Outraged by what he calls “a stunning display of corporate cowardice”, George R.R. Martin complained on his blog that “Regal, AMC, and every other major theatre chain in the United States have cancelled their plans to show the new Seth Rogen/ James Franco comedy The Interview, because of – yes, seriously, this is not a South Park sketch (though I expect it soon will be) – threats from North Korea.”
He scoffed, “It’s a good thing these guys weren’t around when Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator. If Kim Jong-Un scares them, Adolf Hitler would have had them shitting in their smallclothes.”
Martin, owner of the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, NM said thousands of small independent theaters around the country would be glad to screen The Interview and offered his theater as a venue.
Regardless of how good the movie may be, said Martin, “it astonishes me that a major Hollywood film could be killed before release by threats from a foreign power and anonymous hackers.”
[Via Tom Galloway.]
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Well done, George! If I lived in New Mexico instead of in Virginia I’d offer to come out there and be a volunteer security guard for your theater. Good for you for standing up for common sense!
I suspect, too, that it isn’t bombs or sky-diving 767s that Sony is worried about. After all … *they* don’t own theaters. (In fact, it was the theater chains who flinched first, not Sony.) I suspect that Sony is worried that devious North Korean elves working for Red Santa will leave more coal in their internet stockings, and hack at their data again.
“Corporate cowardice” is the first phrase which came to my mind as well. Alliteration is attention-getting.
If G.R.R.M. can get a print, I say more power to him. It’s interesting that as nasty a bastard as the Officially Young Snot’s father was, that he didn’t blink when Team America came out. Some theaters which were brave enough to show the new film have asked for re-run copies is T. A. in its place.
Moe Howard’s You Nazty Spy! beat The Great Dictator into the theaters. Moe was very proud of that. Hitler hated it and its sequel, I’ll Never Heil Again so much that he issued standing orders that if the Three Stooges were ever captured, they were to be immediately executed.
“We want peace. We want peace. A piece of this country, a piece of that country.”
[mustache is torn off] “Give me back my personality!”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Nazty_Spy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'll_Never_Heil_Again
Alliteration is also alluring, astonishing, and astounding.
A news report this morning contained unofficially confirmed rumors that The Interview wasn’t even going to be made available as video-on-demand, much less scheduled first-run pay cable channels.
I pity anyone who took a percentage of income, gross or net, against salary — there won’t be any income.
Hollywood accounting being legendary it’s not likely anyone would have seen any money ….
Corporate cowardice, perhaps. But theater chains were refusing to show the film so what else could Sony do? I was talking to a friend whose father was the CEO of a now defunct small chain of theaters and drive-ins in the Chicagoland area. He said that to show the film the chain would have had to get an insurance rider in case something did happen. GRRM could certainly afford it, but the few remaining non-chain movie theaters that work on a shoe string budget? And you know that insurance and lawsuits if something did happen was something that Sony was definitely thinking about. I’m actually much more concerned on when and where something like this might happen again. Remember the ending of “Sneakers” when Robert Redford used the computer maguffin to transfer the assets of the Republican Party to liberal causes? Pretty silly and unbelievable back then, wasn’t it?
Last night, on a discussion on the CBC there was a hint of an underlying, more devious reason for Sony’s decision. It may not be so much a matter of North Korea vs. America as North Korea vs. Japan. It was suggested that there were hidden dynamics among the Japanese owners of Sony that related to their country’s relationship with their troublesome neighbor. Maybe they were more worred about terrorism in Japan than in the US?
I’m just thrilled that the award-winning writer of the Game of Thrones series of books and television and I came up with the same phrase independently. Maybe someday there are awards and an HBO series in my future. Woo-hoo!