VLVL(5) At the Movies and on the Tube

[Dave Monroe]

p. 65 "Takeshi"    Pynchon is fond of transplanting
characters from one novel to another. Takeshi Fumimoto
is a perfect example. He made his first appearance as
a bit player in Gravity's Rainbow, where he was one of
a pair of wacky kamikaze pilots. His first name is
almost surely borrowed from Takashi Shimura, the star
of Godzilla -- a film referenced in the very same
sentence, when Zoyd plays the Godzilla theme music to
accompany Takeshi's first appearance. (Pynchon seems
to have been thinking about this beast for some time:
There's a boat named Godzilla II in The Crying of Lot
49 -- and the word is that he loves Japanese horror
flicks. In fact, at one point rumor had it that he was
writing a book with Mothra as a major character.)

http://www.mindspring.com/~shadow88/chapter5.htm

Ever since the appearance of Thomas Pynchon's epic,
mind-bending Gravity's Rainbow (1973), rumors have
circulated among the faithful that the elusive author
was working on two new projects: a novel about
Japanese monster movies and one dealing with the 18th
century drawing of the Mason-Dixon line between the
(then) colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Fragments of a Godzilla-like episode indeed appeared
in Pynchon's Vineland (1990), and now here comes a
real monster: Mason & Dixon ....

http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1101970505-137632,00.html

See, not to mention hear ...

http://www.godzillamonstermusic.com/G8055.htm

http://www.godzillamonstermusic.com/G8056.htm

http://www.godzillamonstermusic.com/KICS836.htm

http://www.dalekempire.com/GodzillaSongBook.html

I've a Japanese 2-CD set of all the classic Toho sound
effects as well, inc. the netire final Monster Island
battle sequence from Destroy All Monsters (1968).  And
see in general, e.g., ...

http://www.godzilla.co.jp/

http://www.stomptokyo.com/genre-index.html#godzilla

http://www.stomptokyo.com/godzillatemple/index2.htm

Not to mention ...

http://www.kaiju.com/

> > Zoyd plays the "main title theme from "Godzilla,
> > King of the Monsters (1956)" ...

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