The King of the Monsters Begins His Purple Reign

Image courtesy of Kaiju No. 14.

If a man is considered guilty

For [putting fake director quotes in official Godzilla books]

Then gimme the electric chair

For all my future crimes, oh

Electric chair

-- Prince, "Batdance"

I firmly believe the Internet should talk about Hideaki Anno less (not more), but this bit of goony nonsense was too amusing to pass up. Last year, an "official" Godzilla book was released, which to this day I've never seen. Until recently, all I knew about it is that one of the authors promised some never-before-seen storyboards (or whatever), upon which a Twitter user pointed out that these would-be exclusives had already been published for years. Other than that, I didn't know much else.

That was until yesterday when I discovered that this "official" tome published an all-time howler, which you can see in the image above. Although I wasn't aware of it at the time, a fake quote attributed to Shin Godzilla (2016) director Hideaki Anno was making the rounds online at the time of the film's release, in which the auteur supposedly named Prince as an inspiration for his movie.

An example can be found here, but, as you can very easily see, the alleged quote was quickly debunked in the comments. So how did it get past our "masterclass" authors and into an official history of the Godzilla series?

That's a great question, but, if past is prologue, I'm afraid we won't get any satisfactory answers. Had this blunder occurred in some other book, either the aforementioned authors themselves or their social-media mouthpieces would be flogging it for years, using it as a cudgel to discredit the poor, duped, disgraced journalist and as proof that only a select few self-appointed experts should cover the genre.

To illustrate this point, another writer who tackled Ishiro Honda in his own biography got put through the ringer for a string of silly typos ("eye-pooping" being the most eye-popping example), which have been used ever since to discredit him and his research. The first Honda book does contain its share of flaws, but I'm pretty sure it didn't contain any fake quotes about how the director got the idea for the film while spinning some Paul Anka records.

Will the stench of this "Purple Rain" gag follow our heroic book authors and DVD commentators the same way that "eye-pooping" has followed the embattled first Honda biographer? Pfft! Who are we kidding? The reaction to the revelation of this gaffe on social media was mostly muted, and folks have already moved on to more pressing topics, like how Rental Family (2025) is pure cinema. 

Happily, this is something we can correct ourselves. Remember the laziness and sloppiness on display here, and make future book-purchasing decisions accordingly.