Tom Ronca’s Godzilla: The Naked God (Godzilla Without Mercy)

Dear Tom,

Thank you for sending me your script for "GODZILLA: THE NAKED GOD/ GODZILLA WITHOUT MERCY" -I hope I am not wrong in interpreting those to be the titles of your proposed script, as these are what is written all over the outside packaging, cover and elsewhere. There are other things written as well, but these strike me as good titles and the other expressions are harder to make out as you have very thoughtfully recycled pages from "Jugg Thugs" as material for wrapping, binding and printing your script.

I really enjoyed your script and feel that it is simultaneously a bold departure -a re-re-reboot -as well as a thoughtful tribute to the long tradition of Godzilla films. In fact, the fact that you so obviously know that tradition well and hold in the same high regard as many fans makes some of your more aggressive and outré choices somewhat baffling.

After Godzilla vanquishes Gigan he does things... these things are not traditional or canonical. Once a foe is dead, Godzilla typically just turns and walks into the ocean. He leaves. He does not take further action against an already dead enemy. Specifically, he does not rape or abuse their corpses.

It's true, as you say, that Godzilla is a monster. Yet, nowhere is it implied that he is this kind of monster. I really suggest that you change this scene. Maybe some music?

Likewise, it is true, as you say, that Godzilla is an organic being. An enormous organic being with proportionally large bladder and bowels. There is a reason previous films have not chosen to depict this in any great detail. There is no official treatment of how Godzilla disposes of his wastes, but it is certainly not “down each of King Ghidorah's severed necks, as promised."

Most of the scene in Paris is fine, as far as it goes. I do not think it is necessary to subtitle Godzilla and Mechagodzilla's roars in French. In any case, the French text you have provided appears to be Serge Gainsbourg lyrics anyway.

It is less clear why you think this whole exchange between the two is necessary. Why should being in France change either Godzilla or Mechagodzilla's well-established behaviors? They do not NEED to talk. Emphatically, Godzilla does not NEED to challenge Mechagodzilla to a "jerk-off contest on the Arc de Triomphe." Mechagodzilla is a ROBOT. What purpose does this rather sordid episode serve since Godzilla waits until Mechagodzilla "whips it out" and then "pounds his shiny faggot ass"? This scene seems both explicitly homoerotic and violently homophobic and more along the lines of Crusing than a traditional Godzilla film.

Another endemic problem I see with your treatment is equally serious, and, I fear, will prevent anyone from taking it seriously, indeed, even finishing it. I understand there is a conscious attempt here to recapture the naïveté and innocence of one's first encounter with Japanese film and perhaps even some effort is deliberately directed at reclaiming such stereotypes. Nonetheless, your treatment instead comes off as severely handicapped with respect to race. Specifically: it's totally racist.

Some of the peculiar constructions used in the early English dubs relate to the technical problem of matching Japanese lip motions with English words. This does not reflect the reality of how Japanese people talk. In reality, Japanese people are perfectly capable of speaking perfect, fluent English, or any other human language. There is no real reason for everyone to talk in a kind of crude, forced pidgin, particularly during the love scenes.

Furthermore, it seems as though the Japanese have no actual language of their own. For example, you have the newspapers headlines read: INVLADERS FLOM SPLACE! Furthermore, no Japanese News Agency refers to itself as “Slant-Eye Witness News,” and with good reason.

Were that the only problem with your treatment. Instead, in every scene Japanese people are described as either: 1) eating rice, 2) making cars or electronics or 3) "committing seppuku." Also, Tom, not all Japanese women are geishas, nor are geishas exactly what you seem to think they are. Your description is more like a Hooters with Kabuki make up. Geisha are not strippers. They are not ninjas. They are generally not robots. I know you have seen things, things that may have convinced you otherwise, but Wikipedia assures me this is so.

Likewise, Teppanyakki, though delicious, is only one mode of food preparation in Japan. The General’s suggestion that they “go to Benihana’s” makes no sense as Benihana’s is an American restaurant and is unlikely to have a branch in the cafeteria of a super-secret base. The wise-cracking Teppanyakki chef is indeed one of your most original (and least racist characters) in your script. From his monologue are we to suppose he is Mickey Curtis' character from Fires on the Plains? The one who ate people? Didn’t he die? In any case, I would like to suggest that relying on him narrate segues between scenes, though charming, is perhaps unnecessary

In a related vein, the ethnicity of the Xliens, as you describe them, seems problematic. I agree with that your characterization of them as "tiny, clever, cunning and deceptive" is consistent with their previous portrayal.

However, you go on to say that they are also "greedy, gold-loving, usurious, controlling CNN and the source of all wars." Tom, where are you going with this? You know what I am talking about. The Xliens always wear black, but you have them now wearing little tiny skullcaps. The alien salute is now "mazel tov." The fact that Mel Gibson is interested, I think, seals my point here.

I understand the well-established tradition of exploring ethnicity through science-fiction and fantasy you allude to. Yes, the Vulcans and Ferengi can be thought of as self-constructed projections of post-racist ethnic fantasy identity that reclaims bad stereotypes. The fact remains that the Xliens, as you describe them are the crudest and most objectionable of stereotypes, being basically a race of hamburglers from space that speak Hebrew.

I think it is highly appropriate that you include Mothra in the lineup. I assume you mean "Mothra" and not "Mothera" as it is typed in the treatment. Less appropriate seems to be your treatment of the twin fairy princesses. The fairy princesses are indeed, tiny and beautiful and go everywhere together. I have no doubt that they do indeed love each other. However, Tom, NOWHERE, NOWHERE, IN NO MOVIE are they portrayed as having an incestuous lesbian relationship. Yes, Tom, I have seen that yuri manga, but these fairy princesses are unrelated. The island they live on is called "Infant Island" not "Ultra-Lesbos." Mothra does not protect the island against "men with their weapons of war and their stupid penises." I cannot help but think that some confusion or synaptic misfire has clouded your writing with respect to these characters as I cannot make even sense of such passages as "Mothera has now entered the clitoral stage." The passages I can understand, such as the mechanism of the "activating twin fisting power" strike me as unfilmable now that Bob Guccione is dead and do not redeem your treatment of its problematic homophobia any more than Showgirls does Basic Instinct.

Finally, as a writer of little more than para-literary pastiche myself, I have no objection to mixing genres or "cross over" characters from another series, even a radically different one. And yet the deus ex machina of having Mork from Ork appear at the end seems totally forced and implausible. Never mind that you have him emerge from "an egg vomited out of the Fonz's interdimensional vagina." I know these characters have met before. I recall your previous script that explains the Fonz's "void orifice." I understand that it, and the repeated, rather shabby treatment of Mindy McConnell are a well-established part of M/M BDSM fan fiction. All these things speak against their inclusion in a Godzilla picture, much like your suggestion for an all King Crimson soundtrack. And, again, many of the characters in the sex abattoir of the fifth act are from Taxi, not Happy Days (please see attached chart).

These are, of course, simply my reactions to a fine and original script. However, I feel these are the logical and reasonable observations that any reader would make, any reader who is not already wearing a red and silver Orkian travel suit with a zip up egg mask. Perhaps this is where the genesis of and work shopping of some script elements has gone astray?



Your script for Transformers 3, however, is brilliant. I would not change a thing (well, maybe just one suggestion). I do not know if the people in charge of this profitable franchise can be interested in a script where the Transformers neither transform, nor speak, nor move, but I sincerely wish they could be. Perhaps if Jim Jarmusch were involved, rather than Michael Bay. As it is, your script represents a series of hour long monologues of the main characters complaining about their problems to semi-trucks, race cars and jet fighters that never respond. I was particularly moved by Shia Labeouf’s complaints about his mom, though, again, I sense the script way not be best served by the conventions of slash fiction here and threatens to trivialize the theme of incest.

Also, I really don’t understand what to make of this scene:

SHIA LABEOUF

Mom, I just want what every other kid has got. Some cool friends, going to parties, a regular hangover. Just to wake up and not be worried about anything other than a term paper. I’ve been running so long, Mom, so long, ever since I met these machines. I feel like I’m old, really old. Older than Dad. As old as they are.

SHIA’S MOM (Played by TOM RONCA)

I know honey. You have an extraordinary fate. A lot of lives are shaped into something, different, something amazing, something that other people will read about by sheer force of circumstance. But not you. You always would have seen a bit more. You would always have to go a bit further. Maybe father than anyone has ever gone. Trust me on this, you’re not missing much –one drunken kegger is much like another. Now rub this oatmeal on me and put the chew toy back in my mouth.



This is an intense scene, Tom, and very much more along the lines of the New Trangressive French Cinema than anything really legal. But it's very confusing. 

To begin with, when you write "Shia Labeouf" you mean his character, right? Because this is a movie script. It is not real.

Likewise, by "Shia Labeouf's Mom" you mean his character's mom, right? Because she keeps calling him Shia and "Shia Labeouf" call her "mom" and sometimes "Tom" and frequently "Tom Ronca." In fact, I think she refers to herself as "me, Tom Ronca, your hot mom," more than once.

I know this scene is important to you Tom, because you have described it many, many times to me. And also the altered pictures you sent.

I honestly think it’s a good script, Tom. I really think that were Shia Labeouf to read it, he might indeed be as impressed as you say he will. I think the pictures really detract from what I take it you are trying to say here. So my heartfelt advice is for you to stop sending them. Stop sending them, Tom. Stop. Let your script with its highly original elements and eloquent moments speak for itself and not be drowned out by endless of series of highly vocal autoerotic performances left as voicemails that end “That was for you, Shia, baby. Love, Mom.” Because I think those might be misinterpreted, much as your legal counsel has stressed. 

Anyway, thanks for sending your scripts. And merry xmas.

Van

Films Tom Sent Me

Resigned as I am to the impossibility of recovery, and isolated as I am from human contact on this shrug of an island, quarantined even from the other inmates, it is with great pleasure and gratitude this week that I have finally received the boon of another care package most thoughtfully sent by the most considerate of friends.

One of the greatest influences upon my soul has been the education provided by the direction of that living eye, Tom Ronca. Under Tom's tutelage I have seen many things, things that hurt, horrified, or destroyed me; terrifying, reprehensible, awful things; ghastly, appalling, obscene things; but things, things that always, above all, we must not fail to acknowledge, that Tom wanted to show me.

Though I am deprived of his company and direct influence, Tom continues to grace me with his vision, much as the voices in the heads of Poe's protagonists provide certain and continual guidance.

Has this guidance been for the better, or for certain ill that has rendered me from any moral sense like glue is mealed out of horse, leaving only a puddle of putrescent dross with no fiber, value or shape, a soulless broken husk, exiled from all humanity, damned for all eternity like some unflushable ejecta that endlessly circles the endless white enameled arctic maelstrom like an excremental Pym?

Cast your eyes upon his gifts to me, dear reader and draw what conclusions you can. Tom's taste's are impeccable, save for their peccant essence of total damnation. They also, you may notice, reflect certain enthusiasms, certain questionable zeals that Tom has lately been obsessed with, a solecism that we had all hoped would die once this man-like thing had been sedulously staked in his grave, yet which, much to the horror and alarm of all non-deviants, seems to have found companions in his total campaign against Nature and Human Values.

The Room (2003)

I try and watch this from time to time. I honestly do. But every time I do, I end up stopping it, turning on the lights and taking a good long look at myself instead and thinking: I don’t deserve this, I don’t.

Bronson (2008)

On the other hand, I totally deserve this.

Pontypool (2009)

This is how the world ends: in a sound booth, full of Glenlivet with Slavoj Zizek and bad high school French, about to be stomped to death by an obsolete theory of language.

Everybody Poops, Dies (1982)

Wikipedia tells me this is The Big Sleep of caveman detective fiction, featuring more on screen club based deaths than any other feature film. When Gigantor and his raiding party massacre another more advanced tribe, they discover pictograms that depict time travel –or so it seems. What follows is a rather Lacanian account of the scene of language and the invention of writing. Features the immortal line: “It you Gronk, you.”

Mork –ein Pedo?

This documentary aims to prove the rather implausible thesis that the mission of Mork of Mork and Mindy was actually the rather unsavory directive to impregnate underage human females. Given the clearly specified age of the character of Mindy McConnell, the line of reasoning from the actual series seems unclear and is not at all made clearer by the filmmaker’s decision to express most of it in song.

Though the songs are sometimes catchy, the ideas presented are never quite intelligible or credible and the low-fi, single set-up camera, the degraded tape quality and the always hooded figure on the Casio keyboard by themselves make this one of the most disturbing videos I have ever seen.

Make Love to My Face Without Using Your Hands

Not sure what country is this from, but I hope I never go there.

Mindy is Naked and My Sister

What if Mork and Mindy were brother and sister? Wouldn’t this ruin the whole premise of the series? Apparently not for these Japanese fans of the M&M BDSM community. Also, apparently it’s okay if Mindy doesn’t keep her arms and legs, but does somehow become a stripper. A humiliating, upsetting film. I haven’t got past the appearance of “the Eggmen.”

The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996)

I honestly puzzled over why Tom sent me this film for some time, until I found he had replaced one of the DVD audio tracks. At first, I thought Tom was groaning during certain scenes to make fun of the film. Once I realized what he was doing, I threw the DVD away and joined a Buddhist monastery. And now you know the rest of the story.

Play Mindy for Me (1982)

Of all the Mork and Mindy fan films this is easily the most well known and well produced. Indeed, its leads look disturbingly like Robin Williams and Pam Dawber, though the ludicrous amount of body hair and cocaine use depicted are clearly dispositive of an homage. The film is both lyrical and disturbing at times, most notably in the scene where a nude Mork forces Mindy at gunpoint to stare at a TV screen and describe what she thinks is happening on a scrambled Cinemax channel.

This film is notable in that it established most of the conventions for Orkan genitalia and discharge in the many, many films to come, films I would have never, ever heard of or voluntarily sought out or watched, if not for my friend, Tom Ronca.

How To Reach Me

Dear Tom,

ก.ท.ม. is indeed remote from L.A., I would beg you not to risk such an endeavor. You would have to travel very far up your own difficult and intransigent coast line, through the farthest land you have already visited, the land of potlach and salmon, to even farther, farther than Pytheas or Parry. In the white lands, it is said that it is so cold, pockets of moist air collapse into columns of standing fog that resemble hooded figures, that mere possibility and exhausted stars fall like ash from the skies and a man's heart stops beating, its sound stolen.

Here, at the summit of the globe, you will find the iced over and justly neglected ruins of Hitler's last fortress, done in a style that is monumental, overbearing, impregnable, illucid and non Euclidian, a sort of n-dimensional kitsch poorly copied out of badly understood alien forms, crossed by the transepts of UFO ports and the melted altazimuth mounts of various super vengeance weapons, all disintegrated and derealized by weapons of still more occult origin from Ag-Har-Ti, the capital of the hollow earth and the unsurpassable armory of its King, who shall remain nameless, but to whom all other kings and leaders are slaves.

Also, nearby the hardy community of Little Arctic Bavaria, settled by the survivors of the arctic conflict and denizens of the inner world who have developed a taste for harsh living, suffering or growing old, or could not or would not return : fitting subjects for Milton's poem.

It is recommended that you stop by Little Arctic Bavaria, particularly the Biergarten, where the ageless Sargent and his children make a number of fine and rewarding Bavarian comestibles. Here, too, some of the heavenly ways survive and if the Sargent thinks you a worthy traveller, you may taste a further draught of the “waters of paradise” courtesy of the children's mother. The way to the inner world is closed, so this may be your only opportunity. But do not mention it directly; it suffices to be a good heart who truly likes beer and children. Everyone else will wake up in the snow. Or not.

The way to the inner world, it must be emphasized, is closed. Do not stay overnight, as magnetic peculiarities produce extremely disturbing and vivid dreams, particularly of continually waking up and dreams of erotic bondage. These are particularly common among younger, more attractive travelers. It is important to remember that everything about the land of the Smoky God, particularly dreams of waking up there, are highly misleading. Do not talk about, or otherwise refer to your dreams, especially to anyone who was in them.

If you and your package somehow escape this remotest of circles, then you will still have to travel south, to negotiate through the Forbidden Kingdom, which is surrounded by a singular and impenetrable wall, whose 9,999 classes of bureaucrat have prepared an infinite maze whose complexity is that of heaven, and whose every citizen will place themselves before you as a guardian of a door you will never open.

Were you to somehow pass through these impenetrable doors, unscalable walls and mysterious foods that leave you hungry a half-hour later, then you would still have to pass through the spoiled Kingdom of ▣▨▩, whose inhabitants are all cursed lepers and whose twelve princesses you must win and marry in order to pass through the country, each disfigured in some terrible way and each afflicted with a different, even worse depravity within.

You must find a way to love each, well and truly for who they are: mutilated and evil, unlovable and unlovely, or never cross the kingdom, but remain in the province of the princesses' rejected affections, along with the other rejected suitors, whom the disease continually consumes, biting off a piece here and there, until they become all but unrecognizable to themselves, hardly able to intelligibly or distinctly pitch woo at all. To end up a suitor in this court is an unenviable fate, dressed up in soiled finery, whose cut cannot accommodate one's horrifically degraded symmetry, pawning what possessions one had for a tincture of parfum to try and abate to any degree, the deadly smell, or a piece of clay to replace a ravaged nose or missing lip, and then to compete with the barbaric yawping chorus of similarly debased and degraded half and quarter men, mumbling loud rumbles of stolen rhyme and gaudy praise through decaying throats and palates, all for a wretched, evil and ugly princess whose heart is long turned against love, in a land whose very soil seems soft rotten and unclean like the flesh of an enormous corpse.

Even if you should succeed in wooing, winning, and ultimately, truly loving each, fighting off army after army of failed and leprous suitors on diseased horseback, you would still have to then live with your bride in a fecund palace surrounded by over ripened groves, as husband and wife for 21 moons, until the birth of your child, who will stumble out like a fetid spoiled coconut and whose death in the river will end the curse and withdraw the venom from the rivers. And you must do this twelve times.

Then you would still have to pass through Lan Na, the land of a thousand rice fields, the Kingdom of my forebears. This will require due obeisance requiring at least 502 head of cattle, 1,400 pigs, 678,000 chicken and eggs, 1,000,897 sacks of rice, 302 bolts of finest silk, several wagons of finest fruit, at least 1,000 fine birds and peacocks of a musical nature, 134 barrels of salted fish, no less than 103 comely and accommodating slaves and Universal Soldier 3 -on VHS.

From there, it is only a week's journey or so to the capital, here, where I will welcome you and your gifts, Venetian, in the highest and most appropriate manner.

As you will no doubt die here, I will erect a splendid plaza in your memory, that curves in a spiral as long as your journey has been, done in gold and ivory, recounting your travails in your journey here. At the center of this structure will be your tomb, where I will select the comeliest and most talented of girl-slaves to lie with your body each night to the accompaniment of fine music.

No visitor shall escape the memorial, however, just as you could not escape your own death.


Or, you could just send your package to the US Post Office.