14 DAY TRIAL // As the investigation into last month’s breach into the Sony servers continues, with authorities still trying to find whoever is behind the group named Guardians Of Peace (#GOP), more leaks shine the spotlight on Sony Pictures and all the juicy details of what goes on behind the scenes when a movie is being made.
“The Interview,” the latest film with Seth Rogen and James Franco, which Rogen wrote and directed, has been named quite a lot, too, by #GOP first of all.
Because the story is about a pair of newsmen who are tasked by the CIA in secret to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the hackers made it very clear from the start: either Sony backed down on the release, or they would run them into the ground with these unauthorized leaks.
Rogen and Franco are finally doing press for the film
Until just now, James Franco and Seth Rogen have been keeping a very low profile, avoiding to do interviews to promote the film – even though, with a Christmas release date, they should have already started.
When the Hollywood premiere took place last Friday, they said a few words before the screening, but they asked the studio beforehand to ban all questions from the media. It’s time now to break the silence.
The two actors appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America, where they briefly touched on this topic. Actually, as you can see in the video below, it was Rogen who did most of the talking, because this falls on him, since he wrote, directed, and collaborated with Sony to make it happen.
“I can't definitively say I know the ramifications of the storm,” he says. “I mean, I don't know if the hacking honestly is because of our movie, definitively or not. I know that it has been the center of a lot of media attention lately. It is weird because we just wanted to make a really funny, entertaining movie and the movie itself is very silly and wasn't meant to be controversial in any way.”
Rogen and Franco blame the media
Much like famous writer Aaron Sorkin did the other day, Rogen and Franco also blame the media for the scandal because it’s equally to blame for what is happening, by publishing the leaked emails.
The two actors also sat down for an interview with Howard Stern (you will find it available on SoundCloud, but *please be advised that it contains strong language that might offend), in which they cut to the chase and stop mincing their words: the media has no right to publish those private email exchanges because, in doing so, it’s doing exactly what the hackers want.
Those are private conversations that concern no third party and most definitely not the larger public, and they should never go out in print, Rogen says passionately. Sharing stolen files is also a crime – and the people reading them are hypocrites because, not long ago, with the NSA scandal, they were outraged to learn that the government was snooping on their own conversations.
Leaked video shows exactly what made the film so controversial
Meanwhile, Gawker has obtained a video of the original ending of “The Interview,” showing exactly what made the film such a hot-topic: the scene shows Kim Jung-un on a plane, looking as it’s being hit by a missile. The next second, his face and his hair are on fire and the blast of the explosion makes his head explode, right as he’s being engulfed by flames.
The same media outlet has the email conversations around it, with Rogen, Sony Pictures co-chairwoman Amy Pascal, and Sony’s Japan-based CEO Kazuo Hirai discussing about the changes that “had” to be made to make the scene acceptable. Hirai never gets involved in the studio’s business, but this time, he would not allow the movie to come out without alterations to the scene in question.
