Barry poses with one of his collectible Godzilla figures during our call.

For many fans that grew up in the dot com and digital age of Godzilla fandom, there are countless fan sites that we draw intense nostalgia and fond memories from. From Rodan’s Roost to Stomp Tokyo, and beyond, a good majority of them are lost to time. There is one that remains as a loving tribute to Japan’s greatest monster, and a time capsule of an era long passed us.

Barry’s Temple of Godzilla is lovingly remembered by fans that grew up in the early 2000’s, and its creator, Barry Goldberg, has graciously agreed to sit down with us. This is the first time he has ever spoken publicly with the kaiju community as an audience since the active heyday of The Godzilla Temple. Kaiju United is proud to kick off 2024 by debuting our exclusive interview with the man behind one of the most iconic staples of early internet Godzilla fandom.

Our Interview with Barry

JL: Jacob Lyngle (KU)
BG: Barry Goldberg

JL: Greetings Kaiju United listeners, viewers, however you are tuning in today… I am here with Barry Goldberg, the founder of the iconic website Barry’s Temple of Godzilla! I am sure everyone my age and older knows exactly what that website is — I grew up reading it as a kid!

To start, tell us a little bit about your upbringing and the origin point of your love for Godzilla.

BG: I grew up in New England in the Boston area. And every Saturday from I think, one until three, I was glued to my TV watching Creature Double Feature on channel 56. They would show two specific monster movies every Saturday. And for whatever reason, my parents will not allow me to watch TV during the week, which meant that Saturday, which was the one day I could watch it, I was glued to the TV all day long to the exclusion of all else.

I loved watching the old classic movies, you know, mostly black and white Godzilla, Gamera, pretty much anything. At the time, I did not even know these were Japanese movies. I was not that sophisticated to realize that; they were just fascinating movies. They gave me the worst possible nightmares, though! But I did not care. I just loved watching it. In fact, I think War of the Gargantuas provided me with the worst nightmares. That one scene with the Gargantua looking into somebody’s window, this woman getting dressed or something like that. For years after that, I could not look out of the window at nighttime. I had to close the curtains just in case there was a gargantuan peering in!

JL: What an awesome (and perhaps terrifying) memory! I was expecting a Godzilla film to perhaps be the crucial turning point.

Where and when did the Godzilla Temple come into play?

BG: After watching so many of those double features, I had this long-standing love of all thing’s giant monsters. And then in the early to mid-nineties, I had gone to college and attended law school, and after getting out, I was working in a computer related field at a firm. Two things happened: One, was that the World Wide Web suddenly popped into being almost overnight. I was one of the early email users at my law school. Suddenly, there was this thing called the web where you could create web pages and oh my gosh, it seemed like so much fun. I just really thought that sounded wonderful. So, I taught myself basic HTML coding. Then I said, okay, well, what can I possibly build a website about that could get some attention. Because at the time, the number one thing was you had to get visitors, oh, my gosh, if you do not get visitors, if you do not have a counter on your site, it does not count.

At about the same time, I had discovered that Toho had started making new Godzilla movies. There was a store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near where I lived. Honestly, I do not remember the name anymore. It has been long gone. But they had these imported Godzilla movies on videotape that they had illegally copied. And I can say that because the store is long gone. (laugh)

 I was like, oh my gosh, that is a revelation! All my memories of Godzilla at that time were a result of the films of the era I was growing up in. They were fun, but they were the cheesy, you know, guy in a monster suit and the cheap little buildings being knocked over by the lumbering giants. And suddenly, these were movies that okay, by today’s standards, not that great, but you know, when they came out, they were fantastic! I especially love Godzilla vs Biollante, Godzilla vs Mothra, and [Godzilla Vs.] King Ghidorah! Films coming out back-to-back, and they were so impressive!

I looked on the internet for Godzilla; there was pretty much nothing present. There was one or two sites — there was a one called Mark’s Godzilla site or something along those lines. and one or two others. I thought okay, why do a Star Trek or Star Wars when there is already 10,000? I could do a Godzilla site. And I just had fun. That was really what it was.

 If you are familiar with the site, I tried to write a couple of fan fiction novels. That was my first foray into writing. At the time, I had never done any writing before, and I am not going to pretend they are the great American novels, but I really loved it. And in fact, although I have not really done any fiction writing since then, my career has now taken a complete left turn. I work as a technical writer for a medical software company, I manage IT departments, and I am writing all the time. And I also do things on places like Quora where I am drafting essays on assorted topics, I have authored a book on pocket watches, written other books on Atheism, I mean, I just all over the place. It all started because I had that chance with the Godzilla site. I was just trying to think of content, what could I put on my website that would draw some attention? And I thought, yes, all right, a Godzilla story would work!

JL: And the rest is history!

You have kept the site up all of this time. Why is that?

BG: Honestly, I have not been able to work on the site for years now. And it is a combination of stupidity on my part, laziness on my part, and extreme embarrassment. Because in the early days, I was having to pay various places trying to get web hosting. The first one, Geocities, had free web hosting! Yay! They put the Temple of Godzilla up. Three months later, they say, sorry, we are shutting you down, there is too much traffic. And that is what kept happening over and over. And they say, oh, the amount of traffic you are getting, you are obviously a commercial site. Because of that, we are going to charge you, you know, $100 a month, $1,000 a month. I cannot do that.

Luckily, a couple of guys contacted me from a website called Stomp Tokyo. They said, hey, look, we love the Temple. We are sorry that you are having all these troubles. Tell you what, if you do not mind, we will host it for you for free, and you can continue to do whatever you want. We will give you a domain: godzillatemple.com. And we will host it because it brings traffic to our site. I said, great, that is wonderful! I did that for you know, four or five, six years. And then my computer crashed. Regrettably, I had not backed up all the information. And I realized I had no way of logging back into the site. I just could not do it. I shamefacedly reached out to my contact at Stomp Tokyo. And I said, Chris, I hate to say this, but I need my username and password because I just do not have it; I completely lost my computer. Thankfully, he got back to me and gave me the information. Oh, thank heavens.

So, I am back in business. And about a year later, my computer crashed again. And once again, I had not bothered to write down that information on anything other than the computer, not even a piece of paper. Do you know how your computer always remembers your username and password when you log in? That is what I did. And at that point, I was just too embarrassed to reach out again and say, you know, gee, I lost the username and password again. But also, that was right at the point where I was stopping a bit; I just no longer have the time to be devoted to Godzilla. It was before the American Godzilla movies had come out. It was after Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah had happened. And it seemed like okay, that is pretty much it, you know, there is not going to be any more Godzilla movies because they killed off Godzilla.

The American Godzilla came out, and you know the story. Gee, they are never going to make a sequel to that. Godzilla 1998 was my last formal review at the time, it was done during the time I got control of the site back. By that time, I got married, I had a kid, I, you know, my job had changed radically, and I was doing other things. And I just, you know, I figured, okay, let us just leave the Temple of Godzilla up there as a memorial. Maybe somebody will look on it with fond memories. At the time, I had no idea that they were going to keep doing more Godzilla movies. I did not know that Japan too was going to do Shin Godzilla, and now, Godzilla: Minus One.

JL: Have you seen Godzilla: Minus One?

BG: I did. In fact, I saw it with my son, who is a freshman in college. In fact, he came back specifically to see it with me because he is great. He goes into an urban college so he can take the train. And I loved it. I will say I was not a huge fan of Shin Godzilla. I have watched it twice now. And the first time I watched it, I said, you know, it is just not for me, and I forgot why I did not like it. I had to rewatch it to remind myself why I did not like it. The special effects and everything were fine. I just I felt like I was not a target audience because it really involves so much of Japanese culture and bureaucracy and talking about the whole thing. Basically, an analogy to Fukushima, and how Japan felt after that disaster.

Also, I just hated the way they portrayed Godzilla. You know, the fact that for half the movie, he is this weird little fishy googly eyes thing. And even though by the end, he looked better, he still had the fishy googly eyes, and I just did not love it. On the other hand, oh my gosh, I have to say I loved Godzilla Minus One. You know, there are a couple of minor little nitpicky things I could say about it, but overall, it was fantastic. It has some deep themes. I do not know anything about World War II, in the sense of I do not feel personally connected to any of that stuff, or kamikaze or any of that. But it was so well presented that it did not matter that I did not have the cultural connection to that. It just was a well-done story. Awesome special effects. I am amazed they did it for how low of a budget it had. And everything about it was so delightful.

JL: I love that Godzillsaurus-type proto creature they had at the beginning of the film.

BG: That was really cool. I was a huge fan of that. When I was watching in the theater with my son, about halfway through. I told him, the only thing wrong with this movie, was that it needs to have some of that classic Godzilla music, the Akira Ifukube themes. And then, all of a sudden, da dun dunn…. (laugh)

JL: The film was like just hang on Barry; it is coming!

BG: It was awesome because I went in knowing nothing. I did not know what Minus One meant, what it was about, or anything. I just told my son, hey, this thing has 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, you gotta see this. And I love Godzilla to begin with, so that was fun to experience with my son.

JL: It is truly wonderful that you are able share it with the next generation of fans. Is your son a fan of Godzilla, or is it just something dad likes, and he is along for the ride?

BG: I have shown him some of the movies. I do not know how much he remembers from when he was young. But apparently, while he was in his freshman year, he and his friends discovered Godzilla vs Megalon. And he keeps watching. He just cannot believe just how funny it is. You know, the inventor who invents this little boat that has dolphins and then [Jet] Jaguar’s gonna get big and then the drop flying dropkick, and the giant cockroach. He just thinks it is hilarious. But that is fine because I never took those movies seriously. They are just fun. I still watch those occasionally just for the nostalgia. In fact, when he was home over Christmas, we watched the original Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla and Terror of Mechagodzilla. The films get nuts – aliens that die and their faces melt off, and surprise, they are apes! How fantastical. I still like it. I really do. But as I said it was really in the early late 1980s, early nineties, when the Heisei movies came up, I just really started to appreciate the quality of the Godzilla movies.

JL: You mentioned Biollante and King Ghidorah ’91. Would you say there are others that are your favorites?

BG:  That lineup of Heisei films really is my favorite. I mean, I will always say the original Godzilla movie is in a class of its own, because that is the one that started at all, right? It had such a different tone; you really cannot compare it to the Godzilla dance in Astro Monster and the other things.

This series that came after that, some people call it the Millennium series, I tend to call it kind of like the Alternate Universe series, because each movie was reinventing the whole thing from scratch. I will say I really liked Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus.

JL: That one is so underrated! A lot of people I talk to do not like it and think it is lame. Completely disagree.

BG: I watched that again over the Christmas break with my son. Mostly just because, you know, he was so much a fan of the Megalon, that he had to see the scene where Godzilla jumps up and body slams Megaguirus. I love it. That is an all-time moment too. The only thing we could not figure out and my son in the middle of the movie has to positively look on Wikipedia, is what made the city flood.

I said, “Oh, well, since you are right on Wikipedia, what happened? “What does it say?” My son replied: “The Meganulon hatch, and then the city floods.”

(both laugh)

JL: I know that you said you did not have access any longer to the site, but you did eventually update when Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla came out in 2014. Is there any interest in talking about Minus One?

BG: Well, as I said, right now, I am locked out, I have been locked out for quite a number of years.

Also, part of it is that if I were to start working on the site again, there is so much out of date and wrong material on the site. Truthfully, I feel horrible that I spent so much time taking video clips of every single movie at the time. For example, my favorite or funny scenes from every movie. And apparently, none of those clips will play now, because technology has moved on. And the codec no longer works. I did audio clips, you know, again, those probably do not work either at this point, all the screenshots I did at the time, they were, you know, big screenshots. And now with modern resolution, there is these little, teeny-weeny things, which means that if I were to start working on it, I really need to spend a lot of time just catching up.

I used to have my VCR hooked up with cables to the computer so I could play it back and do the screenshots. I do not have that now, and even though I own the DVDs, I cannot do that, because my new computer does not even have a disk drive! I would say it is a memorial to a bygone time. If I started adding new stuff to it, then people would say “Well, that’s nice, but why is all this other stuff crap?”

As long as I have not updated in 20 years, people will say well, yes, of course it is crap, because it is 20 years old.

JL: Like you said, it is a memorial in a way. It is historical.

The temple is the oldest Godzilla fan site that is currently alive. Toho Kingdom came around a few years later. You two are the last of a generation of fan content and communities. Your Temple is remembered with intense fondness and nostalgia. How does that make you feel?

BG: A little strange, honestly. At the time, I really had no idea how many people were visiting the site, I used to have my email address on there. I finally had to get rid of the email address; I could not deal with 100 or 150 emails a day sometimes, because I felt that if I could not respond to them, people may get upset. One cannot spend my entire day, you know, answering emails while I am trying to work for a living.

I mean, I will say, I wish I knew how many people had actually read my two books, and what they thought of it, because I never really got much feedback on those. The first one I wrote first, and then published it on the site. The second one I decided to do as a chapter book. And so, every time I would write a new chapter, I had put it up there. And I was painting myself into this immense corner, I got to the point, oh, my god, how am I going to end this thing? I do not even know where I am going… wait a minute. I had this great idea of like, could pull the rabbit out of a hat. The story was posted, I put it out there, and then I got a few people saying, oh, that is nice.

Unfortunately, it is not something I could ever publish anywhere. Other than that website, I do not have the copyright or anything, I will never put it on Amazon. Maybe 20 years from now somebody will find it and say, wow, I really liked this. Or people will say “What an amateur. You did not know what you are doing.” Because I did not know what I was doing. But I am a voracious reader. So, I like to think that, you know, at least I have proper grammar and spelling.

JL: You mentioned earlier that you were fascinated by Japanese culture. Do you watch other Japanese films besides Godzilla? Any Kurosawa or other Japanese films?

BG: Honestly, I have not really watched too much of the classic Kurosawa. About the same time, I was getting back into Godzilla in the nineties. I also got heavily into anime for quite a while, starting with Akira. That film blew my mind. I went on a binge trying to watch every single anime I could find. And I finally realized that I really liked Akira because it was a great film. And it was not that I really liked anime in general.

So, I ended up watching a whole bunch of dreck. I have gotten back into it back and forth over the years and I have a lot of manga that I have collected over the years as well. In terms of movies, I did get into J-horror for a while: things like Ringu and Ju-On: The Curse. I still watch those occasionally; I have them all on DVD. You know, my tastes in this regard are not exactly the highest class. But I totally understand how important Kurosawa is and acknowledge he has been referenced so many times in popular culture at large.

JL: I am a film fanatic. I watch everything. From high-tier art cinema to fun cult genre films like Tokyo Gore Police and stuff like that.

BG: Gore Police is shocking stuff! I watched that around this time too. I was watching as many realistic zombie movies as possible. It got to the point, after my son was born that I went to rewatch TGP, and I was like, I really do not need to be watching this anymore, do I? When I was younger, in my twenties, and even early thirty is, it really amazed me that they could make gore look so realistic. Wow. And now it is like, oh, that is a realistic gore effect. Eww. Ugh.

JL: Maybe that will happen to me eventually. I have way too much fun, though!

BG: It is a lot of fun until you worry about your five-year-old son walking in, and my wife getting mad!

JL: Truth! Despite having the site that has been accessed by thousands of fans, you are not as active in the Godzilla kaiju community, like online and in groups or at conventions. Is that because as you mentioned earlier, you have moved on?

BG: That is basically it. I have moved on. And as I said, getting married, having children was really, you know, the point where I needed to focus on more serious things. My problem is that I love to do things and I cannot do everything I want to do at the same time. So, for a while, I was really into pocket watch collecting and I built a whole website on antique pocket watches. And I authored a book on pocket watch collecting and then I have been a longtime singer. For 20 years or so, I was singing semiprofessionally with a group where we would have concerts and, you know, that sucked up my time. And then I discovered the site called Quora, which some of you may have heard of, and I became an active participant there posting on a variety of topics. I started collecting some of the answers as essays and put them in various books. And that do that and again, I, I kind of flipped one thing to the other, and I cannot do them all. So, I picked my battles. I do not do pocket watch collecting anymore, for example. I have a website that is just there, as you know, again, a memorial to my pocket watch collection and I provide lots of information. But I have not bought a pocket watch in 20 years.

It is the same idea. However, I still love pocket watches, Godzilla, and singing, even though I am not really doing anything with any of those things these days.

JL: That is an interesting way to put it. I personally like the idea of having things on my bookshelves representing eras in my life that are now over, but I look fondly over. Physical representations.

BG: I try not to let my various interests overlap too much. I am an atheist writer, have published books on that. I do not want the Godzilla people to possibly get offended over that, or maybe the pocket watch people get offended that I like Godzilla, so on. This is the first time I have ever talked publicly about all of it at once. I also love philosophy, which was my minor to get into law school.

JL: That is all lovely! Let us bring it back home a bit. Speaking of philosophy, on a deeper level, what does Godzilla mean to you?

BG: It is almost an unanswerable question! Or it is a question with multiple parts because Godzilla has changed so radically over the years. When I was a little kid, Godzilla was my inner dinosaur, you know, I mean, what little kid does not dream of, you know, going “RAWR!” and stomping on old buildings. And you know that that was just fun. Of course, the original Godzilla had a deep philosophical meeting, especially for Japanese people. It was right after World War II. And again, this is why I think Godzilla: Minus One is done so well, because it taps into that. But that meant nothing to me when I was a little kid. As a result, growing up, I really never gave much thought to it, it was just a fun giant monster movie. Some of them are campy, some of them are serious. But I never really thought about any deep philosophy, I just enjoy the films. I know that there are some themes there in many of them, but I just have fun with the movies, honestly.

In terms of what Godzilla has meant to me personally, the Temple itself is something from long ago that I look fondly on. It is a chapter that has closed, but it seems like people still remember. I still watch Godzilla films and enjoy them, but I am not actively putting huge time and effort into it as a hobby.

JL: It is great that you still enjoy these films, though.

JL: I was not around for this, but I would like to know – in the era of Barry’s Temple, the 90’s had a Godzilla boom. We got stuff like the G98 film, the TrendMasters toys everywhere, the Dark Horse comics, the Mark Cerasini books, etc. People compare the current state of Godzilla to this era. Do you see similarities?

BG: It was actually the Mark Cerasini books that inspired me to write my own. It was the first time you had like an American writing a Godzilla story. I said, “Well, wait a minute, he could do that, hey, I have my Godzilla website. I know Godzilla, I can do it too!” Honestly, I actually even tried contacting the publisher to say, would you be if I wrote a sequel to his book? Would you be willing to look at it? And they said no, politely. Basically, they were like, if we are publishing a book, we need a commitment from the author to be willing to go on tour and promote the book and whatnot. They did not even bother asking whether I would have done that, but I could not have done it.

There are definitely interesting parallels! Okay, you have the 1998 American Godzilla, which was pretty critically and socially trashed upon. But I have also talked to people who were only eight or nine years old at the time. And that was their first exposure to Godzilla. To them, it was not GINO (Godzilla in Name Only), because that was all they knew. I can see a parallel between that and the new American Godzilla movies by Legendary Studios. I happen to think the ones from Legendary are far superior to the Emmerich film. But again, it is the same thing. It opened up a world to people who maybe had no previous knowledge of Godzilla whatsoever. And so, to them, that’s Godzilla, even though some may disagree. The big difference to me is the Legendary Pictures films did a much better job of capturing the spirit of Godzilla. They did not just reinvent them as hermaphroditic iguana with the main threat being that he lays a lot of eggs.

JL: From a community perspective, there has been a huge influx of new fans from the Legendary films, Shin Godzilla, and Godzilla: Minus One! It’s great to see!

BG: Right. Even though I am personally not a fan of Shin Godzilla, it did do pretty well, and people loved it. Minus One looks to be doing quite well, too. The only thing I am bummed about is the small release window of Minus. I wish more people would have the chance to see it. But we will see. If in fact, it made enough money that they are going to allow the director to make another film, maybe they will have a new renaissance. Maybe they will have five or ten movies, then something like the Heisei or Millennium series definitely is happening again. My biggest, I do not know if it is a fear, or concern, is that I do not know how well it will be handled. Because eventually if they keep making new movies in Japan, they are going to have to start bringing other monsters in and stop the solo Godzilla outings for a bit.

If they can do it, well, that is wonderful. But just what made Godzilla: Minus One so wonderful, I think, was the somber tone. The moment you then throw in a Rodan. Mothra, or Ghidorah, that tone will naturally shift. I do not want to say that putting Mothra in the movie would ruin it. But if they just go for the 100% camp, then it is almost like well, why did you even bother starting again? We already have plenty of Camp movies. Yes. But at the same time, how many just dead serious movies can you have before you start getting kind of bored with Okay, yes, Godzilla comes up destroys everything, and gets defeated once again.

JL: I do think they need to do a “Vs.” next film, because we have had Minus One and Shin Godzilla represent solo outings for Big G. We have not had a monster fight in the Toho Godzilla film library since 2004. That is twenty years!

BG: Yes, that is true. I will say, my favorite monster of all time is King Ghidorah. I love him to death. At the same time, if they are going to have a versus film following this latest installment, I would rather the studio introduce a brand-new character that has no baggage, no background.

As wonderful as those monsters are, they are all pretty silly. Every single one of them is a silly monster. I will refer to my favorite, Ghidorah. This giant thing with three heads and tails and shooting lightning bolts. I love it. But it is not a serious monster. Mechagodzilla okay, I mean, he is great, but if you are trying to get realism? Impossible. Okay, we have a giant monster. How do we fight it? Let us build a giant robot! Pacific Rim was a fun movie, but it was not, you know, serious.

If they could figure out a way to produce another monster for him to fight that had that same sort of realism, I think it would be wonderful. I mean, I would still see it if it were Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla or something like that. The Legendary films are going that route, for sure. Here is Kong and Godzilla, they are going to go down to the center of the Earth where there is a kingdom of giant apes and then find out there’s an even bigger ape that they have to defeat!

JL: It is fun that we have the best of both worlds. It is insane to me that we had Minus One in December, and now we are gonna have Godzilla x Kong in March. That is not an exceptionally long turnaround. That is freaking crazy. I do not think I have ever seen that before with this franchise.

BG: I am glad that they are allowed to do it. Because for a while it was well, America has the rights to do it, so Japan will not do it until they are finished. And now it is like, yes, screw that. We all just want to make our own Godzilla films. Okay, great. No continuity involved, just make a film. Let us just make some money. And like the American style, Godzilla fans may not like the Japanese style, it may be too grim or too much of the Japanese culture, whatever the reason is, or not enough campy monsters. Who knows what? And the same thing on the other end, people that like the modern Godzilla of Minus One and Shin Godzilla, they may not be a fan of the American style. And that is perfectly fine. What I like is, as I said, at least the American ones are respectful of the classic history. They do use some classical music as well, I love that. But they are not making fun of it. And they are not just deciding, we are going to reinvent it from scratch and make it a wholly American movie.

The comment I kept making to my son as we were watching Minus One was whether or not they ever bring back Rodan, Ghidorah, or Mechagodzilla, I sincerely hope they bring back the Masers.

JL: I love masers.

BG: What amuses me is that they never actually help. They just tickle.

JL: You heard it here. Bring back the masers!
Going into a site to make content, did you expect to achieve an audience of the size you really got? You were quoted in the New York times, for instance. Was the fame too much? As a creator, do you go in to make others happy, or do you do it for you?

BG: You know, it is funny, because I have always had a bit of a love hate relationship with the idea of fame for Godzilla. Back in the nineties, when I was really much into it. Oh, my gosh, I mean, anytime a newspaper would publish an article or magazine would interview me about something, I had to tell everybody. Oh, my gosh, look at this. And, you know, as I got older, I went, Okay, it is Godzilla. I am famous for Godzilla. You know, not famous for my singing not famous for this or that. You know, I am famous for Godzilla. I do not people to look at my face and be like, yes, he is the Godzilla guy. My son makes fun of me enough as it is. I would like to think that my son. now appreciates what I have done. And not just my dad’s weird.

I will be turning fifty-eight this year, believe it or not. So, I started this back when I was about thirty, maybe a little bit at 28-29. It really is a different part of my life, which I look back on fondly. But as I said, you know, not that I do not like Godzilla anymore. But I have just moved on to other interests. And I cannot do everything I like, at the same time. That is why I never asked to have it taken down. I mean, I am thrilled that it is there. And I hope, one year from now, 30 years from now, people can still you know, find it. But it is a monument to a time past. You know, even people have asked me, well, why don’t you update the graphics or update the HTML? Like, well, you know, I actually did update it over the years, I kept redesigning it, redesigning it, and I finally got to that one. And, you know, I am not doing HTML anymore. And I really do not have the interest to teach myself advanced Java scripting, and, you know, ASP, whatever the heck it takes these days to make it look like a professional site. I am not doing that. And again, it would be a disservice if I tried to just keep updating it 20 years later, pretending I was still 20 years ago me.

I am a creative person by nature. The thing I take the most pride in is the fact that none of that has ruined my life. I say that because, you know, I have a real job, and it pays well. And I provide for my family. Furthermore, I am not one of these people that is so creative, that I cannot work a nine to five job because I have to express myself creatively. The kind of folks that are like, I would rather be poor and starving, but creative, like no, I have a good paying job, I am comfortable living in a nice house, a nice car, I put my son to college. And on the side, I designed T shirts and have some websites and do singing and author books. I just love the fact I can be creative without it ruining my life.

JL: If we would like to be a part of “Barry’s World,” where should we go to look for in terms of what you are doing now?

BG: Like I said earlier, I have those books on Amazon if you are of interest. No worries if you are not. I have a Cafe Press store called Barry’s World, which I have had for years and years. And if you like funny designs jokes, and whatnot, I have stuff there. But most of the stuff, again, once I got married, my wife hated the fact that I was out there publicly about anything. She was like, oh, people think you are famous, they are going to come break in your house, kidnap your kid, and rob you! Because of that, I do not really put myself out there as much these days. The stuff I do is just for my own benefit, my own fun. I am thrilled people still buy stuff off my Cafe Press store and I am happy that people occasionally still buy my books.

But at the end of the day, I am just a guy. However, I will give one small anecdote. When I was growing up, there were always famous people in the world. And you always think, okay, famous people are different. They are just, you know, whether it is a movie actor or an athlete, they are different people, you can’t expect them to be normal. And at the height of Barry’s Godzilla temple, when all of a sudden people were writing to me and emailing me all the time, and it was, oh my gosh, you are the famous Barry from Barry’s Temple of Godzilla! All of a sudden, I had this epiphany that, not that I felt like I was famous. But it just dawned on me that people who are seen as famous are actually normal people doing, you know, whatever they think makes them happy and makes other people happy.

I did not suddenly become any different when suddenly, you know, a million people are seeing my Godzilla website and think, oh, I am world famous! I am in the New York Times, quoted in Wall Street Journal, I am showing up in magazines. I am just doing my thing. I am not famous. I am just a normal guy. And that is my philosophy. Now, I do not really seek out stuff and I do not need people to seek me out. But if they happen to come upon my Cafe Press stuff and buy you know, t shirt with a science joke on it, well, that is wonderful. If they read my book, well, that is great. If they come on Quora and find me, that is wonderful. But I just do not really feel the need to be promoting myself anymore.

I am just a guy into Godzilla.

JL: We are all just people into Godzilla, at the end of the day.

Is there anything you would like to say to the folks that are still visiting the site and keeping it alive all these years? I really want to reiterate how important it is to our community.

BG: Looking back, I do regret that I am not still updating it because, you know, it would be nice to keep updating with the newest movies. Regretfully, I am sorry for the readers out there who are wondering, you know, how come he does not talk about Shin Godzilla or Minus One? I am not going to be updating it, sadly, but I do regret it, and I do appreciate the fact that that is something people wish I could do.

Openly, I will say that had no clue that there were still so many people out there who have even heard of Barry’s Temple of Godzilla. So, really, thank you.

JL: Thanks for hopping on with me today, Barry.

BG: Thank you very much.