Archive for December, 2014

You Can Watch The Interview — Now What?


The Christmas Day release of Columbia/Sony Entertainment’s comedy The Interview in shows playing at over 300 sold-out theaters has demonstrated American consumers — of movies or politics — are smarter, and have more character, than comedian Bill Maher, economist Jonathan Gruber, or the major American movie theater chain’s executives believe.

In originally permitting the major theater chains contracted to show Sony’s comedy The Interview to cancel their contracts, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton acted not as the head of a movie studio promising stockholders to maximize box-office receipts for his entertainment division but instead acted as an agent of a nanny state determined to protect adults from any possible risks about what they consume.

It may not even be Lynton’s fault.

No doubt the CEO of a company owned by the even more anal-retentive Japanese Mitsui keiretsu was surrounded by corporate executives and lawyers haranguing him about legal liability for a “foreseeable” terrorist attack, making the theaters and studio more civilly liable than Warner Bros. and Cinemark theaters were held to be for James Holmes’ unannounced 2012 attack on theater patrons seeing The Dark Knight in Aurora, Colorado.

In a country where jumbo soda pops traditionally sold in theater lobbies were attempted to be prohibited for sale in New York City; where a health warning on every pack of cigarettes sold for decades was not enough for tobacco companies not to have to recompense unhealthy smokers who decided to ignore the warnings; where a Drug Enforcement Administration and Food and Drug Administration deny adults the right to decide for themselves what substances will make life more tolerable for them, it’s not surprising that a threat from Internet trolls to attack theaters showing The Interview was enough to intimidate Sony into writing off tens of megabucks they’d already spent producing and ramping up distribution for a comedy they hoped would be a box-office bonanza.

But Sony reversed course, under criticism from such Hollywood insiders as George Clooney, President Barack Obama, and — amazingly enough — myself, being interviewed on Russia Today.

The Interview was not the first movie offensive to someone with a megaphone or a fondness for mayhem and it won’t be the last. It shouldn’t take the wagging finger of Your Hardly Humble Correspondent — much less Obama or Clooney — to convince a corporation not to back off due to threats from bullies such as Internet hackers or their own legal team.

The next “Putin’s Punishers” who threaten terrorism because of the pending theatrical release of Pussy Riot 2: Mayhem in Moscow can be ignored by the simple expedient of treating movie-goers as adults. After the MPAA rating card in the endless trailers before you can see the movie you bought the ticket to watch just put the Terrorist Rating:

Terrorist Rating

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The Interview: Good Political Satire, Not Kosher for Christmas

The Interview
Sony Pictures Entertainment/Columbia Pictures
Directors: Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen
Writers: Dan Sterling (Screenplay) (Story) | Seth Rogen (Story) | Evan Goldberg (Story)
Producers: Evan Goldberg | Seth Rogen | James Weaver
Starring James Franco, Seth Rogen, Aaron Rapaport, Lizzy Caplan, Randall Park, Diana Bang

There’s a joke supposedly told in the Soviet Union during the Cold War in which an American is trying to explain to a Russian about freedom of speech. “Here in the United States,” says the American to the Russian, “I can freely denounce the President of the United States, the U.S. Congress, and the Supreme Court of the United States, and no one will arrest me, send me to prison, or threaten my family.”

“We have the exact same freedom of speech in the USSR,” replies the Russian proudly. “I can also freely denounce the President of the United States, the U.S. Congress, and the Supreme Court of the United States, and no one will arrest me, send me to prison, or threaten my family.”

Apparently, though, making a comedy satirizing a foreign dictator is not as simple as that, as Sony Pictures Entertainment/Columbia Pictures discovered when, following official denunciations from North Korean officials, a secret organization styling itself Guardians of Peace, after hacking Sony’s corporate computers releasing embarrassing interoffice emails and capturing file copies of unreleased movies, threatened terrorism against movie theaters showing The Interview, a Sony/Columbia Pictures comedy about a CIA-driven assassination attempt on the real-world dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.

The Interview poster

Sony took the threat seriously enough first to re-edit the movie making it marginally less offensive to North Korea. Then Sony delayed the movie’s theatrical release from fall to Christmas Day. (I suggested in a tweet that as a Christmas release a movie about a political assassination would have been better titled It’s A Wonderful Death). Sony next notified the major theater chains that it would allow them to cancel the movie’s exhibition in their theaters without contractual penalties to Sony.

An outcry from free-speech advocates (my own during a December 18th interview on Russia Today’s “In the Now” program), including President Obama and George Clooney, caused Sony to make unprecedented efforts to reverse their decision, releasing the movie both on over 200 domestic theatrical screens on December 25th, as well as for rent or sale via online platforms including YouTube a day earlier.

Today I found the movie on YouTube and bought it for streaming, and after hooking up my YouTube access with the Roku box that allows me to watch Internet videos on my big plasma screen I watched it — a day before its theatrical release.

The Interview begins with a satire on the shallowness of current day American news programs that avoid hard news in favor of scandal and entertainment. I don’t think any North Korean critics noticed that. The plot then proceeds to a slapstick comedy that is more in the tradition of The Three Stooges’ short 1939 Columbia Pictures parody of Adolf Hitler, “You Nazty Spy,” than it is of Charles Chaplin’s far more elegant The Great Dictator.


You Nazty Spy

The Interview is good comedy and good political satire. In between obligatory jokes based on scatalogical bodily functions the action is actually motivated by intelligent dialogue and nuances of character. While not touching the exalted status of Stanley Kubrick masterpieces like Dr. Strangelove or A Clockwork Orange I wouldn’t hesitate to put it up with movies like Wag the Dog, Thank You for Smoking, or Team America: World Police.

It’s not a Christmas movie, but neither are other dissonant releases for the holiday season including American Sniper — but given the odd releasing pattern of this major studio film I suspect most of its views should and will continue well past its Christmas opening.

If you’re looking for a movie that aims its jabs at our own government — what the Russian during the Soviet Union era would not have been able to do without dire consequence — my own new movie Alongside Night can be booked for individual theatrical screenings right now but awaits wider release in 2015. If you want to encourage that sign this petition started before Sony reversed its decision not to release The Interview.

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Alongside Night World Premiere Interview with Kevin Sorbo & J. Neil Schulman


On July 14, 2014 — the day of the movie’s world premiere — Alongside Night star and executive producer Kevin Sorbo and author/filmmaker J. Neil Schulman sat down with Reason.TV’s Alexis Garcia for an interview. Kevin Sorbo discusses his acting career, his views on the new wave of Christian-oriented movies, and his personal beliefs. J. Neil Schulman talks about his rare opportunity as a novelist then getting the opportunity to adapt, direct, produce, and act in a movie based on his novel, and the history and ideas behind Alongside Night.



Thanks to Alexis Garcia, Reason.TV, and Nick Gillespie for providing us this unaired interview.

Alongside Night Short Videos on YouTube

Full info on Alongside Night:
Official website: http://AlongsideNightMovie.com
Official Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/AlongsideNightMovie
Official Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/AlongsideNight



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Resisting Arrest

A short photo essay on resisting arrest.

April 19, 1775
April 19, 1775

Gandhi March to Sea
Gandhi March to Sea

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin

Tank Man at Tien an men Square
Tank Man at Tien an men Square

Eric Garner
Eric Garner

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