A flashback for a guy with a small role in a Godzilla movie

Over the years the T-Rex-looking monster Godzilla has wreaked terrible havoc on Tokyo and other parts of the Japanese isles.

A scary dude, I thought when I was a kid. Adults could laugh at the huge, cranky reptile but Godzilla could give nightmares to kids.

My fear was heightened by the fact that the pronouncements of the Japanese actors in the film didn’t match their lip movements. I thought as a kid that Godzilla was so scary that he made his victims blubber instead of talk.

I didn’t realize that the actors’ Japanese had been dubbed over in English. Hell, I thought everyone spoke English.

I had a Godzilla flashback the other day. It wasn’t a scary memory from childhood, though.

I must admit reluctantly that when I was a journalist in Japan, I had a small part in a production called “Godzilla 1985.”

I say “reluctantly” because American film critics called it the worst movie of the year.

The flashback came in the form of a photo that my daughter Angie in Portland, Oregon, sent me recently.

It was a still shot of the scene where I appeared in “Godzilla 1985.”

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