Sony: Hollywood Relationships Unraveling

[heyjude]

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Sony Attack Is Unraveling Relationships in Hollywood

By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
DECEMBER 18, 2014
LOS ANGELES — As Washington considers a response to an online attack on Sony Pictures, Hollywood is trying to repair relationships that were shattered by the assault.

On Thursday, a day after United States officials identified North Korea as the hand behind the offensive against Sony’s now-canceled comedy “The Interview,” the White House said it was considering “a range of actions” in response. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, called the hacking a “national security issue.”

Sony shelved “The Interview,” about the assassination of the North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un, after cancellations by theater owners in the face of a terrorist threat. The studio on Thursday was searching for ways to eventually disseminate the film, but, for the moment, it could find none. Satellite operators, cable providers, or digital portals that might be asked to pick up “The Interview” could be exposed to the same online harassment plaguing Sony.

The attack has disrupted the web of executive, business and talent relationships that stitches together Sony’s core moviemaking operation.


Complaints about Adam Sandler, left, were exposed by an online attack on Sony Pictures, headed by Michael Lynton.
KEVIN WINTER / GETTY IMAGES
Prominent members of Hollywood’s creative community fumed about what they saw as failure by Sony to make a stand for artistic freedom. Steve Carell called it “a sad day for creative expression,” while Zach Braff described Sony’s move as “a pretty horrible precedent to set.” The filmmaker Judd Apatow and the documentarian Michael Moore also took to social media to lament the demise of “The Interview” as caving to the hackers.

The studio’s relationship with Adam Sandler, the star of Sony comedies like “Grown Ups” and its coming summer tent pole “Pixels,” got singed when online news sites published unvarnished executive complaints about his “mundane, formulaic” films. The disclosure of racially tinged emails from Amy Pascal, the co-chairwoman of the studio, led her to meet in person on Thursday with black leaders including the Rev. Al Sharpton, who had condemned the exchange between her and the producer Scott Rudin as “offensive, insulting” when it first became public.

Financiers are unsure whether to proceed with planned deals to back Sony films, as some talent agents — worried about management stability at Sony and long-term chaos — consider funneling scripts elsewhere. Even Sony’s relations with news outlets have been dealt a lasting blow, with the studio upset about the willingness of some reporters to dig through stolen documents and media contacts given an unusually candid glimpse into how executives try to manipulate coverage.

It is nearly impossible to calculate likely financial losses associated with “The Interview” until any option for displaying the movie has been closed off. For the moment, the studio is reluctant to consider the option of charging for it online, on the assumption that few consumers would share credit cards with a company under attack by hackers.

Over the last week, Sony’s attackers began threatening the company’s partners in the entertainment industry, beyond just theaters and theater chains, according to security experts who have been consulting with the companies. Several Sony vendors mentioned in the stolen data trove have begun receiving threatening correspondence from the attackers. Security experts said that “anxiety levels were high” and many vendors complained on Thursday that Sony’s decision to halt the release of “The Interview” might only embolden attackers.

In a more human calculus, a significant loser in the hacking may be Seth Rogen, the writer-director-star who became the principal public face of “The Interview.” There was a growing sentiment on the Sony lot that Mr. Rogen and his filmmaking colleagues had exposed employees and the audience to digital damage and physical threat by pushing his outrageous humor to the limit and backing the film to the last.

The impression that Mr. Rogen overreached was enforced by the publication of an email in which he reprimanded Ms. Pascal for pressing for relatively minor changes in the assassination scene. “This is now a story of Americans changing their movie to make North Koreans happy,” Mr. Rogen wrote. “It’s a very damning story.”

Mr. Rogen on Thursday declined through a spokesman to comment. Among his future projects at Sony is “Sausage Factory,” an R-rated animated film about a frankfurter’s existential crisis.

The strains between Mr. Rogen and Ms. Pascal unraveled only one thread in a Hollywood fabric that was thoroughly shredded by the hacking and ensuing threat. Much of the damage centered on the action, or lack thereof, among high industry executives who never stepped forward to assist Sony.

Wednesday’s decision to withdraw the film brought public silence from the Motion Picture Association of America and its chief executive, Christopher J. Dodd, who had remained quiet through a three-week media onslaught on Sony. People associated with Mr. Dodd, speaking privately, said he failed to mobilize competing studio chiefs in support of the studio, partly because they feared drawing attention to themselves and partly because they doubted that public statements or actions would be effective.

That failure has drawn criticism from senior theater executives, who — again privately, as they will need to work with Mr. Dodd and the studios — blame the trade association and Sony for pushing onto them the onus for canceling the film, rather than Sony’s taking responsibility for a decision that was sure to offend some freedom-minded filmmakers. Sony sees it differently, having received clear signals that the theater chains simply did not want the movie.

Another set of broken or bruised relationships involves black stars and filmmakers, a group with whom Sony formerly had very sturdy ties. More than a few black moviemakers — notably Kevin Hart, Will Packer, Ice Cube and Will Smith — have flourished at Sony under Ms. Pascal and Clint Culpepper, who runs Sony’s Screen Gems unit.

But Ms. Pascal and Mr. Culpepper both got burned by the email dump, which included messages in which she traded racial jokes with the producer Scott Rudin about President Obama’s supposed taste in black-themed movies, while Mr. Culpepper was discovered calling Mr. Hart “a whore” in reference to growing salary demands.

Apologies, public and private, weren’t enough. Mr. Sharpton took aim at Ms. Pascal, saying her comments reflected a “troubling” lack of diversity in Hollywood. Mr. Sharpton notably did not call for Ms. Pascal’s ouster after their 90-minute meeting. He said Ms. Pascal had committed to further action aimed at improving diversity in Hollywood movies and television shows.

Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting from San Francisco.

[ESF]

This entire story is just so bizarre. I have no idea what to think.

[heyjude]

Between this story and the end of Serial ... I just can't get enough!

Season 2 of Serial should be "the case against North Korea"!

[orangeblossom]

Dec 19, 2014 0:48:37 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

I must not have seen all of the emails about Obama because I don't recall seeing anything particularly racist

Here's a link to the post on here about it. It includes the article.

pandce.proboards.com/thread/399150/issues-apology-obama-leaked-emails

[secretlyevil]

What a mess. I really don't know how to feel about this entire situation.

[memenee]

Dec 19, 2014 0:21:28 GMT -5 ESF said:

This entire story is just so bizarre. I have no idea what to think.

This is where I'm at.

[CallingAllAngels]

Dec 19, 2014 0:21:28 GMT -5 ESF said:

This entire story is just so bizarre. I have no idea what to think.

Yes! Every time I read an article about it all I can think is, "What? Huh?"

[gazpacho]

I would like to see the rest of the hacked emails. They must be good to cancel the release of the movie.

[eclaires]

This whole thing is so bizarre.

I will say that it irritates me when I feel compelled to defend Seth Rogen's rights to make unfunny movies.

[Velar Fricative]

All I think is "AMERICA FUCK YEAH! We still should have the right to produce and show shitty movies!"

BUT, I think it is so telling that no other movie companies or the head of the motion picture association are making statements of support. Just proves that Sony revelations are really par for the course in Hollywood.

[ttt]

I'd like to know why nobody is talking about the exposure of the sleazy tactics Sonys lawyers have been taking in their anti- net neutrality and anti piracy campaigns. I get that it's not as sexy as gossiping about celebrities but I thought it was a pretty big deal.

[ttt]

Dec 19, 2014 8:15:37 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Dec 19, 2014 8:13:31 GMT -5 ttt said:

I'd like to know why nobody is talking about the exposure of the sleazy tactics Sonys lawyers have been taking in their anti- net neutrality and anti piracy campaigns. I get that it's not as sexy as gossiping about celebrities but I thought it was a pretty big deal.

I would like to know more about this.

Some of Sonys General Counsel's emails were leaked. I guess nothing shocking but still pretty sleazy.
gizmodo.com/sony-leak-the-secret-meetings-that-set-hollywoods-anti-1671041498

socialtimes.com/sony-hacks-reveal-anti-competition-conspiracy_b208442

I have a feeling there will be more coming about this.

[Deleted]

Everyone knows you don't leave a paper trail when you talk trash about your co-workers. Always talk trash in person!

I'm kind of surprised so many people at Sony are this damn stupid. It's not like Sony hasn't been massively hacked before. And no one thought "maybe I shouldn't put my horrible thoughts into writing...."

[Bernadine]

Dec 19, 2014 7:45:28 GMT -5 eclaires said:

This whole thing is so bizarre.

I will say that it irritates me when I feel compelled to defend Seth Rogen's rights to make unfunny movies.

Not only that, but it sounds like Sony is throwing him under the bus, when they backed the movie to begin with.

[eclaires]

Dec 19, 2014 9:46:13 GMT -5 @songforyou said:

Mr. Rogen on Thursday declined through a spokesman to comment. Among his future projects at Sony is “Sausage Factory,” an R-rated animated film about a frankfurter’s existential crisis.

Say what now?

SEE?  This is why I feel irritated about wanting to defend his right to make whatever dipshit movie comes into his brain, lol.

[Alyssa]

The whole thing sounds like some silly Onion article, I can't wrap my head around it.

[ajj]

Dec 19, 2014 7:19:34 GMT -5 gazpacho said:

I would like to see the rest of the hacked emails. They must be good to cancel the release of the movie.

That is what I would like to know, too. It seems like there must be a lot more that could be shared because they canceled it pretty quick and are keeping really quiet about it all.

[jigsy]

Dec 19, 2014 9:46:13 GMT -5 @songforyou said:

Mr. Rogen on Thursday declined through a spokesman to comment. Among his future projects at Sony is “Sausage Factory,” an R-rated animated film about a frankfurter’s existential crisis.

Say what now?

I feel like I have seen a preview for this movie, and that I thought it looked funny. 

Then again, I don't think that Seth Rogan is completely un-funny. I like stupid stoner humor. I am simple.

[jeaniebueller]

The studio’s relationship with Adam Sandler, the star of Sony comedies like “Grown Ups” and its coming summer tent pole “Pixels,” got singed when online news sites published unvarnished executive complaints about his “mundane, formulaic” films.

Is that really controversial? Come on now.

[jigsy]

Dec 19, 2014 14:23:15 GMT -5 @majorwife said:

Dec 19, 2014 14:21:27 GMT -5 jigsy said:

I feel like I have seen a preview for this movie, and that I thought it looked funny. 

Then again, I don't think that Seth Rogan is completely un-funny. I like stupid stoner humor. I am simple.

i quote the 40 year old virgins, you know how i know youre gay bit, far too much

You know how I know your gay...


...because you quote the 40 year old virgin gay bit.

[heyjude]

Meh. I shed no tears for Rogan or his movie or Hollywood. Hollywood is sexist and racist and greenlit a movie ABOUT A HOTDOG but movies for and made by women and minorities are "special" other films. Maybe they SHOULD have to think about the schlock they produce and how they are an industry largely controlled by well connected white men. Does that make the attack good? NO. Does that make NK less evil? HELL NO. Should the US respond? YES. Should Sony have shelved the film? It was a business move so...? Maybe...? I'm just hoping this spurs a greater dialogue on the role the entertainment industry plays on society at large. Every single day in Hollywood someone is making a decision as to whether or not to go forward with a script. Somone read The Interview and said YES (probably because it was written by Rogan). Maybe give some new voices a chance studio execs. And maybe not the same bro dudes you always work with.

Again, nothing about this situation is good. It's absolutely bananas.

[Wrath0fKuus]

Dec 19, 2014 14:28:38 GMT -5 heyjude said:

Meh. I shed no tears for Rogan or his movie or Hollywood. Hollywood is sexist and racist and greenlit a movie ABOUT A HOTDOG but movies for and made by women and minorities are "special" other films. Maybe they SHOULD have to think about the schlock they produce and how they are an industry largely controlled by well connected white men. Does that make the attack good? NO. Does that make NK less evil? HELL NO. Should the US respond? YES. Should Sony have shelved the film? It was a business move so...? Maybe...? I'm just hoping this spurs a greater dialogue on the role the entertainment industry plays on society at large. Every single day in Hollywood someone is making a decision as to whether or not to go forward with a script. Somone read The Interview and said YES (probably because it was written by Rogan). Maybe give some new voices a chance studio execs. And maybe not the same bro dudes you always work with.

Again, nothing about this situation is good. It's absolutely bananas.

I feel like you put into words what I could only express with grunts and gestures.

[Daria Morgandorffer]

Couldn't it at least have been some serious expose on North Korea? Why an idiotic Seth Rogan movie starting some major political crisis. It's just so...so..STUPID.

I hate our world, I really really do. The earth is dying before our eyes, people are being tortured and oppressed, kids are being massacred in schools, and we're squabbling over a fucking shitty comedy and tasteless emails by over inflated Hollywood douchebags.

Slight rant there, sorry.

[ttt]

Dec 19, 2014 14:28:38 GMT -5 heyjude said:

Meh. I shed no tears for Rogan or his movie or Hollywood. Hollywood is sexist and racist and greenlit a movie ABOUT A HOTDOG but movies for and made by women and minorities are "special" other films. Maybe they SHOULD have to think about the schlock they produce and how they are an industry largely controlled by well connected white men. Does that make the attack good? NO. Does that make NK less evil? HELL NO. Should the US respond? YES. Should Sony have shelved the film? It was a business move so...? Maybe...? I'm just hoping this spurs a greater dialogue on the role the entertainment industry plays on society at large. Every single day in Hollywood someone is making a decision as to whether or not to go forward with a script. Somone read The Interview and said YES (probably because it was written by Rogan). Maybe give some new voices a chance studio execs. And maybe not the same bro dudes you always work with.

Again, nothing about this situation is good. It's absolutely bananas.

I really hope these things happen. But I have a feeling the main result is that the studios will now give their IT departments a huge budget increase.

[msmerymac]

Dec 19, 2014 7:45:28 GMT -5 eclaires said:

This whole thing is so bizarre.

I will say that it irritates me when I feel compelled to defend Seth Rogen's rights to make unfunny movies.

I'm so torn. I don't know what to think. I mean, they're blaming Seth Rogen's creative freedom for the fact that they are being backed into a corner by N. Korean hackers? GTFO with that shit.

OTOH, did the terrorists win with the cancellation of this movie? Or did we ALL win?

[heyjude]

Have you guys read Chris Rock's recent scathing attack on Hollywood? It's amazing. Let me see if I can find it.

[debatethis]

Dec 19, 2014 8:02:12 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

All I think is "AMERICA FUCK YEAH! We still should have the right to produce and show shitty movies!"

BUT, I think it is so telling that no other movie companies or the head of the motion picture association are making statements of support. Just proves that Sony revelations are really par for the course in Hollywood.

They're all scrambling to beef up data security. Or at least they should be, given how royally Sony fucked up a situation that was fairly easy to prevent.

[msmerymac]

Dec 19, 2014 14:55:06 GMT -5 debatethis said:

Dec 19, 2014 8:02:12 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

All I think is "AMERICA FUCK YEAH! We still should have the right to produce and show shitty movies!"

BUT, I think it is so telling that no other movie companies or the head of the motion picture association are making statements of support. Just proves that Sony revelations are really par for the course in Hollywood.

They're all scrambling to beef up data security. Or at least they should be, given how royally Sony fucked up a situation that was fairly easy to prevent.

This is like everyone, though. The Target and other data breaches at major retailers last year? (Hell, the electronic division of Sony had a customer data breach.) Basically preventable if companies took cyber security seriously. It's frankly terrifying how little they care, though, and how easy it is to access.

[heyjude]

Here:

www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/top-five-filmmaker-chris-rock-753223

In particular:

It's a white industry. Just as the NBA is a black industry. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. It just is. And the black people they do hire tend to be the same person. That person tends to be female and that person tends to be Ivy League. And there's nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact, that's what I want for my daughters. But something tells me that the life my privileged daughters are leading right now might not make them the best candidates to run the black division of anything. And the person who runs the black division of a studio should probably have worked with black people at some point in their life. Clint Culpepper does a good job at Screen Gems because he's the kind of guy who would actually go see Best Man Holiday. But how many black men have you met working in Hollywood? They don't really hire black men. A black man with bass in his voice and maybe a little hint of facial hair? Not going to happen. It is what it is. I'm a guy who's accepted it all.

We cut it out in Top Five, but there had been a scene where Kevin Hart, who plays my character's agent, is in his office talking to me, and he finds out that "Zoolander" (Ben Stiller) is down the hall and he's mad because none of the agents called him. He's the only black agent at the agency, and there was a line in the movie like, "I'm the only black agent here. They never invite me to anything, and these people are liberals. This isn't the Klan."

But forget whether Hollywood is black enough. A better question is: Is Hollywood Mexican enough? You're in L.A, you've got to try not to hire Mexicans. It's the most liberal town in the world, and there's a part of it that's kind of racist — not racist like "F— you, nigger" racist, but just an acceptance that there's a slave state in L.A. There's this acceptance that Mexicans are going to take care of white people in L.A. that doesn't exist anywhere else. I remember I was renting a house in Beverly Park while doing some movie, and you just see all of the Mexican people at 8 o'clock in the morning in a line driving into Beverly Park like it's General Motors. It's this weird town.

You're telling me no Mexicans are qualified to do anything at a studio? Really? Nothing but mop up? What are the odds that that's true? The odds are, because people are people, that there's probably a Mexican David Geffen mopping up for somebody's company right now. The odds are that there's probably a Mexican who's that smart who's never going to be given a shot. And it's not about being given a shot to greenlight a movie because nobody is going to give you that — you've got to take that. The shot is that a Mexican guy or a black guy is qualified to go and give his opinion about how loud the boings are in Dodgeball or whether it's the right shit sound you hear when Jeff Daniels is on the toilet in Dumb and Dumber. It's like, "We only let white people do that." This is a system where only white people can chime in on that. There would be a little naivete to sitting around and going, "Oh, no black person has ever greenlighted a movie," but those other jobs? You're kidding me, right? They don't even require education. When you're on the lower levels, they're just about taste, nothing else. And you don't have to go to Harvard to have taste.

[debatethis]

Dec 19, 2014 14:59:18 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Dec 19, 2014 14:55:06 GMT -5 debatethis said:

They're all scrambling to beef up data security. Or at least they should be, given how royally Sony fucked up a situation that was fairly easy to prevent.

This is like everyone, though. The Target and other data breaches at major retailers last year? (Hell, the electronic division of Sony had a customer data breach.) Basically preventable if companies took cyber security seriously. It's frankly terrifying how little they care, though, and how easy it is to access.

Agreed. I read an article recently (can't seem to find it now) that says something like 35-40% of the computers in the world are still running XP.  DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!