[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Thanks for sharing part of your day with us. 10 years ago, a United States company faced a major national security crisis, all thanks to a movie starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. That movie, The Interview, was a comedy mocking North Korea and the regime of Kim Jong Un. North Korea was unhappy with the film and decided to hack Sony Pictures Entertainment to attempt to threaten the company into squashing the film.

The hack led to a trove of emails from studio executives and even some celebrities being released to the public. Some of the emails were embarrassing and degrading like producer Scott Rudin referring to Angelina Jolie as a "spoiled brat." James Franco and Seth Rogen tried their best to make light of the situation. Here they are on SNL in the midst of the scandal.

[applause]

Seth Rogen: Actually, it's much, much worse than we thought it was going to be, man.

James Franco: What?

Seth Rogen: You're not going to believe this, but an hour ago, they released some of our private photos from our phones.

James Franco: What? Oh, my God. Which photos?

Seth Rogen: All of them.

[laughter]

James Franco: You mean like the one I took of you in your dressing room?

Seth Rogen: Yes, yes, yes, with the control top pantyhose.

[laughter]

Seth Rogen: I'm just trying to look a little slimmer.

James Franco: I thought you looked great.

Seth Rogen: Thank you, thank you, but they also leaked this one of me teaching you how to read.

[laughter]

James Franco: Oh no.

Seth Rogen: You're making such good progress, man.

Alison Stewart: Many of the leaked documents weren't just good gossip, they were enlightening. The emails revealed a massive gender pay gap in Hollywood and demonstrated the way that racism informed the worldview of the top Sony producers and executives. A decade later, how did the Sony hack change Hollywood? Brian Rafferty is a journalist, author, and now the host of a new podcast from The Ringer, Hollywood Hack. The show is an in-depth dive into the Sony hack and the immediate aftermath. You can find all episodes in the big picture podcast feed right now. Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Raftery: Thanks so much for having me, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Now, you were supposed to interview James Franco and Seth Rogen for The Interview way back when. What was your first hint that something had gone very wrong?

Brian Raftery: Well, actually, I was working at Yahoo! Movies at the time. One of our reporters was going to interview them. This was right around the time where things were getting very tense and there were a lot of threats to Sony employees. We had a day where they were coming in. This is the same week as, I think, around the time they'd done that SNL appearance. They were supposed to come in in the afternoon.

From what I remember, we just kept getting these updates from the Sony publicist saying, "They're on their way. It's going to happen. They're in the car," and then we saw the news that day where, basically, a threat came in that there was a threat to attack theaters that played The Interview. That was kind of the last straw because I think the car turned around. The interview was canceled. I just watched in real time this incredibly strange international incident just play out right in front of me.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think this is a story we are revisiting on the 10th anniversary?

Brian Raftery: I think there's two big reasons. One is that I truly feel like the early 2010s, we've all memory-hold them. I think everything that happens before 2015 and 2016, they were incredibly monumental events. Based on everything that followed, we kind of forgot them. I think it's interesting to revisit them. I also feel as though this whole release and the controversy over this movie, I think it had a big impact on how people perceived Hollywood, how people in the industry perceived themselves, and even on the kinds of movies we're getting now.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's get in the Wayback Machine way back to 2014. Everybody, let's jump in. How would you describe the state of Hollywood in 2014?

Brian Raftery: I would say it was running along pretty well. The streaming explosion hadn't quite taken over yet. I think it was still very much a thriving industry. I think it was an industry that for many people such as myself who covered Hollywood but also grew up loving movies and TV, I think Hollywood was one of the last industries in America to have this kind of aura and kind of glamour to it where it had gone through a lot of scandals, but it could always get through them. Hollywood's best product was always Hollywood itself. It had this very esteemed reputation. We all knew there were problems behind the scenes, but they were always glossed over in the end by the fact they were making all these great movies and shows.

Alison Stewart: What was the reputation of Sony Pictures before the hack?

Brian Raftery: It was one of the best studios of the early 21st century. They made some really remarkable movies. They made The Social Network. They made Zero Dark Thirty, but they also had a really fantastic, diverse slate. They did a lot of Adam Sandler movies, a lot of Will Smith films. I think in the years right before the 2014 hack, they were starting to have some issues where they weren't a franchise studio. At the time, Marvel and Disney were all working to make this new model of Hollywood where everything had to be IP, everything had to be franchised. Sony had made some attempts at that, but that's not where their bread was buttered. They were in a little bit of a strange place by the time this hack started in the fall of 2014.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Brian, let me get your last name right, Rafterry?

Brian Raftery: Raftery.

Alison Stewart: Raftery. My guest is Brian Raftery, host of the new podcast, Hollywood Hack, from The Ringer. It's about the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment by North Korea. All episodes are available now. For those who don't remember or never saw the movie, can you describe the plot of The Interview?

Brian Raftery: Yes. Basically, it's James Franco and Seth Rogen. Remember, back in 2014, they were just the kings of comedy in Hollywood. They'd made a whole bunch of hits. They were at a point in their career, especially Rogen, where he had a deal with Sony. He pitched in this movie about two American goofballs who are recruited by the American government to go and interview Kim Jong Un and then assassinate him on behalf of the American government. That's what happened in the movie. This is a movie where a real-life world leader basically has his head blown off. I don't want to spoil a 10-year-old movie, but it goes there. It's a very provocative idea. It's very daring. It's very dangerous in a fun way. Its execution literally goes all the way. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Well, as you'll learn in the podcast, there's a lot of controversy around how his head gets blown off, so to speak. Let's listen to the trailer a little bit. We can talk about it on the other side. This is a little bit of the trailer of The Interview.

Agent Lacey: Mr. Rappaport, I am Agent Lacey with Central Intelligence. You two are going to be in a room alone with Kim and the CIA would love it if you could take him out.

David Skylark: Hmm?

Agent Lacey: Take him out.

Aaron Rappaport: For coffee?

David Skylark: Dinner?

Aaron Rappaport: For kimchi?

Agent Lacey: No, take him out.

Aaron Rappaport: You want us to kill the leader of North Korea?

Agent Lacey: Yes.

David Skylark: What?

Alison Stewart: Oh, good Lord. All right, you spoke with screenwriter Dan Sterling. What did he tell you about how they were considering national security implications of this film if they were considering them at all?

Brian Raftery: They really weren't. To their credit, this was a very bold idea. It's the kind of idea that maybe everyone should have stopped for a week and said, "Hey, what's the blowback going to be like for this?" They really weren't thinking of it in terms of, "We want to provoke an anger." People in North Korea, they just wanted to make a provocative, socially-driven kind of comedy. I think the model here was something like Dr. Strangelove.

I don't think there was a whole lot of hand-wringing or going back and forth on whether they should even do this to the point where they all decided eventually, in the end, to use Kim Jong Un's real name instead of using a fake dictator, which at one point was being kicked around. They committed to this idea. There weren't a lot of red flags being waved either within Sony or within the filmmaking crew itself.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about the morning of the hack. What do people see on their computers?

Brian Raftery: Well, Sony Pictures has a giant lot out in Culver City in Los Angeles with something like 3,000-plus employees. They drive in. This is a Monday before Thanksgiving 2014. Many of them show up. There's this very weird, cheesy-looking skeleton with a warning on it telling them they'd been hacked. A lot of people at first just thought, "Oh, is this a joke? What is this?" Very quickly that morning, people started having their computers confiscated. They were told to shut down. They were told, "Don't even plug in your computer." There was this whirl of confusion for the first 24 or 48 hours where no one could really access their servers there. They had no idea what was going on.

Alison Stewart: What kind of threats were the hackers making?

Brian Raftery: The initial threats were a little vague. They were just mentioning that they had this information that they were going to release their secrets, were going to be put out in the world, but no one really knew what that was. It wasn't until almost a week later, even less than a week, that these leaks started coming out. First, it was a couple of movies that had been pirated that were unreleased that Sony was putting out in theaters soon. Then it became employee databases and records and health records. Then eventually, worst of all, in some ways, was just tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands actually of Sony internal emails, which went back a couple of years and were very expansive and very damaging.

Alison Stewart: Oh, we'll get into the emails in a second. When did it become a national security issue?

Brian Raftery: That's interesting. I think some people, especially in the government, felt right away that North Korea may have been involved. North Korea did not like when the trailer for The Interview which you were playing came out that summer. There was some official objections raised by the North Korean government. There was a knowledge from some within the government that North Korea really had this cyber hacking capability ramped up. People at Sony, some people didn't believe that.

Some people at first thought that maybe it was an inside job. There'd been some layoffs at Sony. It's really only after a couple of weeks in, I think around mid-December, when there's a confirmation from the government that they believe North Korea is involved. On top of all this confusion of, "What's going to happen to my data? Who's going to read my emails? What's happening to all my stuff?" the Sony employees had to wonder, "Are we actually being targeted by North Korea?" There was just no knowns at that point.

Alison Stewart: Well, why would you think North Korea would be that upset by this film, which is relatively stupid, that they would risk provoking a serious response from the United States?

Brian Raftery: I think as much as we look at the movie as this goofy endeavor, it is a world leader being killed by a Japanese-owned studio. Basically, Japanese-owned corporation. Hollywood movies are still immensely powerful. They go around the world. There's a very clear message when you put a movie with two very big movie stars that ends with a leader, his head being blown off basically. I don't know how we would feel if someone did that about a very prominent US leader too. I think if it was made by a foreign country, I don't think people would start hacking the studio that made it. It was very brazen. North Korea is a very mysterious regime and one that is still very unpredictable.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with Brian, hope I get it right. Rafterry, host of the new podcast, Hollywood Hack. Did I get it right?

Brian Raftery: It's Raftery, but honestly, it's a weird Irish name. I sweat. No one forgetting that wrong. No worries. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Brian Raftery, host of the Hollywood Hack, from The Ringer. We're talking about the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment by North Korea. I'll get it right by the end of the segment.

Brian Raftery: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: All right, let's talk about the emails. At the time, Sony movies division was run by Amy Pascal. Obviously, she's a very powerful producer, worked her way up to be chairperson of Sony Pictures Entertainment before the reputation. What made her so successful? What was her deal?

Brian Raftery: She's one of those increasingly rare Hollywood leaders in that she absolutely generally loves movies, which you would think is a given, but increasingly feels like it's perhaps not as valued as it was many years ago. She was a phenomenal executive in a lot of ways. She had great relationships with actors like Sandler and Will Smith, but also people like Nora Ephron.

I hate the word "tasteful" because it sounds corny and boring, but she made a lot of these movies that Sony put out in the 2000s like Moneyball or The Social Network. These are movies that she helped champion. Those are not easy movies to make. Zero Dark Thirty is still one of the most controversial movies in the last 20 years. She was known for really being well-engaged with creative types, for speaking their language, and for fighting for the project she wanted. She is one of the best-known studio executives out here for the last 30 years easily.

Alison Stewart: Now, Amy Pascal and Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, they really didn't share the same view of the studio. What made them a mismatch?

Brian Raftery: I think, in some ways, they were good match as long as everything was going well. They're different personalities. Michael Lynton is a kind of a classic business guy. He was a numbers guy. He was brought in and he even said to the press, "I don't really know much about making movies. This is Amy's territory." They were this very competent, two-headed kind of machine that I don't know if they would have-- When you read about them or listen to them talk, you can't imagine them taking a long vacation together and having much to talk about by day three or four that wasn't work, but they're both incredibly accomplished. They managed to keep Sony really chugging along for their first 10, 15 years together.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about the emails. They always say, "Whatever you don't want to see on the front page of The New York Times, don't write it down." People wrote stuff down in their emails. One of the big issues was pay inequity for both actors and other Sony employees. One of the biggest storylines involved American Hustle when it was revealed that Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence were paid a whole lot less than their male co-stars no matter how famous they were at the time. Do you see a connection between these emails and maybe the time's up or the MeToo movement?

Brian Raftery: I think it was very much an early rock that started rolling with these. I think one thing that's really telling is a couple of months after the hack and after there were these revelations that some of these actresses had gotten lesser deals than their male co-stars, Patricia Arquette gave this very famous Oscar acceptance speech for Boyhood in early 2015. It's the one where if you've seen that GIF of Meryl Streep and Oprah clapping, it was during this speech. She talked about pay inequity.

I think it really highlighted for a lot of people in a lot of industries that, "Wait a minute. If it's this unfair in Hollywood," which is a lot of very wealthy, successful people. Jennifer Lawrence is fighting to get more backend points on a movie after-- At this point, she was probably the biggest female star in the world maybe, then you have to look at your own industry and your own work and looking at the inequities there. I do think that had a very big impact. What we saw in the next couple of years in terms of change, people demanding change from Hollywood and from other industries.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about what the difference was so people can understand the difference in pay.

Brian Raftery: Yes. Actually, I don't have the exact numbers right in front of me, but it had to do with their backend compensation. It was significantly less than a movie that had a lot of stars like Bradley Cooper. I think also, there were also other examples throughout the Sony hack. There were two film executives who had the same title and the female executive was paid substantially less than the male executive.

You have to remember, all these salaries were leaked. They were put out there. Not only are people outside of Sony looking to see how much people make, people are also looking at their own co-workers, at their own colleagues, and saying, "Hey, wait a minute. Why does so-and-so get this much when I get that much?" It was a very combustible situation inside and outside the studio.

Alison Stewart: Then there was the issue of race. What did the hack reveal about racism within Sony?

Brian Raftery: The biggest news-making element of the hack aside from the Angelina Jolie quote you mentioned was Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal had this exchange where they made jokes about what some of Obama's favorite movies might be. All the movies they mentioned were Django Unchained or a Kevin Hart film. The implication being that he only watches Black films. Those emails, when those were released, Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin both apologized.

Amy Pascal went and met with Al Sharpton in New York. There was really no way to recover from that. There's no way to spin that. It was incredibly embarrassing for the executives. It was one of those things too where I talked to a lot of people inside Sony for the podcast. Some of them on background. These are people who really respected Pascal and they were very disappointed by what they'd seen. The leader of this big company, right?

Alison Stewart: What do the emails reveal about how a major studio decide what gets made and what doesn't?

Brian Raftery: Well, one of the most fascinating things about the hack, and this is stuff that if you really want to drill down and get totally in the rabbit hole, there are so many emails back and forth about projects that are in development. One thing that's really fascinating is you can see a particular movie or a show as it gets kicked around the creative conversations.

You can see also that in some of the emails, there's understandably a fear of risk of something not working, of not making enough money. Some of it's not really weighty stuff. One of the most fascinating email exchanges in the whole Sony hack is about this attempt to make an Alf movie and just the anguish and the back and forth of like, "Oh." Amy Pascal, who, by the way, I think, is an incredibly intelligent filmmaker.

She made Challengers, which I think is still my favorite movie of the year. After all these months of emailing notes back and forth, she has this crisis. She sends an email saying, "What are we even doing here basically?" I think for anyone who's worked on a long project or had people work on a project of theirs and not get the green light, you do see the internal back-and-forth and the agonizing and the calculations that go into getting a movie made.

Alison Stewart: One of the interesting tidbits from the email hacks was the story about the movie Concussion. It starred Will Smith. There was an attempt to sanitize it so it didn't upset the NFL too much. What did the emails reveal about the way studios can sanitize their "art"?

Brian Raftery: I think it speaks to the fact that this was a major corporation. In cases like that, a major corporation does not want to irk the NFL. I think it proved that when you're making movies with budgets in the 50s, 60s, 70s, millions higher, there is a lot of calculations you have to do, a lot of triangulation. I think there is a lot of risk management that, 10 years later after the hack, feels like it's even more prevalent nowadays.

One of the craziest things about going back and looking at the story is trying to think of movies after The Interview that were big studio movies with big stars that were really provocative in a way, movies that would really make people upset in some ways. Then I think it's a shame because I think Sony made movies like Zero Dark Thirty that were provocative. I think we're seeing fewer and fewer of those nowadays because you have to take into account, "Who is this movie going to make mad and how are we going to lose money if that happens?" You're seeing fewer, really envelope-pushing, big studio films in the last 10 years since The Interview.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with Brian Raftery, host of the new podcast, Hollywood Hack, from The Ringer. It's about the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment by North Korea. How did journalists cover it back in the day?

Brian Raftery: With a lot of the mix of zeal and trepidation. I spoke to a lot of journalists on background and on the record about this. The fact is they were getting these emails that were from a giant dump of data that they knew had been hacked. These were stolen emails. On the one hand, they're dealing with stolen data. They're being given and saying, "Do whatever you want with this." On the other hand, they have an obligation to their readers.

I think there was a lot of hand-wringing after the fact. This was covered by mainstream publications, by the Hollywood trades, and by a kind of ecosystem of digital sites like Gawker that isn't quite as robust today. They covered every single aspect of this. They went through these rabbit holes very quickly and found stuff within a day or two of some of these data dumps and would have full stories on it. I think some of the journalists I spoke to, they had some trepidations 10 years later of, "Did we get played by these hackers?"

At the end of the day, they felt they were serving their readers' interests. I do think, looking back at the coverage as a whole, some of it was kind of gross and irresponsible that some of them did print personal stuff that I don't think had anything to do with Hollywood as an industry or with national security. For the most part, I do think that journalists were trying to handle this as tactfully as possible, though I think a lot of people whose emails were hacked would understandably disagree with that.

Alison Stewart: What do you think this would have been like if it had happened during social media?

Brian Raftery: This was very early Twitter days. 2014 versus 2024, it does feel like a completely different lifetime to a lifetime ago. I think this would have been as big of an issue as this was. When The Interview was pulled from theaters because all these theater chains eventually said they weren't going to show it, it did become a free-speech rallying cry. You would see people on CNN saying, "Hey, Sony should release this movie."

People on Fox saying, "Sony should release this movie." Obama gave a press conference saying he was disappointed that this movie wasn't being released at that point. I think that would be pretty much a two-week-long TikTok opinion spree at this point with people fighting that out. I think there would have been a lot of people coming to the defense of Sony if this happened now in the modern social media swirl.

Alison Stewart: How did Sony's leadership handle the crisis? Who ultimately took the fall?

Brian Raftery: Amy Pascal did depart the company a few months afterward. Michael Lynton stayed around for, I think, three more years afterward. In some ways, there was no playbook for this. Even people I talked to in the government who were cyber-attack experts, they run all kinds of drills. They don't run a drill from when a Seth Rogen-James Franco movie irks a foreign government. That's not really something that's in the playbook.

I actually think Lynton and Pascal handled it in many ways as well as anyone could have. I do think the emails that were leaked from Pascal probably in the end damaged her credibility to the point that she could not have remained in that role, though she did go on to become a multi-Oscar-nominated independent producer. I don't know. It's very easy to look back and say, "You should have done this, you should have done that."

When you talk to people at Sony as I did about those first few weeks and how chaotic and shocking and unnerving it was, I do think they handled it as well as they could have. Look, I couldn't have handled any better. There's a million reasons why I don't run a major studio, but dealing with the hacking for many months is one of the things I'd like to avoid in my life.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] I know that when we get a Sony Pictures screener, it's near impossible to get into. There's emails and there's all kinds of barriers to us getting into the film. It can take half an hour. Do you think that they change their business strategy?

Brian Raftery: I think they certainly, all the studios, but especially Sony because I talked to employees. They definitely changed their security measures. I talked to one person who was telling me how much of an annoyance the hack was because then they had to do two-factor authorization and all this stuff-

Alison Stewart: So many, so much,

Brian Raftery: -which none of us want to do. The thing is, in terms of technology, I think everyone got smarter and clamped down about what goes out, what's transmitted electronically. I do think, though, people have forgotten that putting stuff in a Slack or a DM or a text is not that different nowadays from putting in an email because we still have these leaks or stuff being sent to reporters around Hollywood that are not always great.

I think maybe the lesson should be, as much as everyone hates getting on the phone in Hollywood, maybe everything should be a phone call at this point just to be safe, or maybe you should just go back to real 1950s, golden '40s, golden age. You have to drive to the lot just to have a five-minute conversation. That might be the only safe way to do things at this point.

Alison Stewart: Ultimately, do you think it was a good thing that the emails were released?

Brian Raftery: It's a tough question. I put that to people there. I think having these revelations about how the industry worked and being able to apply them to demand greater social good is a great thing. I also feel that there were so many people whose lives were really upended and harmed by this that I couldn't say, "Oh, it was a good thing." A lot of people were really hurt.

They were just hurt because they worked at a company they loved. They weren't responsible for green-lighting The Interview. They weren't responsible for putting out ridiculous things in emails. They were just people who work in their job who had to go through a lot of uncertainty and scares to get through this. No, I think there's got to be a better way for us to affect change in the media and Hollywood and elsewhere.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Brian Raftery.

Brian Raftery: Perfect. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Yes. [laughs] Host of the new podcast, Hollywood Hack, from The Ringer. It's about the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment by North Korea. All three episodes are available now. It's a great listen. Brian, thanks for your help.

Brian Raftery: Thanks for having me, Alison. This is wonderful.

 

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