Original subtitles

Did you ever hear of Kong?

- King Kong was a guy I rented an apartment from

in Philadelphia while I was in college.

And he was really, really unpleasant.

We called him King Kong

because he was really big and he smelled bad,

but the other King Kong, the one I'm talking about,

is an icon.

- King Kong is a sadly and horribly misunderstood

love-sick gorilla.

- King Kong is one of the biggest on-screen

creatures, beast, in movie history, I have to say.

He's awesome.

- He is, not only just a monster

who frightened moviegoers, but he paved the way

for a lot of filmmakers to expand their imaginations.

- King Kong is the icon of an entire

three or four generations of monster lovers.

- "King Kong" was the firs movie

that I remember seeing as a child

where you just had no idea how they did it.

- For me it's a very powerful thing,

it's about the time in my life when I first saw "King Kong",

it's about the inspiration,

how it was one of the many things

that led me to want to make movies like this

and be involved in movies like this.

- Look, Kong's the eight wonder of the world.

And there's no getting rid of him either.

He'll come keep on coming back and coming back,

like the best monsters do.

- Anybody who hears the name King Kong gets excited.

He's our hero.

- "King Kong" is still the greatest movie ever made,

and I would watch it right now if you wanna spool it,

because it is just a fantastic piece of work

that just cannot be matched.

- I saw "King Kong" for the first time

on Million Dollar Movie, on the first Monday that it was on.

They would run at 7:30 and 9:30, I think.

- At Million Dollar Movie they would show

the same film twice a day,

and three times on Saturday, three times on Sunday.

And the first film in the Million Dollar Movie series

was "King Kong".

- And we were asleep, my brother and I,

and my father, who is a very serious man,

if you don't do sports you don't exist kind of,

isn't into fantasy or anything like that,

came into our bedroom, woke us up,

which is unheard of without the house

was on fire or something,

and took us into the living room where he had this tiny TV,

and he said, "This is the greatest movie ever made".

- And it was one of those films

that my parents were talking about during the day.

"Oh, 'King Kong' is on tonight", right?

And this is back in the day before you could

get the home DVDs and whatnot.

So when something was on TV

you catch it or you miss it, right?

So it was an event.

"King Kong" on TV was an event.

- I remember my mom sitting down and watching it with me,

like saying, like, "You're gonna love this movie!",

'cause she knew I was like a monster kid.

And I also remember her drinking a lot.

It just came to me.

- I was hooked.

I mean, I watched it every night.

I couldn't watch both showings because I had to go to bed.

- And on weekends they would show it three times on Saturday

and three times on Sunday,

so you could watch it 16 times when it was on.

And I don't know if I watch it 16 times.

- I watched every single showing.

And the second movie in the Million Dollar Movie

was "King Kong" again.

It was so popular they held it over for the second week,

and I watched all of those.

So, in a very short time

I'd seen "King Kong" almost 40 times.

- "Channel 56" was a UHF channel,

and two generations just went, "What?"

And you were the envy of the neighborhood

if you had a really good picture on Channel 56.

And every Saturday they had the Saturday Night

Channel 56 creature double feature.

'Cause someone knew the difference

between "Beast with the Million Eyes" and "Frankenstein".

Someone knew that there were levels of quality.

When it was time for a really good movie

they would make a big deal of it,

and one of the first ones I saw was "King Kong".

Thursday afternoon,

see three of the screen's greatest thrillers,

starting at 1:00 with the greatest of them all.

- The only way I ever saw "King Kong"

was on Thanksgiving Day when I think it was WPIX in New York

would air "King Kong", "Mighty Joe Young"

and then "Son of Kong".

And I would just live and die every day,

every Thanksgiving Day, to see these movies,

to try to rush through Thanksgiving dinner

with my parents, my grandparents,

and sneak away into the TV room

and try to catch one of the giant gorilla movies.

And God forbid I'm having Thanksgiving

at my grandparents house and they got a lousy TV

and it just, that would destroy the whole year for me.

- We actually had a school field trip to go see "King Kong".

So we went to a full movie theater,

I got to see it on the big screen,

it was my first experience in the like 1970 ...

Like, before "Star Wars", if I remember.

So it was like 1975 or something like that.

That was really, really uber cool.

- It's such and effect on you,

'cause I've never seen anything like that in my life.

And my dad, he kept saying, "I have no idea how it's done.

"I don't know how they got to find a guy that big".

'Cause my dad was an idiot.

- Every single frame goes into your psyche when you see it

because you're just so in awe of what you're seeing.

- It was actually my first introduction

to science fiction and fantasy.

I lived in a small town in Arizona,

and we moved to a bigger town, Phoenix,

and I went to junior high

and one of the teachers brought in "King Kong" on 16 mm,

started showing it at lunch.

So it was my introduction to stop-motion,

photography, backstairs score.

I mean, everything.

It was just a fantastic deal.

That was my introduction to "King Kong",

and to me it was like the greatest thing in the world.

- I think everybody remembers

the first time they saw "King Kong".

- I'm going up and make the greatest picture in the world.

Something that nobody's ever seen or heard of.

- Well, "King Kong" tells the story

of an excentric movie producer named Carl Denham.

- A ruthless filmmaker who is willing to do anything

and exploit anyone.

- So off they go, and his first problem is

he has to have a female star,

the public likes a female face, a beautiful face.

And he does, he comes across the most beautiful face.

- It's money and adventure and fame.

It's the thrill of a lifetime.

And a long sea voyage starts

at six 'o clock tomorrow morning.

- And he says, "Come on, we're gonna get on a boat,

"and I've heard about this island".

An incredible map that tells of a mysterious island

where a beast god actually rules.

- "Now, we're gonna go to this island,

"we're gonna make a movie that's gonna be fantastic,

"and I want you to be in it".

And with no script to prove or whatsoever

she decides, "Fine, I'll venture on this boat full of men

"out to the middle of the ocean".

- It's an adventure, the adventure of a lifetime,

of going out and, oddly enough,

in search of making the best movie in the world.

- And they find a bunch of prehistoric natives

who worship this great Kong.

- And so they all load up,

and he just starts randomly shooting.

It's like John Cassavetes, there's no firm script.

- What he doesn't realize is on this island

lives this creature that the natives have worshiped.

- This thing, it's not a natural disaster,

it's not the result of atomic mutation.

It's this cultural iconic thing

in the life of this civilization

that we don't even know exist.

- The island itself is the lost continent, you know?

It's preserved prehistoric times, prehistoric history.

- The natives, as a way of saying hello,

strap the actress to a pole.

Kong!

Kong!

- They find out what King Kong actually is,

he's actually a gigantic prehistoric ape.

- And, oh my gosh, here comes this terrifying scene

where you hear him coming, and it's like,

"Oh, he's bigger than I thought".

And poor little Fay Wray, you know, with the,

with the back and the forth, and the back and the forth,

and then, oh!

And the dramatic, and the "Ah!"

I was in love with her immediately.

- And rather than have a snack right there, Kong takes her.

- And so of course he becomes enamored

with this beautiful blonde.

- 'Cause all he had eaten before that

was dark hair native girls.

- I think Kong sees Ann as this beautiful,

unusual, you know, strange, inexplicable treasure.

It's just, he's just never seen anything like this,

this fair skin blonde creature.

It fascinates him.

- The captain of the boat,

who is then falling in love with her,

becomes a big rescue mission.

- It's impossible to describe the horror

of the wildlife on this island.

There's no like a house cat,

everything is the size of a Buick.

- So you have this island with this giant gorilla,

and there's dinosaurs too.

"Oh, what the heck. Put them in".

- Dinosaurs come around, never been seen my mankind,

specially as it's written history.

They throw a couple of gas bombs at it and they're like,

"Ah, look at that thing. Let's keep going".

- It just doesn't stop.

You're going to Brontosaurus land

and you're going to Tyrannosaurus Rex land,

and you're going to this Plesiosaur.

- And other creatures kind of want her

because she's little and shiny.

And Kong has to like fight them off, he's protecting her.

And we get a feeling that he really likes her.

- When Kong has won the girl

and he see's he's got Ann Darrow up on his lair.

- Not only is he not yet eating her,

he's kind of keeping her over on a shelf

he has in the jungle.

He's kind of keeping her like a knickknack,

like, "Wow, she's got a pretty dress on".

She's momentarily, she stopped screaming.

- It's this moment when you see that

this is actually a thinking creature.

I think it's the first time we say,

"Wait, he's not a monster, he's something else".

And that for me, I think it's the most serious moment.

- I remember him,

I remember him having his hand and doing this,

which as a child went "pheew", you know?

As a college student "Prrrr.

"What did he just do?"

- And he's just ready to sit down and enjoy his prize,

and the pterodactyl comes.

- Kong is having a really, really frustrating day.

And the pterodactyl is really the,

that's just like, "Dammit!

"Please!"

- The guys realize that to attract the monster

they'll get the girl and the monster will follow the girl.

- But we've got something he wants.

- The producer, Denham, has this wild idea

of taking the most powerful creature on Earth

back to New York with very disastrous results.

- Carl Denham pick up a gas bomb and King Kong goes on it.

He can't believe all that, but then Carl Denham, he says,

"You know, we're gonna take him back to civilization".

- And the whole world will pay to see this!

- "We're millionaires, boys!"

- I'll share it with all of you!

- And you know he's gonna get rid of those guys,

he didn't care.

- It's like, I will believe a giant gorilla.

I will believe that you can somehow

get him across the ocean without drowning him,

and then you can run a mock in New York.

I do not believe a producer will just offer out

profit participation willy-nilly like that.

- Ladies and gentlemen, look at Kong,

the eight wonder of the world!

- The curtain goes up and there is Kong,

and the flash bolts starts flashing and he freaks out,

he breaks his chains and he escapes.

Had he not broken his chains,

what was the show?

- I'm assuming there was a huge warmup,

with dancers and a band, you know,

Tony Dorsey, you know, who knows what they had.

- And, of course, you can never control a wild animal,

even though everybody thinks that they can.

- Kong breaks lose and is rampaging through the city.

And in his panic, 'cause New York City is scary.

- He's in a strange world he doesn't know.

He has no idea what's going on.

They chained him up, they've done all this crap to him.

So, I don't blame him for turning down the city,

I think I would too.

- Goes through New York looking for his long-lost love.

Climbs up to the top of the building.

- And there he is trapped.

- And then they send planes to get him down.

And the planes shoot him down and he falls.

Sadly, he's dead on the sidewalk.

And Mr. Filmmaker decides he'll dispense some wisdom.

- Well, Denham, the airplanes got him.

- Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes,

it was beauty killed the beast.

- And the story is a perfect circle.

The old Arabian proverb

written by that old Arabian Meerian Cooper

that opens the film,

and the fable unfolds in front of you.

All these adventures have an amazing imagery,

this amazing quest.

Kong's downfall, and it all works back around,

basically to the opening proverb begin

with the famous final line.

- Kong was, for all intends and purposes,

an original screenplay.

- So I'm talking about the origin of the whole story,

and I think you can credit Willis O'Brien,

Jules Verne a little bit, obviously,

maybe Marien C. Cooper read all of this stuff

and wanted the giant gorilla because of that.

We know Willis O'Brien made contributions,

but the person who's never been vindicated

on the contributions to "King Kong" is Edgar Wallace.

Edgar Wallace, if you don't know, is probably

the most prolific mystery writer that ever lived,

and largely his stuff is mystery thrillers.

But in a lot of his mystery thrillers, guess what,

you find poison gas.

Those gas bombs, I'm the only one saying it,

but those gas bombs in "King Kong" is Edgar Wallace.

- Merian Cooper will later say that

at least 90% of the film screenplay was Ruth Rose's work.

There were still little bits of James Creelman's screenplay,

there were little bits of Edgar Wallace,

and probably a few bits that Cooper himself had thrown in,

but he said, mostly it was Ruth Rose.

So, and that's yet another piece of the puzzle.

They truly caught lightning in a bottle for "Kong".

- Because it's a crazy notion,

it's just the craziest call of enemies, you know,

"we're gonna make up this movie about a giant gorilla

"that fights a squadron of airplanes

"on top of the Empire State building".

And it's 1933, it's impossible how they got it done.

And I think the creation of "King Kong"

is almost as impossible as the actual

strangest story ever conceived by man, "King Kong" himself.

- It's one of those rare moments in artistic endeavor

when everything was right where it needed to be

at the right time,

and the result is the all-time classic that we have now.

- I mean, Cooper was a real nation hero.

I mean, he flew, he got blown out on a plane

and burned real bad.

I mean, he and Schoedsack were really soldiers of fortune,

is what they were.

And it shows in this film.

- Yeah, and the fact that these were documentary filmmakers,

and for them to say,

"We're gonna make this incredible story",

and for people who show to invest in it, you know.

- David O. Selznick would later write

that one of the biggest risks he took

when he was the chief at RKO

was pulling money from other productions

so that Cooper could make "King Kong"

the way he envisioned it.

- I mean, you have Willis O'Brien with this basically

the left of the remnants of creation, you know?

You have Merian C. Cooper, a madman wanting to pick

Komodo dragons against real-life gorillas.

And to put all of this together,

and this heads to finally say,

"Well, we can make this movie, this magical movie",

I think it's the testament

of these guys passion and skill, you know?

I, for one, am so glad that they did.

- You know, for a movie directed by a guy

who was sort of going blind,

'cause Ernest B. Schoedsack was,

every part of the movie is memorable for me.

- I mean, all this stuff is just so incredible.

I can imagine in 1925 when "The Lost World" came out,

which you had the dinosaurs and stuff and things like that.

I try to put myself back in that and think,

"Boy, I would have been flabbergasted",

and I was, I was flabbergasted with "Kong".

I mean, absolutely, in a very good way.

- I of course was blown away by it, you know?

It just, it's one of those experiences that

they just impress themselves on your mind.

Every single frame goes into your psyche when you see it

because you're just so in awe of what you're seeing.

- It was a film I just couldn't get out of my mind.

I mean, at first, I just loved it,

it was a great adventure story for one thing,

and everybody was good in the film, I thought.

- It's got fantastic actors.

Robert Armstrong is just incredible.

- Robert Armstrong plays this sort of Ripley-like guy

who is actually kind of Merian C. Cooper,

this entrepreneurial producer who goes off

and makes these jungle movies and stuff.

And Carl Denham has always been my favorite director

because of the way that he directs Fay Wray on the ship,

when he's explaining to her how to act and what to do,

"Now you see him and you're frightened".

He just talks and just talks at her.

Throw your arms across your eyes and scream!

Scream for your life!

- Ah!

- He has a crude authority

that makes him kind of lovable.

- Robert Armstrong was an amazing Carl Denham.

Nobody could do it better than he did it.

You know, Fay Wray was the most beautiful woman

in Hollywood then,

and still today she is the most beautiful woman.

She just signified beauty in such a way.

- I watched a lot of Fay Wray's pictures from the early '30s

and she was quite a looker.

And she, of course, did a lot of drama pictures.

And in "King Kong" she doesn't wear a bra,

which is always very pleasant.

- But it's always Fay Wray, it's always that face.

And that very moment when Carl Denham,

when she's about to steal the apple but doesn't,

and Carl Denham, she falls back and caught her in his arms,

weak as a kitten, and you see that face.

Wow, it's just wonderful, you know?

It's a beautiful face.

And I think that there's no red-blood man on this planet

that would disagree with me.

- She's the original scream queen.

And just being, I think, in that moment, in that role,

she just blew everyone's mind

because she really, she brought it.

- I fell in love with her, I think the first time,

you know, just, "Wow, she's so pretty".

And that never went away.

- She used to go to screenings all the time,

you know, the big screening at the Chinese

when they sort of, we put the picture back together again

and she was there, and she was very gracious,

talked very lovingly about everybody that was involved.

And it's was just a nice lady.

- When you're on a TV show in any kind of regular basis

you get invited to stuff.

And so I went and there was a guy I knew,

and he was next to this lovely elderly lady

who was just smiling and shiny and just, you know.

And he said hi to me and I said, "Hey, how are you doing?"

He said, "Have you met my friend Fay?"

And I said, "No".

"Oh, Brian Howe. Fay Wray".

And my jaw dropped.

And I remember holding my hand out and my jaw dropping open.

She could not have been more delightful, just lovely.

And I shook her hand and I said,

"The Fay Wray?"

Like it was just out of context, like,

"Why are you here in my life at this moment?"

And she just was, she was lovely.

She was adorable, actually, it's what she was.

- I was here for the 50th anniversary recreation

of the premiere of "King Kong"

at Grauman's Chinese Theater.

There's Fay Wray, Ray Harryhausen, John Landis, Hugh Hefner.

And I brought my "Making of King Kong" book to get signed.

When she was signing my book I was suddenly in limbo,

there was nothing else in the universe

except me and Fay Wray signing my book,

everything else was just blackness.

It was a real, magical, mystical experience,

it's just incredible.

And she was so sweet and so kind to sign my book for me.

I just, I was knocked down.

- I had the opportunity to play her

as a young child on stage in her play

called "The Meadowlark".

So I knew of "King Kong"

and I think I even rented the movie right before,

and I was very excited.

And she was just this elegant woman

just walking down the aisle and,

it was an instant connection, it was instant,

like it had nothing to do with age.

And we bonded.

Fay was always there, she was always next to me.

If I was sitting down eating

she would be sitting next to me.

And after the show was over she said, "Stay in touch",

and I said, "Okay".

And phone calls,

Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays,

Easter, the whole entire thing.

She really mentored me, she really set me down

and told me what to expect

and really don't expect anything and expect all.

And that always stood with me.

- For me "King Kong" is a movie that has everything.

It's a jungle adventure film,

it's got dinosaurs, it's got a giant gorilla,

it's got a beautiful, sexy woman.

I mean, I can't think of anything that lacks.

- It's full of memorable characters,

it's full of memorable scenes.

And, of course, the Willis O'Brien's work is phenomenal,

and even the flaws in it,

which are the fur is ruffled under his fingers

every time he moves the puppet.

- And you'd see the finger marks all over the model.

- A plus because it looks like wind.

- And I remember being awestruck all over again,

like it didn't spoil it in the least.

- And those lavage, lush backgrounds based on Gustave Dore

was just, have so much depth,

it just seemed to extend forever,

and they feel so real, it feel like you could

just jump into the screen and enter that world.

- They would paint leaves on glass

and put the glass in the foreground,

and then they put the puppet on a pegboard in the background

and then they had another painting

that were rear background.

And how they figured that out

still is amazing to me.

- It was still a 3D dimensional set with the camera

and a guy and a model,

moving this model a micron of an inch

and going click,

click.

And later that becomes King Kong? What?

That still defies explanation.

So, it hasn't become less awesome with age.

- The effects are not an issue at all, I love 'em.

And it goes back to the "Siskel and Ebert" statement

where, yes, stop-motion looks fake but feels real,

and CGI looks real but feels fake.

- It never ceases to amaze when I watch the movie,

the amount of emotion and animalism

and humanity, if you will,

that Willis O'Brien managed to imbue that puppet with.

- After he fights the T. Rex and he rips the jaws open,

and then he leans over and he plays with it,

and he opens the jaw

and he's sort of physically studying it.

- And I loved that when he breaks his neck

and he wiggles it to make sure it's dead and whatever,

and then he gets up and does his thing.

That probably is my favorite scene of the film.

- If you don't include all of the artists,

all of the pre-production artists, all the set designers,

include just the guys that were literally animating,

those two or three people

as opposed to 300 or 400 people that it takes today

to do a whole CGI character,

or a whole horde of CGI characters for a movie.

To me the uniqueness is that it's an artistic vision

that really does come out of one person.

- It's astounding that when you think about

how big Kong really was,

but that they imparted so much character in him

and so much personality.

And you can completely see why every other filmmaker

and every other special effects artist in the world

copied that.

And Ray Harryhausen,

the personality that he put into his creatures,

was clearly mimicked by what he saw in "King Kong".

- I think Forrest J. Ackerman said it best,

in one of his most eloquent moments, he said,

"What sets Kong apart from other movie monsters

"is the fact that somehow or other Willis O'Brien

"managed to insert a soul into that little creature".

And I've never heard it put better,

I think that's exactly what he did.

- And it was achieved at a time

when that kind of thing was still new,

it had not been seen before.

So it was, it sort of epitomizes a time

when there were still new things to be had

in moviemaking that people could relate to

without understanding the technology behind it.

- The other thing that hadn't been around that long

back then was original soundtrack recordings and scores.

That score by Max Steiner is unbelievable,

still one, I think one of the greatest scores of all time.

- The music, oh, my God, the music is spectacular.

Steiner's music just, I mean he made it live.

I think movie scores make films live anyway,

but this particular one, wow, it was just so cool.

- He was so perceptive in giving each character a theme.

- It was one of the first scores

ever written for a motion picture, which I didn't know,

but it makes sense because in that soundtrack,

in that Max Steiner soundtrack,

there are themes for the different characters.

- When you hear Kong via the score,

the first time he appears,

you're not actually hearing him but you're hearing "Hmmmpf".

Where you're imagining, "Okay, that's something huge,

"and it's taking steps", but it's all done musically.

Astounding.

- Again, another thing that locks into an artifact

of a very specific time,

not just in the movie itself but also in my life

when I saw it, I think.

- Skipper, believe it or not,

there's a little Kong. - What?

A little Kong?

How little?

- "The Son of Kong" is an interesting movie

because it's a big picture,

and they had to make it quickly to take advantage

of the amazing success of the first picture.

- "Son of Kong" is a strange little oddity.

It came out in the same year as "King Kong",

they're both 1933, which is impressive.

It implies the presence of a Queen Kong.

That's, there's a movie right there.

- I was definitely wondering how did that happen,

how did King Kong have a child.

So, can someone tell me?

Who was he having kids with

and how exactly would it happen?

- I mean, there's a lot of unanswered questions here.

So Kong just left the family,

they don't know what happened.

He went off to the big city, and with his girlfriend.

- Did you ever catch a monkey?

- Did I ever ...?

Lady, you'd be surprised.

- Kiko, the son of Kong, no explanation where he came from,

where the mom is or if Kong is the mom.

- You know, there's the reason why Willis O'Brien

turned his back on the actual movie,

is because it was too funny.

You know, we had such an epic movie,

and to be followed by a lighthearted rump,

I think really let the movie down.

- Kong is dead, but everybody's interested

in you too, Mr. Denham.

All those people that Kong killed and injured,

all the property owners who are suing you for damages.

- A very clever opening, real,

which most of these movies don't have

where Carl Denham is like ruined to death,

he's been sued by everybody in New York

for all the damage that Kong did.

And that's a pretty hip joke to be making in 1933.

- The setup, the beginning was great.

Carl Denham on the run, and he goes back into the jungle

and the whole thing with the girl

and the father getting killed.

All that stuff was a great setup,

and shockingly enough, when they introduced the son of Kong,

it's a real let down.

- It's the song "Runaway Blues"

that just stops the film dead in its tracks

for the three minutes she's singing that.

♫ Oh, I've got the runaway blues

♫ I want to wander away

But I love it 'cause I love the audience nod in response.

The Asian and Chinese gathered, just kind of sitting there,

just sort of numb as she's going through her number.

But it's a sweet song.

And I love the way that Steiner echoes that song

throughout the film.

- Well, you know, Kong's son,

who may or may not really be the son,

the jury is out on that because there's certain things

about him that don't seem to match up with his dad.

But the idea of making him the hero

sure came from the idea that so many people

actually had responded to King Kong emotionally.

- By the end, when the island is sinking,

and out of nowhere the son of Kong

holds up Carl Denham and saves him,

I can't remember a more affective scene when I was a kid.

Taught me about pathos

and closing a little upon a story, and heroism,

and doing the right thing.

- It's undeniably moving, in a very corny way.

- Then "Mighty Joe Young", which is, I think,

the greatest special effects movie of all time.

There are scenes in that that have never been duplicated.

- Cooper already had the idea for a long time,

but when he re-released Kong in '47

it did better than it ever had before.

I mean, you had audience now, a new audience.

And, if anything else, I'm sure that he said,

"I'm gonna make this other gorilla picture now".

- It's a slicker picture than "King Kong"

because the film stocks are different

and the techniques are different.

- There was enough advance made from, whatever, 1933 to '49,

technically, that it felt more like a traditional movie

about a great character, you know?

Can't go wrong on a gorilla movie, as far as I'm concerned.

- And there's a lot of really sophisticated techniques used,

particularly in the whipping the monster scene

which was repeated later in "The Valley of Gwangi".

- And those were great lions too.

They did a combination of real lions

but also stop-motion animated lions

for when Joe is fighting the lions

when he's tearing apart the club.

Those just look incredible.

I'm sure those were a huge influence on Frank Frazetta.

- It's the template for really a lot of pictures

that Ray Harryhausen made after.

- The whole ending, that just wonderful thing

where Joe's gonna get away but he doesn't

because he needs to save those kids in the orphanage.

- And when the picture was released,

the fire scene in the orphanage was originally tinted red.

The burning orphanage, the combination of fire,

which is hard in a regular movie,

let alone to make fire work for you in an animated film,

climbing the tree, the look in his eyes

when the tree falls holding the little girl.

No one's gonna shoot Joe now.

- My poor Joe.

- It's alright, kid.

There's nobody in the world gonna shoot Joe now.

- No, it's my home, I've lived here all my life.

- Terry Moore is so darn cute in that film.

I just, I fall in love with her

every time I watch that movie.

And I love the way she relates to the big gorilla, to Joe,

that started as her little baby pet

that's growing into this gigantic thing.

- Mighty Joe Young was even more human than King Kong,

though we accept that because he was brought up

by a young girl whereas Kong was involuntarily

this sad, lonely monster all by himself on an island.

- Joe is just a great guy, you know?

You'd like to live next door and have coffee with him

and give him bananas or something, you know?

Kong, I don't think you'd wanna do that.

- I felt like Mighty Joe Young

had more of a range of character than Kong.

Kong had, there was angry Kong and there was Kong in love.

And with Mighty Joe Young

there were times when he was kind of playful,

there were times when he was inquisitive,

there was a whole point where he was

depressed in the basement.

And there was a much wider range,

and more fun setups.

- It's just not matched by anything in kid's cinema

until maybe "Toy Story",

and that ethic that the Pixar and Disney folks brought

to those kinds of films,

which I think deep down is the result of seeing

"King Kong", "Son of Kong", "Mighty Joe Young"

and knowing how to tell a story

to adults and children at the same time.

- As a kid you'd watch "Son of Kong"

or you'd watch "Mighty Joe Young"

'cause "King Kong" wasn't on.

Saying, "Alright, I'll watch this".

- Around 1960 Willis O'Brien,

who did the special effects for the original "King Kong",

thought, "I'd like to do another King Kong movie".

Well, his first thought was probably, "I like money",

and then he thought, "Let's do another King Kong movie".

Now, "Godzilla" had come out in 1954,

so he thought, "Let's do King Kong vs Frankenstein".

He didn't even think of Godzilla.

- There was gonna be Kong versus a Frankenstein

troglodyte creation, like this big hulking mass guy.

- He went right to a giant Frankenstein in San Francisco.

Having lived in San Francisco,

who's gonna notice a giant Frankenstein?

There's enough stuff going on at eye level.

- Couldn't get anybody, couldn't get arrested with the idea.

- He is not a writer but he has this idea.

He hooks up with the producer, named John Beck.

John Beck, "Yeah, we'll get this thing going.

"Let's get it going".

So he's selling it and they find out,

no, you don't have the rights of Frankenstein.

So they changed the name to "King Kong versus Prometheus".

And then, while doing research, John Beck finds out

that Willis O'Brien didn't own the rights to King Kong.

So John Beck thought, "I know, I'll steal his idea".

- And he decided to kind of take it,

you could say he scouted with it, not quite sure.

- So, without telling Willis O'Brien

John Beck starts to talk to a lot of people,

among them Toho International in Japan.

- And Toho is like, "Well, we like the idea

"of King Kong versus Frankenstein,

"but we think it's gonna be even better,

"specially with our 30th anniversary coming up,

"let's do King Kong versus Godzilla".

- Around this time Merian C. Cooper,

who produced "King Kong", says,

"Hey, hey!

"You can't sell my movie, I own the rights of that movie.

"You stole 'em from me!"

John Beck said, "I didn't stole 'em from you,

"I stole 'em from Willis O'Brien".

Merian C. Cooper says, "He stole 'em from me".

So now everybody starts suing everybody.

In comes RKO Studios and goes,

"None of you own the rights, we own the rights".

And then they sue everybody too.

- And Beck went and he negotiated the rights,

got the rights from RKO and sold it to Toho

for an exorbitant amount of money.

- And the only person who stays on the film and gets paid

is John Beck, the one guy who never, ever

had the right to think he owned anything.

Beautiful Hollywood story.

- They were touting the new version

of "King Kong meets Godzilla".

And there were rumored to be two different versions

where he wins and Godzilla wins and all of that stuff.

But none of that really mattered

because the monster suit was so crappy,

it was so terrible.

It was one of the worst gorilla suits

I've ever seen in a movie.

And it's supposed to be King Kong.

- You essentially get a guy in a gorilla suit.

And I've been a guy in a gorilla suit

without any ability to have and show any emotions

'cause his eyes aren't even his eyes.

- And so, and thus the movie is,

it's extensibly a comedy, I think.

And it was suddenly treated by the distributor as a comedy.

- One of our first big treats in "King Kong versus Godzilla"

is Kong versus the giant octopus,

which is an actual giant octopus in some shots.

What happens is Kong is brought back to the mainland,

at the same time that Godzilla

has been woken up from a glacier

because an atomic submarine is in it, of course.

It's destined that these two guys

are gonna fight each other.

You now have Kong at 147 feet tall

to be able to fight Godzilla.

And also, for some reason, Kong has the ability

to conduct electricity,

because he has to be able to fight

the atomic breath of Godzilla.

After all this battle, Kong goes back to his island,

Godzilla falls off to the ocean,

we have no idea what's going on.

- Godzilla has disappeared without a trace.

As for King Kong, our international communications satellite

is following him.

- It's a draw, nobody wins.

Okay, well, there you are.

- Godzilla was my favorite.

Godzilla and the creature

were my two favorite monsters as a kid,

so when I knew there was a Godzilla versus King Kong

I was so excited.

- And to me at the time,

the King Kong was the exact same Kong

from the original movie, I couldn't tell a difference,

I was four or five years old.

I was just excited to see this wonderful ape again.

- I have a very strange deep love

of "King Kong versus Godzilla".

And to this day, there are certain films,

there's just something about the look of them

that I find just gorgeous.

- It was a natural thing that Godzilla should meet Kong.

I mean, they're both big, giant monsters and stuff.

It was very enjoyable, I enjoyed both the films,

but I never took them seriously.

Ever could I ever take either one seriously.

- Here in the States what happened was

the animated company Rankin Bass

got the rights to Kong to do their own animated series.

♫ The legend Kong

♫ King Kong, you know the name of

♫ King Kong

So Rankin Bass approached Toho

about doing a new Kong film,

and this was going to be "King Kong Escapes".

King Kong escapes and meets his greatest foe,

the Kong of steel.

- "King Kong Escapes" is totally

of that Toho science fiction era,

it's totally of that Rankin Bass show,

it's its own creation,

and I don't think anybody's ever gotten

that weird with Kong yet.

- Yeah, I watched them all at once.

That's enough for me.

It was, you know, none of them are really Kong.

The real Kong is the Willis O'Brien Kong.

- It's definitely, if you're a diehard 1933 guy,

the Toho films in general are a disappointment, I think,

because Kong in "Kong versus Godzilla"

is not the Kong we know.

- The problem is, a big hit always brings competitors

or the copiers that have no real understanding for it

and decimate the original for what it was worth.

I mean "Jaws" is one of the 10 best films in the world,

as far as I'm concerned,

but there wasn't one movie made

about a shark attacking people after "Jaws"

that's worth the day.

The always hit this middle ground where

I remember "King Kong" comes about,

"Well, okay, we'll have them do,

"this Chicago city will be there,

"it will be other tower.

"It's not King Kong, it's not the Empire State buiLding".

You know, whatever.

- Fantastic.

There's a huge monster gorilla

that's constantly growing to outlandish proportions

loose in the streets.

- I remember seeing "Konga" as a creature feature on TV,

and ...

I don't even --

As much as I'm willing to forgive the Toho Kongs

for the kind of cheesy-looking guy and suit effects,

when it got to "Konga", that point now,

I mean, it was really just, "Go down, get a gorilla suit

"and put a guy in it,

"and have him rampaged through a model".

And I'm like, "Ah, really?"

And there was all the,

I remember 'cause there was like some growth formula

that Michael Gough's character was using.

I don't know what film he was in but he was off his rocker.

At the end it's not a woman

and Konga's claw, is Michael Gough.

It's like, "Really?"

- Konga!

- He looks very sexy in the giant gorilla's paw

at the end of this film.

- "Trog", although, is not a giant ape.

Essentially it is the structure of "King Kong".

It's good to have a couple of beers with that one.

- I saw some movie at the theater called "A*P*E",

and literally it was just a guy in a gorilla suit.

It was a 3D movie and it was terrible.

And I noticed how cheap it was because this gorilla

had the same rubbed Don Post Gorilla hands

that I had on my gorilla suit, I recognized the wrinkles.

And there was a point where he knocks

a helicopter model out the sky and flips off the camera,

and that's where I got a really good shot

of this rubber hand.

So, I just never liked things

that seemed like cheap knockoffs.

- Here's the power of Kong!

- With the '76 Kong, I mean, I knew my friend Rick Baker

was gonna play the gorilla, and I thought,

"That's kind of cool".

I didn't see any pictures,

or I hadn't seem anything on him at all,

and I was kind of looking forward to it, I thought,

"Well, maybe it's okay".

I did hear he was gonna fight a big snake,

they weren't gonna have a dinosaur, and that kind of,

you know, but, well, maybe they just ran out of budget.

I don't know.

I didn't know who Dino de Laurentiis was, I had no idea.

- Well, Dino's "King Kong", again,

was pretty much a disappointment,

largely because Carlo Rambaldi's big Kong thing

that he built didn't really work.

- "Jaws" had just come out,

and "Jaws" they built this gigantic 25-foot shark,

They had claimed in the marketing campaign for "King Kong"

that they had built a full animatronic Kong

that did everything,

and that the only thing they used the guy in the suit for

was a few shots.

Later, of course, you find out

that the reverse was really true.

They did built a full-size mechanical Kong

that looked absolutely nothing

like any of the ape faces in Kong.

Nothing at all.

- And then of course when you're seeing the movie

it's like ...

And it doesn't even move,

where you see like four shots of it.

- The arm actually came loose,

it's all mechanical, made out of steel and stuff,

with fur on it,

it fell off and, darn it, it hit some people.

And then it's used, I think, in two scenes in the film

for about maybe five, six seconds, that's it.

And the rest of it is Rick in the suit.

- But I remember watching the movie for the first time

and I think more than anything the giant mechanical hand,

I loved that, I mean, I just loved how they built that hand

to come in, and then, you know,

in the waterfall scene where it's holding her

and there's one that's she's sitting in.

That I always love,

I was always fascinated with that aspect of it.

- Before that movie came out,

going into all the excitement, knowing it was Rick Baker,

and I was a big Rick Baker fan by then,

and pictures came out.

I remember when "Time" magazine came out

just trying to read everything I could.

And I read past all the stuff about,

"It's all gonna be a life-sized robot".

And I just didn't care,

I didn't believe it and I didn't care,

I was just wanting to see Rick Baker

in another gorilla suit.

- And Rick did a gentleman job

because Rick loves playing apes to being with,

and to play King Kong was obviously, you know,

it's the guild leader of monsters.

- I know that Rick Baker isn't fond of it,

or isn't fond of aspects of it.

I think I'm much generous in embracing all of it

because it was Rick Baker.

- Aside from Rick's great suit and the miniatures

that John Berkey artword for the poster, was it.

And I'm a big fan of John Berkey's

because he had also painted

the poster for "Towering Inferno" and "Orca".

He'd done a lot of amazing posters.

And there are variations of the posters.

There's one of him knocking through the wall,

there's one of him fighting the snake.

The movie posters is what pulls you in,

it was that sense of wonder of like,

"Wow, look how big he is".

And then, of course, you see the movie

and there's not way he could have stood

from one tower to the other, but it didn't matter.

- I didn't hate that one at all.

What? I didn't hate it.

It was silly in places, yes,

but, you know, by then, of course, with all the animations

you could get out of his face,

and like you could read more expression from him and all.

I absolutely have a big heart for that big silly.

- And I'm a huge Jessica Lange fan,

so I found her riveting,

I mean, I thought she was just amazing.

And I loved the movie.

- I think Jessica Lange could take care

of any ape that she wanted to, specially back then.

Oh, my.

- But good character, I loved Charles Grodin,

I thought he was the best.

It was interesting that he wasn't in moviemaking

but there was still a reason to take Kong back

as an advertising gimmick and all that stuff.

I really thought it was fun.

- And I think the switch looking for oil

at the time of the '70s was a good plot twist.

You know, it wasn't as theatrical as the original one,

wasn't quite as big a fairytale.

I, for one, I'm a really big fan of it,

and I can put it that just below the original.

- Had the chance to work with Jeff Bridges

on a movie called "K-Pax" and I'd forgotten,

I had actually forgotten

that he's in the Dino deal in this "King Kong".

And he had a brief anecdote that they were coming up close

to the end of the shoot and, you know,

Jeff and Jessica were both like really over it.

He said that, "Jeff! I have two words for you",

and Jeff said, "What?".

"Kong 2".

And Jeff said, "I have two words for you".

- The 1976 "King Kong" was disappointing enough.

It's all in retrospect that I think people like it

because it was Rick Baker in the suit.

So, what does De Laurentiis do?

He doubles down, literally.

And he brings this "Kong Lives".

Not one but two people in suits,

male and female, 'cause that's what we wanna see,

two people in gorilla suits getting it on.

- The worst scene in that movie is when the two apes

are kind of trying to be romantic

and they're playing this soft music.

It's like, "Ah, this is just too much.

"No the romantic apes".

- The thing about "King Kong Lives" also is that

this is like way after the '76, this is like 10 years,

it's like '86 when "King Kong Lives" come out.

We've had "Star Wars" since then,

you've had a lot of classic '80s cinema,

"Blade Runner", since then.

You have no excuse for sub-'70s special effects

like little tiny storebot alligators,

they just took them off his feet.

And the best De Laurentiis came up with

is an open heart transplant,

which an open heart transplant on a giant gorilla

is saying something, but who wants to see that?

- I don't have a lot of fond memories out of it,

I just remember this was a really bad,

bad movie all the way around.

- I think at that point we were pretty sure

that Kong was dead as a property.

- You know, Peter Jackson of course came on

and that's a true labor of love.

It's a remake made by somebody

who loves the original picture to the point

of re-staging scenes that were cut out of it

or maybe not even filmed to put them into this picture.

And it's technically marvelous, of course.

- When Peter Jackson told he was gonna make "Kong",

and he had planned it for years and years and years,

and he always had said, "I'm not remaking 'Kong'.

"It's my favorite movie",

I mean it was his absolute favorite movie.

"I wouldn't even attempt that".

He says "Kong" is the perfect movie.

"I can't do it.

"All I can possibly do is make it a little bit more,

"not modern, I'm gonna keep it in the same place it was,

"but technically I can make it a little better".

- And what I love is because Peter

also is such a fan of the original movie

that you knew that you were in good hands,

that he would do justice to the great moments

from the original "Kong" that people really responded to.

- And he did everything right,

down to having the tribal dance from the original movie

as the Broadway show dance in the remake,

which was just a stroke of genius.

- I was totally pumped and ready for that movie,

and when it opened up I thought,

"This is going to be incredible",

because it was a gorgeous reconstruction

of Depression-era New York, and it's just grim and down.

Yet, as a counterpoint to that was this jaunty music

from the era, and I thought, "This is gonna be great",

'cause already it's indicated to me

that there's gonna be a lot more depth to this.

- It was the scene in Central Park

where they're skating on the ice,

and we're sitting there in the theater and my wife goes,

"Does he die at the end?"

And I say, "You've seen 'King Kong'".

And she goes, "No, I haven't".

And I ...

You got a rough 20 minutes coming up.

- I mean one of the greatest scenes in the movie,

and I cry almost every time I see it, I tear up,

and that's where she's doing the sign language to him

about beautiful and all, and he finally does it himself,

and it just, it gets you, man.

- Beautiful.

- And then when he actually dies,

there's one expression he gets.

- When you're close on Kong's face

and you see the the life drowning out of him,

his eyes glaze over.

I mean, I don't even know how they did the shot, honestly,

and make it work the way it did,

but in his eyes you see him glaze over

and you know he's gone,

and he falls out of the scene, you know? I thought --

- That part to me

was really a wonderful thing to put in there.

- You know, my wife and I went to see "King Kong"

and by the end she's just balling,

just weeping, you know?

It's just like, this is so sad.

- You know, I'm not a gigantic fan of CGI,

I much prefer the guys pulling the cables

and finding really smart ways to do it

and to marry the two techniques

instead of one technique sort of overshadowing the other,

but I thought that "King Kong" did a really good job.

I hadn't seen that good of an integration

since "Jurassic Park".

It's those kinds of things that keep the audience

in their head guessing, "How the did that?",

which is what really interests me.

- They had Andy Serkis,

who turned out to be one of the greatest mimes,

I mean, plus a good actor too,

but one of the greatest mimes I've ever seen in my life.

And he get all of Kong's moves and

he hit all the dots and things on,

maybe when they do that he did everything,

I mean, really great.

So that was Kong's personality.

- I got to work with Andy Serkis on the "Apes" films,

and the love he has for playing King Kong,

and also apes and primates in general is just,

it's really touching.

- I loved it, you know?

I mean, I know one of the biggest criticisms was

it was too long and there was too much going on,

but I didn't have a problem with that.

I really enjoyed it.

- And this picture, technically it's really quite a marvel,

and the love is in every frame,

but it's just not,

it's hard to beat the original.

To the scene, he was last sighted nearly ...

- Remember there was this time when all the news was a buzz

that Universal was gonna do a Kong attraction

where Kong was gonna be as big as Kong was in real life,

and I was like, "How the hell are they gonna do that?"

- My first real excitement for "King Kong"

was when I went to Universal Studios as a kid,

went on the Tram Tour, and saw this seven-ton,

30-foot tall animatronic King Kong,

and it was absolutely mesmerizing.

I went and had to go on again,

that was my favorite thing on the tour.

Later I got a job at Universal Studios playing Frankenstein

and I would ride that tour, when I first got it,

just to see that King Kong,

because it was right in front of your face, it was huge,

it had the banana breath.

It was just absolutely, it was stunning to me.

And it was like, I think it was

the biggest animatronic for years, in the world.

- That and also my imagination also was,

"Wouldn't it be great if the mechanical Kong

"broke free of the ride

"and rampaged through Los Angeles?

"That would be awesome".

And I lived down from Universal,

and I saw this big plum of fire

coming from the Universal lot.

"Oh, wow, the got fire in the back lot".

- They had a fire in 2008 and it burned,

and it was just, I was like,

"Oh, my God, I can't believe this happened".

- The Kong ride burned, and it was lost forever.

And that killed me.

The hell with heritage of film and television history,

they killed Kong, they burned it down to the ground.

It was an accident, I don't think it was arson,

but I still blame somebody.

- And they were gonna shell the whole thing,

and then Peter Jackson came in and did the 3D.

And, you know, that's cool, but there's just something about

having something real in front of you

that massive, you know?

And that's the size that you think of King Kong

when you see that.

So it was really exciting and the childhood memories

were of that piece at Universal.

It's really, really good memories for me.

- I wonder how many people "Kong" influenced

to get into the film business.

I mean, Ray Harryhausen, I think had a direct influence,

I think "Kong" had a gigantic impact on him,

and he ended up actually getting to work

with Willis O'Brien.

Me, I mean, that was my introduction to fantasy films,

to look at film itself, but also fantasy films,

and I became totally enraptured by special effects.

When I began making my own films I was a production designer

who's specialty was special effects,

and I trace that directly back to "King Kong".

- Years ago I had come up with a little idea

for a short film, and the whole thing stemmed

from being on a tram at Universal Studios,

and I thought, "Wow, wouldn't it be kind of funny if,

"they never acknowledged or recognized it,

"but the monster that Universal used were real?"

And then I had this image in my head

of a facility in Burbank where all these monsters lived.

And the first thing that popped into my head was,

"Wouldn't it be funny if there was a big cage

"next to the building with King Kong

sort of sitting in the cage

with truck fulls of bananas in front of him

because he's too big to put inside.

So, they had to find a way to keep him subdued.

And that was really, that was the actual visual

that kind of propelled the rest of the short.

- "King Kong" is partly responsible

for my career as an artist.

When I saw the movie and asked my gran

how was King Kong done and she said,

"Well, it's made from clay".,

I mean, that's how she worded it to me.

So, I went at four years old with a pale and bucket

to the local riverbank, I took the clay from there,

and then I came home and made statues of King Kong.

I was very disappointed 'cause mine didn't move

unlike the one at the movie did,

but certainly "King Kong" is the reason why

I started sculpting.

- "King Kong" definitely inspired me

to want to start making movies

when I was a very, very young man.

And I didn't just wanna make movies,

I wanted to make movies that involved big special effects.

- Inspirational? Definitely.

I can remember imitating King Kong

out on the playground after seeing it.

Everybody banging in their chests and, you know,

"I'm the biggest, meanest gorilla".

This is inspiration,

this is the things that make you want to do something.

- I wanted to show him

at his most frightening

and most ferocious, both at the same time.

He wasn't in his own element anymore,

and he was fighting things

that he had no clue what they were,

and protecting his damsel in distress.

You know, "This is mine. Back off".

So, I had this picture in my head,

and the whole thing took me about a year and a half,

of what I wanted it to look like.

I had no idea it would wind up being this big,

but I never do when I start something,

and they all turn into big things.

- I'm Bob Burns, and this is the original armature

of King Kong that was used 80 years ago

to bring him to life.

What I think with stop-motion guys and animators,

Kong is such an icon,

it's done so well for its day and everything,

I think it's a natural thing

that if you're a puppet animator you wanna do Kong,

you wanna animate him at least once,

you wanna do something with him.

- I did animated projects

of both "Mighty Joe Young" and "King Kong",

and they really came about because of Bob Burns.

Bob Burns is really the,

he was the thing that made it happened,

because I've always wanted to do it, right?

I'm sure every animators has wanted to play

with those armatures on film.

My 50th birthday gift to myself was asking Bob

if I could animate this thing.

And he said, "Yes, take it, take it".

And I took it and I animated here

at the shop on that weekend, and it was great.

I put the Kong's armature in the scene

'cause I wanted to see it with Mighty Joe Young.

And I know Bob, he said that,

he always said how hard Kong was to animate

compared to Joe Young.

And after I finished Joe Young he said,

"You've really gotta do Kong next time".

The main thing I wanted to do was

do this overlay of the armature on the original film,

so I came up with whatever the technique

I needed to that using my computer.

I just wanted to make 'em move again,

and it turned to be so rewarding.

- He took the armature, and actually used the film

and put the armature in the film.

So when you see a move you see the armature move too.

I think it's the most fascinating thing I've ever seen.

I mean, I take that as incredible.

But every animator who wants,

it's just something you wanna do.

That's the thing you strive for.

If you can do Kong sometime,

even in a commercial or whatever you may do it on,

you feel you've done something.

- I think the weirdest thing I've ever saw Kong

was when you would see cartoons of Kong

in the pages of "Playboy",

because, you know, at 15 years old

you're not looking through "Playboy"

for the comics necessarily.

And then, for me, to suddenly see Kong,

it just seemed dirty and cheap.

Even now, "I'm here to see Kong do Playboy", right?

But that was wrong, to put Kong in a "Playboy" magazine.

It was just an incongruent place for him to pop up.

- I mean, King Kong is everywhere.

You know, I see him on mugs, I see him on t-shirts,

he's in cartoons.

He is the pop culture,

the biggest icon of all the creatures ever created.

- In the Disney cartoon "Frozen",

I was sitting in the theater with my daughters,

and there's a giant snowman

that actually looks a lot like Kong, but he's a snowman.

And he's chasing the hero and heroine down a hill,

then they do exactly what Jack Driscoll and Ann Darrow did.

It's beautiful, it's right out of "King Kong".

That was really, that was a pleasant surprise.

- That's makes it always come to life in every generation,

even though they don't see the actual movies.

- He's iconic in his own way as Karloff's Frankenstein.

I mean, instantly recognizable.

If you do a big gorilla and place him

anywhere near the Empire State building or with a dinosaur,

people automatically says it was Kong,

or a gorilla with a girl on his hand.

- One of the things that I think has really

supported the Kong legend is

that Kong is not a simple character.

He is not a one-dimensional or two-dimensional character,

he is very layered.

- He was a character you could identify with,

and he was severed from all the other monsters,

and I think that's why he lives on, 80 years later.

People still loves King Kong.

- When Kong dies you're sad, it's terrible, it's a tragedy,

even though he's just slaughtered hundreds of people

you still feel for that big gorilla,

'cause everything he did he did out of love,

and who cannot relate to that?

- People would say to Cooper,

"You can't make Kong so brutal.

"The audience will lose sympathy for him",

and Cooper said, "Nope".

He said, "The more brutal I make him,

"the more the audience is gonna cry

"when he falls of the Empire State building

"at the end of the movie".

And he was absolutely right.

- I cry every time I watch it,

in every version of the film.

It always, always breaks my heart.

- Everybody that watches it can

overlay it with their own interpretation.

I tend to take Merian Cooper at his word

that all he wanted to do was make

the greatest adventure movie ever known,

and he wasn't trying to have tons of subtexts in it.

But if you read any of the volumes of material

written about "Kong" in the years since,

every subtext known to man

has been applied to it by one observer or another.

- There's some moment that clicks in your memory

that just kind of associates whatever's going on

to something in "Kong".

There's so much stuff than you can just connect to.

And anybody watching it picks up on something

that relates to them personally.

The next guy is probably not gonna see,

but it means something to that person.

- I think it hits home for a lot of people

for a lot of different reasons,

and I think that's also it,

it's not a one-shot deal.

I think people find in it, you know,

things that they like

and things that mean something to them.

- It really for me it's about the sentimentality

of who King Kong is,

and we've grown up with him,

and it's like then we pass him down to our children

and they appreciate the beauty of cinema

and where it all started.

- So we pass that down from one generation to the next,

that's why he lives on and on.

- Well, you know, like Frankenstein and the wolfman

and Dracula and other characters from the early '30s,

they've been passed down from generation to generation.

And also merchandise and the entry,

to a point where they become a part of pop culture

partly because it's been voiced upon us.

But it's voiced upon us because kids like it.

And King Kong is very popular with kids,

as all giant monsters are.

And he was the granddaddy of them all.

And he's a monkey, and kids love monkeys.

- Kids really relate to King Kong on two levels:

one, you feel like King Kong,

you're just a very primal being,

you don't have a lot of shading

in your sort of thought process,

and you're also like Ann, you know?

Everybody's bigger than you,

everybody who's bigger than you

they can just pick you up and move you

if they want you to be moved.

- I think Kong is important to the culture

because he's an icon.

I think once something becomes established as an icon

and it becomes an element of parody,

it becomes an element of, in a way, sophisticated comedy,

or even as it's used in political reasons.

If you can look at something like Kong becomes an icon

and he can become useful to editorial license,

he represents things.

And he's been around through generations,

he's kind of, he's a grandfather into our society now,

he's always going to be an element

of a huge highly successful monster movie

and monster character.

- But he's come down the pike unscathed

after all the remakes and the copies and the imitations,

and he's an original.

And still with us, and will be for,

I think, many generations.

- And I will just say after all this:

Long live the king, long live King Kong.