Tsutomu Kitagawa +others in S.Carolina MARCH 2017

[Benjamin Haines]

This almost flew completely under my radar. I'm glad I randomly clicked my old bookmark for this convention from four years back.

http://madmonster.com/events/carolina2017/index.php

The 2017 Mad Monster Party Carolina will take place in Rock Hill, South Carolina at The Hood Center on the weekend of March 24-26, just two weeks from now. Among the many noteworthy guests will be Tsutomu Kitagawa (Godzilla of the Millennium Series, sans GMK), Linda Miller (King Kong Escapes, The Green Slime), and Bin Furuya (the original Ultraman).

The website does not currently have a schedule so it's unclear who among them will be present on which days. When the Mad Monster Party was in Charlotte, North Carolina , I only went on that Sunday because that was the only day that Haruo Nakajima was there. He had a Q&A panel back then and there's no indication on the website if any of them will have one this time. I'll definitely try to make it out to see those three if I can. I figured some other fans on here would want to know about this since it's not often that we get events like this in the South.


*****
Edited with the updated guest list. Haruo Nakajima was originally featured on the website this year but he has since been replaced with Tsutomu Kitagawa.

[Benjamin Haines]

I'm not sure why exactly but Haruo Nakajima has been removed from Mad Monster Party's guest page and replaced with Tsutomu Kitagawa. Linda Miller and Bin Furuya are still listed.

The website also now has a complete schedule of the weekend's events. Kitagawa, Miller, and Furuya will participate in a Toho panel together on Saturday, March 25 at 2:30pm. Additionally, Kitagawa and Furuya will each hold their own back-to-back photo ops with attendees, spaced 15 minutes apart, on Friday at 9:00pm, Saturday at 3:45pm, and Sunday at 2:30pm.

[Benjamin Haines]

I went to the Mad Monster Party yesterday. Both Bin Furuya and Linda Miller had to cancel their appearances at the last minute but it was great to see Tsutomu Kitagawa there. He had a Q&A panel with a translator and they took some questions from the crowd. He talked about how playing King Ghidorah in Rebirth of Mothra 3 was much harder than any of his performances as Godzilla. That Ghidorah suit weighed 200 kg (440 lbs) and took about 20 people to operate, with Kitagawa moving the legs while holding onto two vertical handle bars inside the suit's chest area. Before they started shooting, everyone involved in operating Ghidorah would meet to work out their choreography.

Kitagawa talked about how he tried to express Godzilla's intent to the audience. He never saw Godzilla as trying to kill people specifically but that he was lashing out more broadly. When considering why Godzilla was in a particular place or situation, Kitagawa thought that he would be trying to get to a more peaceful place. He wanted to make the audience sympathize with Godzilla.

One kid thanked Kitagawa for killing Zilla in Final Wars, which draw a lot of laughs, and then asked him what he thought of Shin Godzilla. Kitagawa thought it was scary. He said that his favorite movie to work on was Godzilla: Final Wars because of how freely he could move in that suit, which only required two other people to operate, one lifting the tail by wire and the other moving the mouth by radio control.

Kitagawa had a table situated in the middle of the main corridor with lots of Godzilla memorabilia. Folks paying for his autograph could get it on one of several glossy photos of his tokusatsu characters available at the table but I opted to have him sign the insert of my Godzilla 2000 DVD, which was the first DVD I ever owned.

[klen7]

Awesome. very cool