Aaron Sorkin Harshly Criticizes Media on Coverage of Sony Hacking

In recent weeks, Sony studio has been under a digital attack in which unreleased films have been leaked to file-sharing sites, along with a slew of revealing emails between Sony executives and Hollywood A-listers and other internal confidential information.

The group claiming responsibility for the siege calls itself The Guardians of Peace and have demanded that they will continue hacking the studio until it agrees that it will not release the upcoming film, "The Interview," a comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco which centers on an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un that turns into a CIA-sponsored assassination attempt.

While North Korea has officially denied any connection to the group, the government has publically praised their efforts, referring to it as a "righteous deed."

In today's New York Times, Academy and Emmy Award winning American screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has written a scathing piece, criticizing the American media for giving the group undeserved attention by publicizing news of the hackings on a daily basis.

Explains Mr. Sorkin, "Much of the squabbling between Ms. Pascal and Mr. Rudin was about a movie that's about to begin shooting, "Steve Jobs," for which I wrote the screenplay, so my name comes up from time to time. The widely published documents that were stolen include an email to Ms. Pascal in which I advocated going to Tom Cruise for the lead role (I did), a second email from one executive to another speculating that I'm broke (I'm fine) and a third that suggested that I might be romantically involved with a woman whose book I'm using as source material for a new script (I wish)."

He continues, "And because I and two movies of mine get a little dinged up, I feel I have the credibility to say this: I don't care. Because the minor insults that were revealed are such small potatoes compared to the fact that they were revealed. Not by the hackers, but by American journalists helping them."

Read Aaron Sorkin's New York Times piece in full here.

Aaron Sorkin is an Academy and Emmy Award winning American screenwriter, producer, and playwright, whose works include A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network, Moneyball, and The Newsroom.

In television, Sorkin is known as a controlling writer who rarely shares credit on his screenplays. His trademark rapid-fire dialogue and extended monologues are complemented, in television, by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's characteristic directing technique called the "walk and talk". These sequences consist of single tracking shots of long duration involving multiple characters engaging in conversation as they move through the set; characters enter and exit the conversation as the shot continues without any cuts.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos

To post a comment, you must register and login.