Interview with Keith of "S.V."

Keith runs a site which shall go unnamed, but what he does is basicaly preserve lots of material which is most probrably destroyed by now. For those of you who know who I am talking about, here is my interview with this, one of the more outstanding of fans...

1. How long have you been a Godzilla Fan?

Since I first saw a Godzilla movie in 1977. I was ten at the time.

2. Can you remember your first experience with kaiju, specifically Japanese kaiju?

Well I was born in Germany and we lived in a small farm town. Very few people had cards and there was no theatre in town (or next few over). Only the bigger cities had theatres at the time. So everything I knew came from TV (I think there was maybe two channels) and one would show the Universal horror movies from time to time. The closest to kaiju I got was seeing the "Creature From The Black Lagoon". When we moved to the states I finally was able tog et to a theatre and saw the first "King Kong" remake. I know the movie gets panned now but at the time it was fantastic to me. Shortly after a while looking in the newspaper movie ads I was a strange sight: two monsters fighting each other atop the World Trade Center! This of course was Godzilla vs. Megalon (yes I had the comic and yes like many others I basically destroyed it). When I saw it I can remember thinking how off it was that there was a lot of Japanese people in it and what were they all doing in New York? Of course I finally figured out when the credits rolled that the two monsters were actually not going to right on the WTC, talk about a disappointment! So Kong remained my favorite until I saw "Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla", which in the paper was advertised as "Godzilla vs. Cosmic Monster"! Man I was confused; I thought they were different movies! To me there was just no way not to be a Godzilla fan after seeing Mechagodzilla, he was just too cool.

3. From what we have conversed of, you have an interesting collection. Could you describe it a little to our readers?

I like to collect the diorama sets. I have the complete Yuji Sakai diorama series now that thankfully (hint-hint) was able to point out to me the last one I needed - the "Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah" one from the first series. Other than that I have the complete Bandai Polystone diorama set some other various dioramas and lots of books from Japan. My favorite would be the Sakai Concept Works "Ka-Ma-E" Meltdown Godzilla because it was so difficult to obtain. Oh and of course lots of DVDs and VHS tapes.

4. You make products for fans in the DVD format. While some material is from the R2 DVDs, how did you get the more rare material like the TV spots for, "Godzilla vs. Cosmic Monsters" or the double feature trailer for "War of the Gargantuas/Monster Zero"?

All of my rare stuff comes from people I have traded with in the early days of the internet and fanzines. Lots of good traders out there!

5. Thanks to you, the aforementioned rare materials (which may not even exist anymore as original material like film) will be preserved. Would you say that you may have made kaiju history?

Not even close - I will leave that to actual people who help clear up discrepancies and myths in the fandom. People like August Ragone, Keith Aiken, and James Ballard (I am sure there are others out there too) who participate in the forums and provide the blogs (and even write books for us!) they are the fountains of information that make kaiju history. Even you with this site and Dan of the Kaiju Movie Review do way more for the fans than I go. I just get happy when I hear from someone that they saw a movie as a kid, they could not find it anywhere and can’t wait to share watching it with their kids, that’s simply what I want to provide.

6. Personally made products play a big role in the kaiju fandom’s history in the 90’s. Did you play a part of this? Did you buy any fan made products and could you please tell of the quality?

I started making some of my own stuff available around 1999. I got started because I felt I could do a better job than some of the stuff that was out there - I thought a lot of fans were getting ripped off by some of the things I had gotten that were supposed to be "top quality". Of course this did not apply to all sellers there was really good stuff out there too.

7. How is business right now?

Just fine, how I like it: not too busy. This is only a side thing for me and I mostly like doing it as a hobby and keeping it in that perspective. I try to keep a fair price for the fan and give them as good quality as I possibly can.

8. What equipment do you use to make the discs?

Some hardware and software from Canopus (now Grass Valley), software from Adobe - these things I use to edit and create my project. I use only Verbatim discs and they are printed using a "modified to print" Canon printer.

9. Anything else could you add for our readers?

Just to thank everyone who has purchased from me and hopefully they are pleases with what they got. And many thanks to all the great people I have talked to and met through Godzilla.