Senator Wants to Screen The Interview at First Re-election Fundraiser

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) wants to screen the movie that angered North Korea so at his first re-election fundraiser.

“I would say one thing — I’m pretty disappointed in Sony Pictures decision to pull The Interview under pressure from North Korea,” Kirk said Thursday on WBEZ radio, in comments captured by BuzzFeed. “I would say that I’m gonna be trying to hold the first big Kirk for Senate fundraiser at a screening of The Interview, so that everybody shows the North Koreans that you cannot edit what we want to see and do in the United States, under the First Amendment.”

“It was a terrible lesson to terrorists, to give them what they wanted — that we should, as Americans under the First Amendment, we should never have to ask North Korea for permission as to what movie we can — just think of a previous really good movie, that was Team America: World Police, that was really funny about North Korea,” Kirk said of the 2004 film from the creators of the South Park that lampooned Kim Jong-il.

Like the assassination plot against Kim Jong-un in The Interview, the elder Kim dies in Team America by being impaled on a kaiser’s helmet.

However, without explanation, Paramount has now banned theaters from screening Team America.

“And your birthright as an American citizen — you never have to ask the North Koreans for permission for what movie you can see,” Kirk said. “I hope that now all the media about this movie makes it a smash hit, and that we see many more movies like it, and teach the North Koreans a lesson about what Americans can and cannot do.”

There was no elaboration on how the Kirk campaign would get the film if Sony refuses to ever release it.

Anonymous accounts on Twitter have noted that people are asking or assuming that the power-hackers will leak the film, but they haven’t indicated that they plan to do so.