Godzilla (1998)

Usually when I post about movie soundtracks on the site I usually bring up good music but today will be a little different. I’m going to take a dump (a monster-sized dump) on 1998’s American produced shitfest Godzilla. Because that movie hasn’t been criticized and reviled enough.

There really is no other huge colossal fuck-up for a summer movie than the American Godzilla. I hated every single frame of that movie; every decision and every stinkin’ detail. Even the craft service table was just wrong! They managed to cast French actor Jean Reno as the French scientist (was he a scientist?) because he was probably the only French actor any American simpleton would know at the time but Reno is actually Spanish and didn’t move to France until he was 17!

I could write for days at how truly awful 1998 Godzilla is. It’s as if French Stewart and Pauly Shore somehow had a baby and that baby actually caused syphilis to anyone who touched it. I was working at the movie theatre at the time and even then I didn’t have any desire to see Godzilla that summer because of the promotional material we saw.

Quick story about Godzilla that I’d like to share with you: I was 20 that summer and somehow moved up the ranks to actually managing that shitty 5-plex. I don’t know what’s worse, that the owner couldn’t get a more responsible adult to run his dive of a theatre or that he let me interview, hire and manage teenagers just a few years younger than myself! But anyway, I loved that job and took it somewhat seriously. The owner had a friend, this old-timer—geezer really—as the projectionist and the man was totally inept at this easy job. I was a projectionist before being the manager and I happened to excel at it. Why this old coot couldn’t was a question for the ages. So many movies started out of focus, out of frame, or had huge scratches on the film after a short while. The man was a menace to the industry. Anyway, knowing what I know about this idiot, I forced myself to watch Godzilla after-hours the night before it opened to make sure that the old fart spliced the reels together adequately. The problem was, being that Godzilla was the tentpole feature of that summer we booked two screenings of it. So I could only watch one print really unless I should bounce from one theatre to another. In hindsight I should’ve done that because the print I watched was a-ok. The other one had a reel spliced in backwards. Meaning, that sometime in the middle of the movie, the film was reversed and had no soundtrack. The moron projectionist had to race up to the booth, cut the film and fix the print, losing time and angering customers. And that wasn’t the first time he’s made that mistake either. Holy shitballs, that guy was the worst.

Anyway, so you can see I have zero love for ’98 Godzilla and nothing but bitter memories. But today I wanted to bring up the awful soundtrack to this abomination and how they couldn’t even get that shit right. I’m a huge Led Zeppelin fan and could easily place Jimmy Page as my top 5 favorite guitarists. Back in the late 90s he was revitalized somewhat by teaming up with Robert Plant to make 2 successful albums. So it was a nice time to be a Led Zeppelin fan…except when he teamed up with Puff Daddy for the soundtrack. I guess Puff Daddy (back then he was Puff Daddy, then changed it to P. Diddy and then changed it again to just Diddy and now I think he’s panhandling to the name of Sean Combs) was somewhat successful back then—I’m sorry but Hip-Hop isn’t much my thang—but he was more or less the Kanye West of the late 90s. Never mind that he should do as many projects that he wants being a superstar at the time but doing a soundtrack for a crappy monster movie was a weird choice. And having his mediocre rhymes over the loop of “Kashmir’s” guitar and string riff is a huge slap in the face as far as I’m concerned. He almost ruined “Kashmir” for millions of fans. It’s sonic vomit and I shouldn’t even have brought it up. I’m sorry.

Speaking of sorry, another notable piece of wretched abominations is the Wallflower’s paint-by-numbers lazy cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes.” Remember the Wallflowers? They had that one decent album in 1996 and haven’t sold dick since. I just looked them up to see if they’re still around and they are shockingly. I guess having a famous musician father doesn’t always help. Now “Heroes” has been covered ad infinitum by a slew of mediocre bands over the years and that’s a shame. It’s one hell of a song sure, but I’m very sick of hearing that one particular tune being covered and shit on. Seriously, try another Bowie song please. The man only has 3 dozen other terrific songs to choose from. But anyway, why that song happened to be on the Godzilla soundtrack is another head-scratcher. Even the Wallflowers look dreadfully bored playing it in the music video.

The rest of the soundtrack reads like a lame excuse to have as much late 90s representation as possible. With the exception of Foo Fighters, Green Day, Rage Against the Machine most of the bands are has-beens or fell into obscurity like The Wallflowers and Puffy Dad or Piss Diddy or whatever his stupid name was/is: Silverchair, Ben Folds Five, Days of the New, and Fuel. Suffice to say, I didn’t own a copy of the Godzilla soundtrack. I wouldn’t even look at it. I lost friends because they owned a copy. Just stopped talking to them or return their calls. If one of my daughters happened to buy a used CD of it, I would disown them. It pains me that I have these two videos in my YouTube history now.