Hey, remember when December used to be a slow month for news? But with the MSM and Hollywood committing Seppuku on multiple fronts (mass resignations at TNR, Rolling Stone’s UVa rape fable, and Sony’s eagerness to surrender to both North Korea and Al Sharpton), it’s been quite a month in the media wreckage business.
When Chris Hughes imploded the New Republic to kick December off, I wrote:
Incidentally, earlier in her article, [Bloomberg’s Megan McArdle] writes, “But even by my profession’s cinematic standards, [Chris Hughes’ TNR debacle] is going to be one for the Criterion Classics collection.” Heh. If a decent comedy screenwriter could be found, it would certainly make for a great made-for-TV movie along the lines of HBO’s The Late Shift or its likely inspiration, Larry Gelbart’s satiric 1993 adaptation of Barbarians at the Gate.
In the meantime, a riveting documentary about a magazine with an eccentric plutocratic socialist leader and aggrieved staff exists already: The September Issue, on Vogue magazine in 2007. It really does have a Last Days of Pompeii feel to it, seeing as it was filmed a year before the housing bubble blew up the economy, followed by Barack Obama getting to work at fundamentally transforming America to a standard that TNR could finally give its blessing to.
Today at NewsBusters, Jeffrey Lord asks, “Will Seth Rogen and Hollywood Make the Movie on the Sony Cave-In?”
So now that the North Koreans are taunting Sony and all of Hollywood, rubbing their face in this, isn’t it time for Rogen and all of Hollywood to pull together and stand up for the First Amendment? For creative expression? Doing this by making the Sony counterpart of the Edward Snowden film being made by Oliver Stone? Sending a defiant response to North Korea and tyrants everywhere not just from Seth Rogen but the entire American film industry?
If ever there is a film that begs to be made — with an entire industry that should be leaping to lend their talents — it would be the story of Sony, Seth Rogen’s film and the terrorists of North Korea’s Communist dictatorship.
Or is it just those who reveal US government secrets that Hollywood chooses for cinematic glory? The hypocrisy coming out of Hollywood is so thick it would take a chain saw to even make the first surface cut.
As Lord writes, “don’t bet the rent that this film will ever be made,” and of course he’s right. For one thing, it would expose, as Lord writes, Tinseltown’s utter hypocrisy on the issues of hacking and doxing:
But when it comes to, say, US government secrets? Oliver Stone is on the job with an as yet untitled film glorifying Edward Snowden, with Snowden already the subject of the documentary Citizenfour. Steven Spielberg is on the job with The Fifth Estate, glamorizing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and starring Hollywood’s latest heartthrob Benedict Cumberbatch. And don’t forget the 2003 TV movie starring James Spader as Daniel Ellsberg in The Pentagon Papers.
The reviews of those upcoming films by Stone and Spielberg write themselves, don’t they? But it’s too bad that there may never be a documentary about Sony’s implosion, as film about a film studio being hacked, having racist emails published, shelving a film to appease Kim Jong-Il, and then turning around and handing their hoden in a lockbox to Al Sharpton would be an incredible film, whether it’s a documentary or a swinging Late Shift-style satiric farce.*
As the late Gene Siskel famously said, “I always ask myself, ‘Is the movie that I am watching as interesting as a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?'” And this would make for a much more compelling 90 minutes than that. But unfortunately, modern Hollywood probably lacks both the brains and the hodens to make it.
* Currently on Amazon Prime Video, incidentally, and well worth your time if you haven’t seen it.
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