How Kim Jong Il Kidnapped a Director, Made a Cult Hit Godzilla Knockoff (2015)

Only those who know about the Spectacle theater enter the Spectacle theater. Tucked off bustling Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in a building that might look abandoned to the untrained eye, it’s the home for the latest in unknown, cult, and cutting-edge hip cinema. And last week, it was home to what might be Kim Jong Il’s masterpiece: the Godzilla knockoff Pulgasari. Called “bizarre” and “fascinating” by some of the 23 Brooklynites who attended last month’s screening, Pulgasari the film—about poverty-stricken farmers joining forces with a giant beast to fight a tyrannical Emperor—isn’t even as insane as the story of how it came to exist. Author Paul Fischer chronicles the saga in his book, A Kim Jong-il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power. “The story of the book is such a serious one,” he wrote in an e-mail to Vanity Fair, “tyrannical dictator abducts two people, imprisons and tortures the ... Read full article.