A month ago I could take or leave Seth Rogen. Don’t get me wrong, he was great in “Knocked Up” but his Twitter feed is iffy and his aging pothead persona is a little stale. Ditto for James Franco. He’s got a great smile, I’ll grant him that, but I haven’t really loved him since “Freaks and Geeks,” you know?
Now I find myself in the odd position of vehemently defending people I don’t really like. Because America.
It’s more than a little ironic that their movie “The Interview,” which would have barely made a splash if left alone, has become—and I don’t think I overstate when I say this—the rallying point for the free world. The movie that launched a thousand hacked emails is now the movie that every liberty-loving American must see, despite the grammatically problematic threat towards theaters that show it.
What do a free people do when a thug says they can’t watch something?
Damn well watch it.
Theater owners are facing threats of an attack if they show the movie. They’re in a rough spot, to be sure. They don’t have the manpower or expertise to guard against that kind of attack and no one wants to see a repeat of the horrors of Aurora.
But still.
You know who else didn’t have the manpower or expertise? The minutemen at Lexington and Concord. The Union Army at Gettysburg. The United States Marines at Guadalcanal.
They didn’t fight so that a crazy Communist dictator could tell Americans they were forbidden to spend $12 to watch a crappy movie.
Hollywood was defeated by this guy pic.twitter.com/WSo89F1WX2
— Matthew (@Matthops82) December 17, 2014
Let me speak clearly: The Constitution protects our rights to laugh at stupid penis jokes if we want. No dictator can take that from America. Nor can the Islamic State dictate that we convert to their brand of Islam nor the Taliban keep us from sending our children to school.
Freedom is in our DNA. If other theater chains follow the example of Carmike Theaters and pull it, I hope Sony streams it to every home in America. Heck, Sony could do the patriotic thing and post the whole thing on YouTube. (Yes, of course they’re a Japanese company, but they’re largely American, too.) That would show Kim Jong Un. Let the whole world see it.
Well, except the kids. After all, it is rated R for pervasive language, crude and sexual humor, nudity, some drug use, and bloody violence. Which is quite a list, to be honest. Maybe Grandma shouldn’t watch it either. Don’t show it to your Bible study. Nor to people who think “Big Bang Theory” is edgy.
Come to think of it, most Americans won’t want to see “The Interview.” But I hope that those who do won’t be cowed into skipping it. And those who don’t? Maybe send the price of a movie ticket to an organization that helps Korean refugees or American troops.
