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![At a meeting with studio executives -- which included Toho chairman Isao Matsuoka, Godzilla series producer Shogo Tomiyama and FX director Koichi Kawakita -- Emmerich spoke first, describing what he hoped to accomplish if given the opportunity to make GODZILLA. "For the first time, I saw Roland trying really hard to get the job," Tatopoulos recalled. "He's used to getting what he wants, and I think before we had the meeting he cared, but he felt very comfortable. Until the day that we had the meeting, I could tell that he was throwing his heart out there and he really wanted them to know how much he cared about doing that project." With Emmerich's introduction out of the way, Tatopoulos unveiled his Godzilla artwork and maquette. It was met with a gasp from the Toho execs, followed by stone silence. "After designing my last Godzilla, the one that wound up in the movie, I felt very secure and I believed we had something great. But the day I sat in front of the Japanese I thought, `what have I done? Am I crazy? They're not going to go for it'," Tatopoulos worried. "They were speechless, Emmerich recalled. "They stared at it, and there was silence for a couple minutes, and then they said, `Could you come back tomorrow? I thought for sure we didn't have the movie then." "It was so different we realized we couldn't make small adjustments, Shogo Tomiyama disclosed. "That left the major question of whether to approve it or not." That night, Tomiyama visited Godzilla co-creator Tomoyuki Tanaka, whose failing health had prevented him from attending the meeting, to bring him up to speed. Tomiyama wasn't allowed to remove any design art or photos from the studio premises, and found himself at a loss when describing the Tatopoulos Godzilla to Tanaka. "I told him, `It`s similar to Carl Lewis, with long legs, and it runs fast`."³8 Tanaka would pass away in April 1997 shortly before the launch of principle photography on the TriStar GODZULLA. Size isn't the only thing that matters to Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. When the self-professed "film geeks who got lucky" decided to bring "Godzilla" to the screen, they not only wanted the radioactive monster to be the biggest and baddest lizard on the block, but they wanted him to have sex appeal to spare. "Our Godzilla has calves and shoulders that are almost human," boasts Devlin. "We wanted his muscles to bulge when his feet hit the ground, his neck to flex and his jowls to shake." Adds Emmerich, “I told (Godzilla designer) Patrick (Tatopoulos) I wanted Godzilla very slim and muscular. Sexy, even. When his tail swishes along buildings, its almost sensual. I also wanted him to be very reptilian. Before Patrick and I came up with the design, we looked at dozens of documentaries about lizards. And the thing we noticed was that the arms and legs of lizards are very buff." Unlike other incarnations of Godzilla, this incarnation is known to have genitalia - female genitalia. Patrick Tatopoulos admitted this in the 1998 "GODZILLA" DVD Special FX Supervisor commentary, saying: "This one thing that's interesting is that we actually did end up sculpting the genitals of the creature, which you barely see in the movie. You guys were aware of that; when we started on the CG, we actually created the idea of putting genitals. Thank God we didn't see too much of it [and] they were quite discreet. But, you know, it was interesting that we were building some of that. [...] And the funny thing is, if we did make male genitals, it'd be very scary, because most of the shots are from the street level, I think it'd be too much."](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/750/069/ecd.jpeg "Godzilla 1998 design process")
