George Clooney Calls Out Hollywood for being a Bunch of Cowards

Has there been a story over the last couple of weeks that doesn't touch upon the Sony leaks in some way? If so it certainly doesn't feel like it, and with the studio's decision to yank The Interview out of theaters, giving in to threats from a hacker group linked to North Korea, the ripple effects are still being felt. There has been a vocal backlash against the move to not release the comedy in any form, and one of the loudest voices against it is George Clooney.

While speaking with Deadline, Clooney openly questioned why Hollywood didn't band together to help Sony while they were being publicly bullied day in and day out. He even attempted to circulate a petition rallying some support for the studio, but didn't get many takers because Sony had been so humiliated...

Clooney: "All that it is basically saying is, we’re not going to give in to a ransom. As we watched one group be completely vilified, nobody stood up. Nobody took that stand. Now, I say this is a situation we are going to have to come to terms with, a new paradigm and a new way of handling our business. Because this could happen to an electric company, a car company, a newsroom. It could happen to anybody."

He went on to add...

Clooney:  "This is just where we are right now, how scared this industry has been made. Quite honestly, this would happen in any industry. I don’t know what the answer is, but what happened here is part of a much larger deal. A huge deal. And people are still talking about dumb emails. Understand what is going on right now, because the world just changed on your watch, and you weren’t even paying attention."

And of course Clooney would be the guy to come out and say this. His career as a filmmaker has been about making movies that focus on hot button topics; the kinds of films that may offend some and make studios nervous. He recognizes those kinds of films could be harder to make if distributors are too afraid to release them...

Clooney:  "What’s going to happen is, you’re going to have trouble finding distribution. In general, when you’re doing films like that, the ones that are critical, those aren’t going to be studio films anyway. Most of the movies that got us in trouble, we started out by raising the money independently. But to distribute, you’ve got to go to a studio, because they’re the ones that distribute movies. The truth is, you’re going to have a much harder time finding distribution now. And that’s a chilling effect."

How to resolve this whole thing? Clooney says The Interview needs to be released. Now. And he says Sony's Amy Pascal feels the same way...

Clooney:  "We should be in the position right now of going on offense with this. I just talked to Amy an hour ago. She wants to put that movie out. What do I do? My partner Grant Heslov and I had the conversation with her this morning. Bryan and I had the conversation with her last night. Stick it online. Do whatever you can to get this movie out. Not because everybody has to see the movie, but because I’m not going to be told we can’t see the movie. That’s the most important part. We cannot be told we can’t see something by Kim Jong-un, of all f*cking people."

Clooney's got a bunch of points here that I think are valid and will certainly be discussed more over the coming months, possibly even years. The Interview has now become a historical fixture, whether it ever gets released or not.