a chance to film a lovable retarded dude in a rubber "Creature From The Black Lagoon" suit? Certainly not Inoshiro Honda, the Japanese Genius who gave us "Godzilla", "Mothra", "Rodan" . . . Gosh, if I listed the titles of every movie this nut made that would be the whole article right there. Thanks to Honda, rubber monster suits are so common in Japan they sell 'em in men's room vending machines.

Whenever film critics are forced to write about Honda's movies instead of those miserable Scorsese things they're forever jabbering about they invariably make the same snide remarks about sumo wrestlers in rubber monster suits stomping on scale model skyscrapers and then wash their hands before they get anything icky on their brand new super deluxe "Mean Streets" DVD. And, yeah, "sumo wrestlers in rubber monster suits stomping on scale model skyscrapers" looks really stupid when it's just eleven little words on a page of The New York Times, Vanity Fair, or Kill The Rednecks, but "creepy Italian-American actors cursing at each other for two hours" looks really stupid when it's just eleven little words too and nobody ever wrote that about no Scorsese movie. If Robert DeNiro had been in a rubber monster suit all through that godawful "Raging Bull" I coulda sat through it before going to the drug store for some Pepto Bismol. Maybe a Minotaur kinda thing, that woulda been a trip. Maybe in "Goodfellas" Joe Pesci could have worn a rubber Robert DeNiro suit and Robert DeNiro could have worn a rubber Joe Pesci suit, I dunno - Kill me for having an imagination.

Just a rubber suit. None of that animation, double exposure, or computer legerdemain to create the monsters in his movies, Honda just puts 'em right there in front of his camera and "Action!" (Or however Japanese people say "Action!"). Godzilla may not have the hyperactive zippiness of Ray Harryhausen's monsters but makes up for it with a genuine physical relationship with his environment. I like Harryhausen's monsters but, as great as they look when strutting about like "Hey, get a loada me - I'm a fuckin' CYCLOPS!!!", it's always kind of awkward when it's time to quit with the vamping and to work on the Picking Up And Throwing Stuff which is the Bread And Butter of any respectable Giant Monster movie.  When Godzilla picks up a train and throws it up in the air it's obviously a guy in a rubber suit and a little model train, but the fact that he really does pick it up and he really does throw it in the air creates an excitement that Harryhausen's crazy critters can't touch. Movies are all about walking around, knocking stuff down, throwing it around, and falling right down and what we see doing it all is of no importance as long as we believe in all the walking, knocking, throwing, and falling. The monster and the prop may be fake but the ACTION is real. Hhhmmm . . . Maybe I should take the effort to find out how Japanese people say "Action!" after all?

Realism - Feh! Walt Disney was The Most Important Man In Animation until he screwed up and started trying to make animated people, animals, and plants that looked like real people, animals, and plants - That's just STUPID! The real reason The Seven Dwarves took in Snow White was they felt sorry for her cause she's so badly drawn. Bringing real deer and rabbits in so his artists could sit around and study em for "Bambi" - How many of those guys said "Screw this! I'm gettin' a job at Warner Brothers before Walt starts walkin' around in leg warmers!"

A lotta people put Honda's movies down as "Kid Stuff". What's wrong with Kid Stuff? If everything was for grown ups then kids could never watch TV and we'd have to pay attention to the little shits all day long! I have a lot of fun when I go to visit my four year old niece for the weekend but if it wasn't for those crazy cartoons she has to watch for thirty minutes every three hours I'd have to pack her up in a cardboard box, ship her off to Nickleodeon, and let Sponge Bob Squarepants put up with her psychotic antics for a while. My Uncle wasn't as patient as I am - I remember waking up in the Hanna Barbara studio hearing the guy who did Barney's voice on "The Flintstones" going "Annudda kid!? Sheesh!!". Sure, now that I'm all grown up I prefer more sophisticated fare like "The Nanny" and "Dumb And Dumber" but even an intellectual with as discriminating tastes as myself has to let his pants down . . . I mean, let his hair down every now and then for more lighthearted fare like a Court TV documentary  about a couple getting sent to prison for killing their baby and then the cops finding out that the kid had been ripped apart by dogs -  you know - A lil' Eye Candy?

There's not a lot of information available about Inoshira Honda's life and the little I could find was in Japanese and - from the way Film Study usually goes - it will probably be translated in French before it makes into English so don't hold your breath waiting for cute stories about his first beer or how freaked out he was when his teenage daughter started dating or anything like that. Here's what I do know - He was born in Tokyo in 1911 and his Father was a Monk. Hol' de phone, Kingfish! What kinda crazy religion lets its Monks run around having kids? What religion they got in Japan? Scientology, right? Well, if that don't explain Godzilla right then and there Mo Rocca will turn out to be a really funny guy after all! Young Honda began working in the movie industry but his career was interrupted when he was drafted to fight in World War Two, a very difficult experience for a young man especially one on the same side as Hitler. But Honda paid for this mistake when he was imprisoned by the Chinese. In the future everybody in the whole wide world will be imprisoned by the Chinese so Honda was truly a Man Ahead Of His Time. After the war ended Inoshiro returned to his native land, became a movie director, made a ton of crazy ass movies, and died in 1993 - Too soon to be dragged out of "Forrest Gump" screaming "Where rubber Creature From Black Lagoon suit like in book!?! Honda want money back!! No blonde whore in book!! Shit!!"