ART OF EUROPE
Godzilla Attacks Hong Kong
(Sets Were Cheaper There)
China Reuters Associated Press | 02.07.03
HONG KONG. In what residents could only describe as "the worst attack by bipedal dinosaurs drunk on their own power in, well, 5½ years" Godzilla, the much-feared and oft-reviled mutant dinosaur whom mis-macro-managing Japanese bankers have traditionally blamed for all their country's economic and infrastructural woes, attacked Hong Kong this morning.
"I just don't get it," said Secretary of I-Own-This-Town Anthony Leung. "Godzilla only attacks Japan. Like Kim Jong-Il, but with better hair."
Japanese scientists agreed. We asked them all. One by one. They all agreed. Even the ones who aren't in Japan right now.
But where the consensus ends is the question of motive. Theories vary, some claiming that Godzilla had simply gotten lost after re-emerging from his subaquaeous slumber in the middle of the South Pacific, subsequently vaporising with his mega-lightning death ray breath any and all he tried to get directions off of, others claiming he had deliberately attacked Hong Kong mistaking it for King Kong, having heard its name said wrong. Some even postulate that Godzilla, having a brain the size of a walnut, went to Hong Kong for the music.
But the evidence most strongly supports what Hong Kong cryptoherpetologist Johnny Lam has dubbed the "cheap sound stage scenario."
"Film sets, camera rentals, light rentals, crew hirings and castings, film processing, bagels and coffee, those little monogrammed folding chairs for the director, megaphones, lightmeters ... all cost far less in Hong Kong than in Japan," said Lam. "Obviously the cost-to-profit ratio is far more attractive to filmmakers in Hong Kong than in Tokyo or Osaka, or, if they have other cities in Japan, than in any of them. Please come make movies here."
"And no," he added. "I don't have herpes."
"It's more than just the cost of bagels," added Aaron Mok, a local Production Manager and amateur cryptoherpetologist, who also doesn't have herpes, but would be interested in a girl, any girl, who would like to give it to him. "Most people don't realise it, but , or Chinese Southerners, are normally shorter than Japanese. Building cheap, disposable sets to scale requires less in the way of raw materials, and can save a B-movie filmmaker a lot of money in the long run. Please come make movies here."
"And of course craft service is cheaper," he went on, "because Cantonese'll eat anything. And rubber suits for actors are cheaper, too, because we can recycle them from the billions of condoms Chinese authorities produce every year, but that Chinese girls will never let you use. And rent is cheaper, because people here can sleep in boats, and we aren't dirty like Shenzhen because people here scrubbed their toilets way before SARS and ... Please come make movies here."