Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Reactions to Sony Yanking the Movie "The Interview"

Aired December 19, 2014 - 15:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BROOKE BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We saw the president speaking at his final news conference of the year before he heads on vacation.

And really the headline, as it pertains to Sony yanking the movie "The Interview," he said, "Yes, I think they made a mistake."

I just talked to the reporter who interviewed George Clooney talking about the slippery slope that has been created by Sony's response to North Korea's cyber attack. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a movie, imagine what they do when they see a documentary that they don't like or news reports that they don't like.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Love to bring in now long time movie critic Lawrence Toppman, Charlotte observer.

Lawrence, nice to have you on.

LAWRENCE TOPPMAN, MOVIE CRITIC CHARLOTTE OBSERVER: Glad to be here.

BALDWIN: So let's begin with I know you read that George Clooney interview and the petition he was sitting (ph) around the Hollywood. You were also watching the president's remarks saying this was a huge mistake on behalf of Sony. Do you agree with the president or do you think it's easy for the rest of us to Monday morning quarterback this?

TOPPMAN: Well, it's easy to Monday morning quarterback if the part of the problem is that decision was really made more for Sony by exhibitors who didn't want to show it for fear there would be violence in their theaters. By the time Sony absolutely decided to shut it down, they had already heard from AMC and (INAUDIBLE) on the other big chains that it wasn't going to be welcome there so exhibition channels were already pretty limited for them.

BALDWIN: Think of all of the movies you have seen over the years and that you have written about those theatrical (ph), geo-political dealing, I don't know, North Korea, China, Russia, et cetera. I mean, do you think that this kind of plot line, this kind of satire movies is dying?

TOPPMAN: Well, the audience for it may be dying. I mean, as early as "team America" you had Kim's father exploding in that film and nobody did anything about that. But at the time, we were used to protests that were by petition, by demonstration, by if a movie offended the catholic church them asking parishioners not to go. What you have now is people who are saying let's cut out the middle man. We are not going to protest or ask for protest. We're just going to act. And I was a little surprised, to be honest, that this hasn't happened before with some group in the Arab world deciding we are sick of seeing Arabic characters portrayed as villains. And so now, we're going to shut that down.

BALDWIN: Well, we have seen it.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: I talked to a film critic earlier in the week talking in lieu with this, was it self-park episode where they wanted to depict the prophet Mohammad and I think comedy central ultimately made them blur his face.

TOPPMAN: They did. And in fact, there was a Dutch filmmaker killed because, some years ago, because it was felt he wasn't sufficiently respectful to Islam. That just never happened to us. And I don't, by any means, equate this with 9/11 attacks. But this is shocking to us because it happened to us. If this had happened to (INAUDIBLE) in France, I wonder how much outrage there would be on behalf of free speech and cyber-hacking and so forth.

BALDWIN: Do you think if because of all of this, if big studios run away from these kinds of story lines, do you think independent films could benefit here or online or on demand as far as distribution goes?

TOPPMAN: I do because I think independent filmmakers who are frankly a little too small and likely to be under the radar of the people overseas who might harass or plague them. They're going to pick up whatever holiday lets them have.

Traditionally in the last 20 years, there's been a trend anyway toward Hollywood doing more action films that reach a huge worldwide audience and independent filmmakers handling the (INAUDIBLE) or edgier material. So I figure that's going to happen. And again, I wonder if Sony weren't distributing this film but some tiny company that had maybe 100 theaters to show it in, would it attract the same attention? I would guess not.

BALDWIN: Such a great point.

Final question, you know, flash forward five or ten years. Lawrence, what's the film industry look like?

TOPPMAN: Well, I think the film industry looks like a bunch of enormous players who are making safer films, not just politically or philosophically, just safer for the box office and a number of smaller players who have decided that they are going to go after niche audiences only. That separation has already begun. You probably know that the world wide box office is more (INAUDIBLE) now at the Hollywood than the American box office. They actually make more of their money overseas. So I think the trend toward specialization and if the top homogenization is probably going to continue, that may not be a bad thing. All topics will still get covered. You will just have to huddle a little harder to find the things you want to see.

BALDWIN: Lawrence Toppman, the Charlotte observer. Thank you for your time this afternoon. I appreciate it.

TOPPMAN: My pleasure.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, our own Fareed Zakaria sat down with the CEO of Sony for an exclusive interview. This is huge. This is the first time he's spoken publicly about this cyber-attack. We'll talk to Fareed about that. Also, he's responding to President Obama's remark that Sony made a mistake in yanking the film.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Not only did President Obama say Sony made a mistake canceling the premiere of its film "the Interview," he said Sony should have done this before making that final call.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I am sympathetic that Sony as a private company was worried about liabilities and this and that and the other. I wish they had spoken to me first. I would have told them do not get into a pattern in which you're intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So, just in the last few moments after that in the news conference, Fareed Zakaria -- I was with "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" just sat down with the chief executive officer of Sony pictures entertainment and here's his response when he was asked about the president of the United States basically saying Sony made that mistake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, FAREED ZAKARIA GPS: President says Sony made a mistake in pulling the film. Did you make a mistake?

MICHAEL LYNTON, CEO, SONY ENTERTAINMENT: No. I think actually the unfortunate part is in this instance the president, the press, and the public are mistaken as to what actually happened. We do not own movie theaters. We cannot determine whether or not a movie will be played in movie theaters. So, to sort of rehearse for a moment the sequence of events, we experienced the worst cyber attack in American history and persevered for three-and-a-half weeks under enormous stress and enormous difficulty and all with the effort of trying to keep our business up and running and get this movie out into the public. When it came to the crucial moment when a threat came out from what

was called the GOP at the time, threatening audiences who would go to the movie theaters, the movie theaters came to us one by one over the course of a very short period of time. We were completely surprised by it and announced that they would not carry the movie. At that point in time, we had no alternative but to not proceed with the theatric release on the 25th of December. And that is all we did.

ZAKARIA: So you have not caved?

LYNTON: We have not caved. We have not given in. We have persevered and we have not backed down. We have always had every desire to have the American public see this movie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: It was stunning interview. Again, the chief of Sony sitting down with Fareed Zakaria moments ago reacting to the president saying Sony made a mistake. More of the interview coming up at the top of the hour with Jake Tapper on "the LEAD." But make sure you tune in at 8:00 eastern tonight on "AC 360." That entire interview will play out.

Coming up next, a big question in all of this, of course, is what's next with the cyber attack hitting its mark? Is this just the beginning of more potential attack?

And how exactly did these hackers managed to pull it off and what led the FBI to connect the crime specifically to North Korea?

We have those answers coming up next on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: More on breaking news, it was North Korea behind the cyber attack on Sony, this, according to the U.S. government. The FBI said it traced the hack to Pyongyang by matching the malware techniques in the attacks essential infrastructure to previous attacks that came from North Korea.

So with me now from Cleveland, Jamie Murdock, chief information security officer from Binary Defense System. He is cybersecurity analyst.

Jamie, thanks for coming on.

JAMIE MURDOCK, CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, BINARY DEFENSE SYSTEM: Thanks. Appreciate you having me.

BALDWIN: So, we gave the cliff notes version as to how this attack was traced to North Korea, right? So do me a favor and just fill in some of the blanks for me as far as how our cyber-spies could point the finger at the cyber-spies in North Korea on this one.

MURDOCK: Sure. What they do is they look at some telltale evidence. In this case, they looked at Malware that was used previously on attacks against South Korea. And they take that information and they also trace it back IP addresses as their actual hub that the attackers took to get in and then to get out.

So what they do is they look at this information. They analyze it and then they make a report based off their findings.

BALDWIN: You have the -- and that's one example. But then you had today the president because of the question is OK, how does the U.S. respond, right? So the president, two different ways, essentially said the same thing today, didn't really say more, that the U.S. will respond proportionately. These are the word he keeps using. I think when the White House does respond, it will not be publicized. But do you have any idea what that proportional response might be?

MURDOCK: There is a number of different things that we can do. The main thing is to be cautious that when we retaliate, we retaliate against the right sources and against, you know, in the right way. And there is a number of different things that can be done. I mean, if you look at what's happened to hacks in the United States, you know, those same attacks could be launched against other countries and other organizations. So when you look at, you know, the possibility of a hacker collective that has attacked the United States, we can return the same kind of attacks back toward them to eliminate their capabilities of fighting a cyberwar.

BALDWIN: You know, I go back to this is the United States of America. And as such we are accustomed to having the strongest military might with best most modern weaponry. Would the U.S. be wrong to assume it is better at this particular game than North Korea is?

MURDOCK: In this case, I think that we are better than North Korea's capabilities. There's a lot of different organizations and state sponsored hacker groups out there. And the problem is this isn't like a conventional war where it takes a long time to train troops. I mean, you're looking at a landscape where you could have 14 year olds who can launch attacks as well as anyone else. I mean, it's not the same kind of warfare we're looking at now.

BALDWIN: Totally different landscape. And you know hacking isn't new. I mean, we know the DOJ has accused China of serious cybercrimes, cyberspying. We have our eyes peeled for, you know, the Russians. I'm curious, you know, what other states out there might pose this sort of real threat when it comes to cyberwarfare?

MURDOCK: Sure. Well, Iran has been looked at pretty heavily recently. They came out and said they're going to invest a lot into their cyberwarfare technology. There's a lot of also other groups out there that may not be state sponsored but they are state sympathetic. You have the Syrian electronic army, for example, that is sympathetic to Syria. So, it's not just state sponsored attacks that, you know, and state sponsored groups. It's those sympathetic with the cause. And those were the actual more dangerous groups than even state sponsored attacks are.

BALDWIN: Jamie Murdock, thank you so much.

MURDOCK: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: Want to go now to our justice correspondent Evan Perez.

Because Evan, you have been all over this. I know that. You now have more details you want to break as far as how significant of an attack this is. What are your sources telling you?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Brooke. The FBI had some telltale signs when they looked at this Sony attack. For example, last year there was this attack against South Korean banks and media companies and what the FBI has done since then and the NSA is study what it could find out about the North Korean internet infrastructure. As you know, this is a country that's very isolated.

However, they do have connections to the Internet via -- essentially via China. And so, they spent the last year looking at that and that provided a lot of detail, new data that they did not have before. And so, when they saw this hack, when Sony came forward a few weeks ago and said that they had seen this hack had occurred and it destroyed thousands of computers at the company, Brooke, the FBI got to work and fairly quickly they found just some telltale fingerprints that showed that this was a North Korean attack. And I'm told that this was a game changer really. This attack, the idea that a country would attack an American company over an ideological matter, basically just the movie studio doing a movie, making fun of the North Korean leader, was really what elevated this to one of the highest level investigations at the FBI and at the NSA.

The NSA has been working very hard to try to get a picture of what the North Koreans are doing because they know that they have been increasing their capability to carry out these types of attacks, Brooke. And this attack very quickly showed exactly what they were doing.

BALDWIN: You know, and that too was part of the president's whole point when he was saying, listen, this is who we're dealing with. We are dealing with, you know, this regime. This is some a satirical comedy with Seth Rogen and James Franco, I mean, really? You know, that's what sort of the president was saying.

And I see you mentioned China (INAUDIBLE). And I wanted to ask you. I was just asking my last guest what other kinds of countries the U.S. needs to keep an eye out for. And the question is, would the North Koreans have had help, vis-a-vis, China? And his response was no.

PEREZ: Right. They don't believe that the Chinese were helping on this attack. But, you know, let me clear also, those Chinese are launching attacks every day on this country. Their attacks on this country, though, are economic. They're looking to steal stuff, anything, as the phrasing goes, anything not nailed down. They're stealing, right? And they're stealing things to try to help their own economy, to help the Chinese companies get stuff that our companies make and to be competitive. That's what they're after. They never really go in to try to destroy a company or to do what the North Koreans just did. In some ways, you know, this is irrational because you never really do

this in carrying out these attacks. Even, you know, criminal gangs out in eastern Europe or Russia that do a lot of attacks against -- on the United States, they're looking to steal credit card numbers, Social Security numbers. They're looking to steal stuff. They're not really looking to destroy companies or people simply because they want to keep coming back. And so, this was, this really was a different type of attack, one we haven't seen before.

BALDWIN: A game-changer, as you're saying, the FBI is categorizing it.

Evan Perez, fantastic reporting on this story. Thank you so much.

PEREZ: Thank you.

BALDWIN: And we are hearing more from Fareed Zakaria's interview with the head of Sony pictures, who is responding to President Obama saying yanking this film was a mistake. Will the movie ever make it online? He answers that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: During the end of the year news conference last hour, President Obama addressed the historic changes coming for Cuba and the United States. But he also says he shares concerns of dissidents on the island and those of human rights activists who have been protesting this shift in policy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: This is still a regime that represses its people. As I said when I made the announcement, I don't anticipate overnight changes. But what I know deep in my bones is if you've done the same thing for 50 years and nothing's changed, you should try something different if you want a different outcome. And this gives us an opportunity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Well, some of this is pretty personal for my colleague, our correspondent in Dallas, Ed Lavandera. He is Cuban-American. He dad and grandfather were Cuban exiles. And he listened to President Obama's announcement and wrote an incredible impassioned piece for CNN.com.

So Ed Lavandera, good to see you, sir. And before we chat, if I may, let me just quote part of what you said. This is one part I really love. "All my life I've wondered if this historic moment would ever come in my lifetime. In my mind it was supposed to be a moment like the Berlin Wall coming down, a highly anticipated event the world would watch together. But instead the news seemed to come out of thin air on the week before Christmas, unexpected and unpredictable, that's the way it always seems to be with Cuba."

Why don't you just begin kind of how you begin in your piece telling the story about your dad getting that ticket to Madrid? ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. You know, my parents

were born there. They left when they were teenagers. And my father left -- I open up the piece with the story of my father who -- his father was from Spain. And my grandfather had sent him to Spain for December to spend the summer with my family. It supposed to be round trip ticket, at least that's what my father thought, and my dad never came back. That was it. He was 14 years old and that was the end of his life in Cuba.

You know, I've always wondered if my grandfather knew that was going to be a one-way ticket and he told that was a round trip. And so, you know, my dad wouldn't go kicking and screaming. But that's part of those things I always thought about.

BALDWIN: You also write, you know, a lot of people are watching this Cuban news and sort of not, maybe as close in and thinking, hey, cigars and rum and beaches, and classic American cars, that sounds great. But that's so one level for this. I mean, for families like yours, you write about how this is a complex and sad reality. How do you mean?

LAVANDERA: This really like, you know, I sat up, I think it was like midnight when I sat up and started writing all this. Everything came to me. And we've talked a lot about over the last few days the generational differences among -- for the families of Cuban exiles, what my grandparents' generation, my parents' generation. This is much harder to stomach than the younger generation.

But what I wanted to make clear and hope that people would understand is that, for a lot of us, even for the younger generation of the children of Cuban exiles, when, you know, anytime anybody asks me about Cuba, it's kind of like this fascination like it's this box on a bucket list that they want to check off. They want to see the cars. They want to have the cigar.

BALDWIN: It's true. It's true.

LAVANDERA: And you know, if you want a beach, you can go to Puerto Rico. If you want a cigar, the Dominicans make great cigars as well. So you know, it's much more than that to all of us. And I think especially the younger generation worry that that all of that will get lost. There are serious problems, serious issues that need to be confronted. And if people just kind of leave it at the cigars and the cars and the old buildings and that sort of thing that would, you know, we think a disservice, I think, what would be done here.

BALDWIN: Let's talk about the reality. I mean, you talk about your uncle in this piece. And you write, people often tell me that they love to travel to Cuba because it seems like such a fun place. I tell them of my uncle who well in to his old age would wake up at 4:00 to get in line for a ration of bread. I remember the first time I visited Cuba, I watched my uncle come home with a piece of bread that had more in common with a hockey puck. I couldn't believe that my elderly uncle would wake up every morning to stand in line for that. Go ahead. LAVANDERA: No, it was heartbreaking. This was 1998. I had gone as a

journalist to cover the Pope's trip. And I stayed two weeks after and met a lot of relatives that my, you know, my grandmother died having never seen her brother and sister again. And these were all the people that I got to meet for the very first time.

And here you have this elderly man, I think he was late 70s, early 80s, he got up at 4:00 in the morning to stand in line for this ration. He would come back and I'd wake up and that piece of bread, I mean, you know, it is kind of symbolized everything for me because it was a hockey puck, Brooke. You could play football with it. And it was -- you know, President Obama mentioned the other day about how (INAUDIBLE), it's not easy life in Cuba. And that's putting it so mildly. Everything is a fight. Everything -- it's so arcane in so many ways. And I don't think people fully realize and fully understand what daily life is like there.

BALDWIN: Ed Lavandera, thank you so much for just personalizing this, writing about your family and it's pretty interesting, too. I think that you have been able to go back to Cuba as a journalist and to see the reality with your own eyes.

If you want to read Ed's piece, please do so, go to CNN.com.

Ed Lavandera, thank you so much. You have a wonderful weekend.

All right, of you, I hope you'll have a wonderful weekend. But stay right here as, again, more from that huge, huge interview, the CEO of Sony sitting down with Fareed Zakaria. That is next.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. "The LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.