THE INTERVIEW

From the moment Seth Rogen specified Kim Jong-un as the target of his satirical assassination script, The Interview was set to ruffle feathers. He had to have known that and wanted to play with it. But he never imagined he would be, in a sense, making history with what was planned to be essentially another big boy comedy with a geopolitical gimmick.

            In its earliest stages, the movie that would become The Interview was to be set in an unnamed Asian country with obvious parallels to North Korea and a thinly disguised Kim Jon-il, in the same manner that the fictional country of Matobo was used as a clear stand-in for Zimbabwe in Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter, a very different kind of film, which also featured a fictional despot ruler that was, nonetheless, recognizable enough to infuriate Robert Mugabe who promptly banned the film in Zimbabwe.

            It’s not clear at what point Rogen decided on Kim Jon-il as the target of the fictional assassination but, after the death of the Supreme Leader in December of 2011, the project was halted. When his son took the throne, the project was not only back on but with a vengeance. The younger leader offered a bigger target with his vanity, surprising taste for Western popculture, and violent manifestations of his insecurities. Dennis Rodman’s much publicized (and frowned upon) visits to the Supreme Leader’s castle starting in 2011 further encouraged their venture.

            “Kim Jong-un is a lot closer in age to Franco and me, which is better comedically," Rogen said. “And he also just seems a lot funnier. You see him in pictures, he's, like, laughing hysterically, but he's an evil fuck! You'd probably like him, but you shouldn't like him.”

            Word about the film was out in Hollywood circles by the middle of 2013 and the nature of the film was well known by the time shooting started in October of the that year. It was not, however, until June of 2014 that North Korea officially responded to the film with a rant that was at the same time pointed and rambling.

            “There is a special irony in this storyline as it shows the desperation of the US government and American society,” said Kim Myong-chol, executive director for North Korea-US Peace. “A film about the assassination of a foreign leader mirrors what the US has done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. And let us not forget who killed Kennedy – Americans. In fact, President [Barack] Obama should be careful in case the US military wants to kill him as well.”

 Verbal lashings and unspecified threats continued throughout the summer even as Sony pushed the release date to Christmas Day allowing time for some minor alterations, toning down the ferocity of the satire.

           Calling the movie an “act of war” a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said, “Making and releasing a movie on a plot to hurt our top-level leadership is the most blatant act of terrorism and war and will absolutely not be tolerated. If the US administration allows and defends the showing of the film, a merciless counter-measure will be taken.”

            The severity of North Korea’s determination to halt the release of The Interview became suddenly clear on November 24 when a group calling themselves the Guardians of Peace hacked into Sony’s computer, sending the studio and its divisions, including Columbia Pictures, producers of The Interview, into a level of panic unprecedented in the entertainment industry. While undisputedly big, the initial stages of taunting by the hackers created little cause for concern outside of the entertainment industry as most of it involved the release of embarrassing e-mails and the scripts for unreleased works, including the anticipated James Bond film Spectre and Annie, also a holiday season release. The hackers alluded to The Interview as part of their gripe, but the early nature of the attack was more prankish gossip than political.

            On December 16 the hackers finally specified the cause of attack; halting the release of The Interview just before its New York premier. A link to North Korea was finally drawn and the situation took on a drastically more serious turn. North Korea denied connections to the attack, but the hackers were pretty clear about their demand.

In their now famous statement they warned Sony, “We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places The Interview be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to. Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made. The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you'd better leave.)Whatever comes in the coming days is called by the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment. All the world will denounce the SONY.”

            On the following day, ArcLight and Carmike cinemas announced they would not be screening the film and, after Sony cancelled the New York premier, the major cinema chains (AMC, Cineplex, Cinemark, Regal, and Southern Theaters) followed suit almost unanimously. Without any outlets, Sony was forced to withdraw the film announcing it had no plans for a further release.

            Sony may have had no choice, but to the public as well as members of the film industry, Sony caved in to terrorists. The anger was heard and took Twitter, Facebook, and the media by storm. Among the outrage, however, there were a number of helpful suggestions, most involving the release of The Interview through video-on-demand services or Sony’s own Crackle. The most visible backlash came from entertainers, including Steve Carell who saw production halted by New Regency on his starring vehicle Pyongyang, a thriller based on the graphic novel by Guy Delisle. There were, however, many political experts who also thought the decision unwise. Chief among them was Bruce Bennett, senior defense analyst for Rand Corporation.
          "I think it should be released," Bennett said, speculating that Kim Jong-un's real fear was that the film end up in the hands of disgruntled North Korean elites. "Once elites see it, it’s going to have some effect, and it’s not going to be good for him. I think that’s what, in the end, they were really trying to stop by stopping the release of the film. From a political perspective, Kim Jong-un’s point is internal politics. If we want to have a proportional response (to the hack and threats against theater-goers) we have to respond with internal politics."

           Of the film itself, Bennett was supportive, recalling of his consultation with Sony CEO Michel Lynton, "I told him I thought it was coarse, that it was over the top in some areas, but that I thought the depiction of Kim Jong-un was a picture that needed to get into North Korea. There are a lot of people in prison camps in North Korea who need to take advantage of a change of thinking in the north."
        Even those who weren't sold on the film agreed that giving in to the hackers' demands was a mistake.
       "It was a stupid idea to have the movie in the first place,” said Kookmin University's Andrei Lankov. "These people try to target groups they think are harmless. I don’t think they would make such a movie about assassinating a Chinese president or an Ayatollah, especially named by their real name. If Iran made a comedy about assassinating Obama, I don’t think it would be seen as good clean humor. It was ignorance and arrogance. But it’s not a good idea to give in now. Once you give one concession you will have to give more, and more, and more. The usual policy, don’t talk to blackmailers, is a good one. North Korean spooks disguised as the Guardians of Peace will just blackmail everybody who says anything they don’t like."

        However, the lambasting that broke the camel’s back came from President Obama, who called Sony’s decision “a mistake”.

          “We cannot have a society in which some dictator in some place can start imposing censorship in the United States,” the President said.

          Sony argued, and rightfully so, that they did not cave in but simply had no option when no cinema picked up the film.

         “The movie theaters came to us one by one over the course of a very short period of time ... and announced that they would not carry the movie,” Lynton said. “We have not caved. We have not given in. We have preserved. And we have not backed down.”

         Nonetheless, this was the shot in the arm that was needed for Sony to announced, on the 23^rd of December, that the film would be given a limited release on Christmas Day in about 300 theaters nationwide as well as becoming available on various sites for download and On Demand TV services. Although it will take Sony longer to recoup the $44 million budget through this method, it did avert the estimated loss of $75 million burying The Interview would have cost and, undoubtedly helped by its close call with becoming forbidden fruit, the film did become the most successful streamed title ever. 

            The Interview, then, did not become the The Day the Clown Cried of its generation. Not that the two films have much in common. The Day the Clown Cried was left unfinished by creator Jerry Lewis for reasons having to do less with censorship than legal and financial difficulties as well as a bit of artistic pride. Furthermore, by the time Sony announced it would be shelving The Interview, many had already seen it and reviews were already present, giving shut-out audiences a sense of what they missed. Meanwhile, those wanting to know more about Jerry Lewis’s hidden work are dependent on the recollection of Harry Shearer.

            The biggest difference, however, is the political implication of Sony’s decision. While it’s true that the studio had few options, it was, at least indirectly, the result of a terrorist threat, setting an alarming precedent. The other chief distinction is that even if Lewis’s film had made it as far as a limited number of sneak previews and seen by a few eyes before being taken out of circulation it was much easier to erase a film over forty years ago. In the Youtube era nothing truly disappears and Sony had barely finished announcing its decision when the film’s most notorious scene, the slow-framed death of Kim Jon-un as his helicopter explodes set to a melancholy rendition of Katy Perry’s “Firework”, which, ironically, was one of the scenes toned down after it was suggested that the shot of the despot’s flaming skull was a bit too savage, began circulating online.

            Now The Interview is easily available and may have reached a wider audience had it not been shrouded in a firestorm. Inevitably, the more cynical voices have suspected the whole thing to be either a very clever marketing ploy or, at least, Sony’s way of making the most of a bad real situation. But there is reason beyond the triumph of free speech to celebrate the release of The Interview. It is, while certainly not consistently funny or as insightful as it could have been, a clever satire of the man North Koreans call the Glorious Leader. Sure, the film’s criticism of the regime is broader than one would hope, but it has bite and a surprising level of empathy.

            Watching The Interview it’s hard to escape the suspicion that what angered Kim Jong-un and his sympathizers is not so much his fantastical movie death but, rather, the harder to dismiss questions the movie asks about his rule and character, penetrating questions that have far deeper consequences than an imaginary death.

            To be sure, the accusations are basic and no deeper than a frat boy’s understanding of politics. The movie, and Dave Skylark, the untactful host played by James Franco, hold him accountable for starving his people, but the only demonstration of this is the revelation that a grocery his propagandist (Diana Bang) shows the Americans as proof that the country is well-fed is a prop with fake fruit. Sure, this is a comedy and real evidence of suffering in North Korea is not only beyond its scope but also out of place, but it’s also important to remember that the objective of this scene is closer to a sensational pay-off than definitive condemnation. Likewise, his unpredictable temper and propensity for violence is dealt with swiftly in one scene at a tavern where, in a drunken rage, the tyrant rants about his contempt for those who think him incapable of filling his father’s shoes and having no qualms about launching nuclear weapons if that is what it will take to convince the world of his power. The movie itself, however, is pretty dismissive of these ramblings, Skylark, at first, thinks he “was just talking”. In fact, it’s not even this disclosure that convinces Skylark of Kim Jong-un’s wickedness but, rather, the realization that he’s been lied to about the grocery shop. If the grocery revelation was treated as satirical drama, the verbal outburst at the restaurant is brushed off largely as a joke when one of the Leader’s guards reminds him that they are in the presence of the “American idiot”. Of course, that line could serve at evidence that there is a real threat behind Kim Jong-un’s bluff, but the movie, apparently unaware of this, prefers to leave it as a punchline.

            Where The Interview gains substance is in its exploration of the Leader’s psyche, his daddy issues, and personal insecurities. It’s funnier while becoming deeper, stopping just short of sympathy. True, most of Kim Jong-un’s appeal to sympathy in the film, mostly about his father questioning his manhood (what other area offers as good an opportunity for humor), turns out to be his a product for his mastery at manipulating the media, it does create what may be the most rewarding decision made in The Interview, it personalizes the despot rather than allowing him to spiral into a generic caricature of a raving tyrant, an effect further helped by Randall Park’s subdued humanizing performance.

            Unquestionably, the film makes Kim Jong-un out to be a buffoon but, perhaps incidentally, also accomplishes exactly what Dave and his producer Aaron (Seth Rogen) set out to do with help from Sook (Bang), the propagandist who is later revealed to be a secret rebel, expose the Supreme Leader to be just a man with all the vices and imperfections of one, effectively breaking the spell he has over his people, yet another thing The Interview explains through a running gag when the biggest myth surrounding the man is that he never urinates or defecates. It is, of course, a simplistic examination of why over 24 million people idolize the man as is also what breaks the illusion (he likes Katy Perry, margaritas, and cries on live television) but as satire the point is well taken.

            In this regard, The Interview is very clever. It finds much to mock about Kim Jong-un but realizes that simply turning him into a monster would have been too easy. After all, we don’t turn to satire for the real horror, certainly not in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator nor any of the countless spoofs of the Third Reich. Laugher is, in itself, a powerful attack weapon and can stand its own ground. Consequently, the worst thing Kim Jong-un succeeds at doing in The Interview is shooting a guard in the anus which is, again, played for laughs.

            What comes as unexpected is that the funniest moments in The Interview come before Skylark and Aaron even arrive in North Korea. The first twenty minutes of the film are classic trash TV lampoon, James Franco playing the shameless shlock show host caricature to new extremes with Dave Skylark. His manner is as tacky as his neckties and his ignorance about topics beyond celebrity gossip are rudimentary at best. A case could be made that his cluelessness is the film's attempt to balance itself with an indictment of America's blissful preoccupation with trivial gossp while real dangers go on in distant lands. In a less comical context the interruption of one of Skylark's inane interviews by breaking news of a missile launch in North Korea would be a painful reminder of how the attacks of September 11th, 2001 drew our attention away from the so-called "summer of the shark" to the real horrors of the world.  Perhaps because of this, when Skylark does land that interview Kim Jong-un, he is the perfect candidate for recruitment by the CIA to assassinate the Leader by use of poison. Who would suspect the man who cares more about Rob Lowe’s hair than nuclear weapons?

            Skylark’s interview of Eminem, which takes a hilariously unexpected turn, is arguably the film’s funniest moment, particularly in how Eminem, a rapper not exactly known for his composure, plays off the audience’s shock. But Franco’s Skylark is a wonderful creation that never gets old and is easily Franco’s best comedic work. His oblivion to the danger that the mission he is entrusted with entails is in itself the film’s richest running gag. There isn’t a single threat, a nuclear missile, a poisoned slip, or Kim Jong-un’s henchmen, that Skylark cannot downgrade to tabloid pulp.

            As Aaron Rapoport, Skylark’s producer with ambitions for more respectable news, Seth Rogen plays straight-man to Franco. Despite writing and directing it, Rogen has less to do within the movie itself than would be expected but does have his moments in the sun. He is used to best advantage when responding to Skylark’s reckless inappropriateness but is given very little time to be funny on his own. His one golden scene is a bizarre encounter with a tiger just outside of the palace that serves as a glorious reminder of Oliver Hardy’s brushes with danger as a result of his friend’s stupidity. Indeed, Aaron has wandered into the palace gardens by night to retrieve a new poison shipped by the CIA after Skylark’s inanity has caused the original strip to get lost (itself a funny bit) when the fierce cat appears on the scene.

            Once Aaron and Skylakr arrive in North Korea the movie shifts gears, even the humor taking a darker turn into the same sort of realm as Inglorious Basterds, albeit wih deeper contemporary implications. Life under Kim Jong-un’s rule is exposed by terms both satirical and glum. As limited as the cardboard grocery gag is as a polemic, Skylark’s discovery of the lie is played more or less straight, suggesting that the film’s accusation may not be far from the reality in North Korea. Only once does the humor return to the unadulterated mockery of the first half of the film, and that’s our first introduction to Kim Jong-un and his boyish fascination with tanks, missiles, Katy Perry, margaritas, girls, and, of course, basketball. But the tone remains decidedly more aggressive than when the film opened.

            Of course, because Seth Rogen is the film’s mastermind, sophomoric jokes abound, including his partiality for painful bloody gags. His character in Pineapple Express got a huge chunk of his ear shot off and here loses many fingers during a fight with a control room techie during the interview. The techie bites off Aaron’s finger first, who responds by biting off the techie’s fingers, then sitting him atop the joystick, and so it continues until both men are a blood-soaked mess. Less savage but equally as bloody was the earlier demise of the unfortunate palace guard who ate the poison intended for his master mistaking it for a piece of gum. We learn from earlier that it takes the poison twelve hours to take effect and claims the life of its consumer during a musical presentation in which the guard collapses and dies, though not before accidentally firing his gun into his companion’s skull, spraying the dinner guests in blood.

            The Interview should not be taken for anything more than a very basic understanding of geopolitics. As a satirical comedy it is enjoyable and generally well executed. It holds no punches in its mockery of Kim Jong-un, especially toward the end, but even then never makes a heavy villain out of him, much the same, incidentally, as the rest of the world sees him. The humor loses its way toward the center where it becomes unsure of how to handle itself, but James Franco shines in every scene and The Interview may be his best comedic work to date. Throughout, The Interview is a subtler and more contained work than its reputation would suggest; at times willing to learn more about Kim Jong-un, the man behind the monster.

            When the future of the movie seemed unsure one critic who saw the film said that any fan of Rogen and Franco would know what to expect. That’s not entirely true. While the first half of The Interview is indeed classic frat pack fodder, the bulk of the movie is of a different pedigree, part traditional juvenile knockabout (Rogen has to hide a can up his anus), part political lampoon, and part pure adventure into territory few comedies dare to go. While it’s also true that The Interview is unlikely to make Rogen and Franco new fans, it will always be credited as a triumph of free speech. In other words, North Korea did more to secure the film’s legacy than anything Sony could have done on its own.