Hier etwas aus der LA Times vom 02.05.2007 zum Film "Giant Monsters attack Japan":
The 'South Park' guys going for a G? Monstrous!
A G-rated film from the creators of "South Park"?
J.F. Lawton was 6 years old when he saw the James Bond film "You Only Live Twice" (screenplay by Roald Dahl!) in 1967. But the film's peek at an exotic Japanese culture, with its kimonoed beauties and training camps full of stealth warriors, had him hooked. Young Lawton began devouring books about Japan, studying martial arts and, inevitably, delving into the antagonistic latex world of Rodan, Mothra and Godzilla.
Thirty-nine years later that Nipponphilia paid off. His original comic screenplay, "Giant Monsters Attack Japan!," is a deadpan pastiche of a variety of Japanese pop cultural forms, icons and fetishes. Ninjas, samurai, cutesy mini-monsters, giant robots and the country's most enduring export, city-stomping mega-monsters played by men in rubber suits, all make appearances in an amusing story about an 8-year-old American boy obsessed with Japanese pop culture who moves to Tokyo when his widowed father is transferred there for work.
Lawton plays all of these clichéd cultural inventions straight, as actual elements of a modern Japanese society that has long since made peace with its little monster problem. And in keeping with the original films' goofy innocence, Lawton always intended the film to engage children at a PG or even G level, with the filmmakers forgoing CGI for the old-school technique of nothing but a sculpted bodysuit and a committed actor.
"I'm not sure exactly where the ratings board is on monster-to-monster violence, what their reaction is to men in rubber suits wrestling but never getting hurt," Lawton says, laughing.
Well, if there's a filmmaking pair that can get imaginative feedback from the ratings board, it's Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who have signed on to direct and produce "Giant Monsters!" Parker and Stone have desecrated everyone and everything in the crudest ways possible in "South Park," its film treatment "South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut" and their last feature, "Team America: World Police." And Parker wrote and directed the four-quadrant slam-dunks "Orgazmo" and "Cannibal! The Musical," so it's not immediately obvious why this is a perfect match.
"It's funny, Trey and Matt said that they felt that they could do a G movie or a PG movie easier than they could a PG-13, because it's their nature to push an issue," says Lawton, pointing out that as filthy as some of their material is, there is still a childlike (or childish, depending) quality.
When Lawton ("Pretty Woman," "Under Siege," the Japan-set "The Hunted") sent out his screenplay, he appended a one-page primer on the ubiquity of Japanese pop culture in America (see: anime, manga, Pokemon, horror remakes, etc.). He also scattered throughout his pages digital color photos of anime characters, giant robots and classic monsters.
"I knew that I was dealing with a lot of imagery that is very familiar to any 14-year-old kid who's into anime and reading manga and all that, but might not be obvious to a studio executive," he says.
Nickelodeon and Paramount — or their younger executives, anyway — were indeed hip to Lawton's script, especially once Stone and Parker got excited by its possibilities. Shooting will have to wait until the "South Park" creators have finished the current season of their show and then direct the teen comedy "My All-American," written by Jeff Roda.
"I was terrified when I wrote it that people would say, 'OK, great, we'll do this and we're gonna CGI all the monsters,' " Lawton says. "And Matt and Trey want to do it with guys in rubber suits, which is what it needs to be. There's something really special about that."
Quelle: www.spscriptorium.com
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