One would imagine that for human beings with any degree of sensitivity or possessing the semblance of a social conscience such an existence must be demoralizing. Reading the correspondence of the film executives and their associates, it is difficult to see how anything thoughtful, penetrating or enduring could emerge from such a milieu. The shortsightedness inevitably bound up with the financially parasitic, stock market-driven character of the American economy is especially destructive to art. Whatever the good, bad or indifferent motives and aims of the various executives, publicists, film stars, writers and others, the latter find themselves trapped in a field where very little counts except immediate box office success and corporate profitability. That decline finds debilitating expression in the perpetual pursuit of “blockbusters,” on which vast amounts are spent, by studios that are merely divisions of giant corporate entities the “sequel” phenomenon, in which commercial successes are endlessly recycled and drained of life the metastatic “celebrity” culture and, centrally, the turn away from any interest or engagement with great social problems and the conditions of wide layers of the population, among other features. Rather, the personalities, relationships and artistic opinions revealed in the Sony communications are the product of the serious, protracted decline of American movie-making and culture generally. Nonetheless, it would be useful to bear in mind that the individuals writing and receiving the various messages, including Amy Pascal, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Pictures Group, prominent producer Scott Rudin, actress Angelina Jolie and others, have not created the present conditions in the film world. The leaked emails shed light on the sort of debased environment out of which such expensive and empty movies emerge. In 2012, Sony Pictures Entertainment led all other film companies in worldwide market share, taking in $4.4 billion in ticket sales on such eminently forgettable works as Skyfall, The Amazing Spider-Man, Men in Black 3, Hotel Transylvania and 21 Jump Street. Sony is one of the handful of media conglomerates that controls what a considerable portion of the world’s population sees and hears daily.
#SPECTRE FILM EMAILS HACKEED SONY MOVIE#
The “human rights” politics of Rogen and his ilk (Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, etc.) is merely the aims of the State Department and the CIA translated into the language of pseudo-comic, philistine ignoramuses.Īs far as “freedom of expression” goes, Hollywood film studios ruthlessly fight to dominate global movie screens and would establish an absolute monopoly if they could only attain it. As the recent US Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA torture program makes evident, the chief source of violence and aggression in the world today is the American military-intelligence apparatus. The argument of the Canadian-born Rogen and his collaborators, seconded by the American government and media, that by making the film they were delivering a blow against a tyrant is also absurd. A film that culminates with the assassination of a foreign head of state is a reckless and unprecedented provocation. In any event, to present the fate of The Interview as having something to do with “free speech”-as George Clooney and others are doing-is ludicrous.
We have no idea who performed the hacking at Sony-and the claim that this was done by Kim Jong-un’s Stalinist-nationalist regime in Pyongyang seems less and less credible. Initially, Sony announced that it was shelving the film, but on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, David Boies, an attorney for the studio, indicated that it “is going to be distributed.” One can safely assume that The Interview, directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, co-written by and featuring Rogen, along with James Franco, is a fairly witless and vulgar affair, like nearly everything that comes from this particular “school” of movie-making. No one familiar with Hollywood will be astonished by the picture of back-biting, pettiness and shortsightedness that emerges, but the information is salutary nonetheless.
The leaked emails that have emerged from the hacking operation directed against Sony Pictures Entertainment, thanks to its involvement in the production of The Interview, add useful detail to what we already know about the inner workings of the American movie industry and the character of its personnel.
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