When Hollywood can’t take a joke

Kim Kardashian’s butt, in the end, didn’t break the Internet.

But Sony’s leaked emails may have broken Hollywood.

I’ve got to say, the woes of Sony executives over leaked emails and all the Hollywood suits quaking in their boots is kind of like an early Christmas gift. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving.

The threats began about a year ago, when North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un caught wind that an upcoming Sony Pictures Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy called The Interview would feature an assassination attempt on North Korea’s “beloved” leader.

This led to a stream of saber rattling and frothing-at-the-mouth threats from Pyongyang, which most people in the media duly reported as part of the “humorous” aspect of the story.

But Sony’s not laughing anymore. Not after a group calling itself Guardians of Peace wormed its way into Sony’s private online correspondence, creating their own version of Wikileaks that put Hollywood execs in the spotlight. They’re scared enough to cancel the movie’s release — scheduled for Christmas day.

It’s hard to pinpoint who exactly did the hacking that led to thousands of leaked memos over the past month, mostly from top Sony execs’ accounts, including embarrassing comments about actors and their respective salaries, habits of fellow Hollywood execs, and even racist cracks about Barack Obama. This led Sony honchos to start going ballistic, calling on the media to “delete” all such posts, and refrain from reprinting or reporting on them, or else face the wrath of Hollywood (or at least Sony’s heavy-hitting lawyers).

The latest development was a series of threats to movie theater chains that dare to screen The Interview. Terrorists targeting theaters: that’s a new one. It sounds like a Hollywood satire.

But those theaters would presumably contain innocent moviegoers, and Sony is put in an odd position of potentially having blood on its hands, if the threats are real and they do release the movie. (Which they might still. Because, hey, this is Hollywood. Don’t ask them to weigh innocent lives against potential boffo box office.)

I can’t help being reminded, too, of certain embarrassing emails by Hollywood execs leaked back in the wake of 9/11. There were gripes among Hollywood suits about the “delays” that the Sept. 11 bombings in New York had put in its movie release schedule — you know, having to hold off on the terrorist bombing action thrillers for a few months while America struggled to get over its collective mourning. Such a hassle! One exec complained about flight delays from New York, post-9/11, and said he couldn’t wait to get back to the “real world” of Hollywood.

Clearly, these execs had a sympathy deficit about the actual “real world,” where real people were personally affected by real tragedies like 9/11. Hey, they don’t call it La-La Land for nothing.

So when the tables are turned, it’s a bit hard to muster up sympathy for a town that churns out whatever it thinks will hit box office paydirt, regardless of the subject matter. (There was that infamous memo about Hollywood execs lusting after “those Jesus dollars” after Mel Gibson’s The Passion became a surprise hit.) As a general movie rule of thumb, it’s in pretty bad taste to feature the assassination of an actual world leader, regardless of his shabby international standing. But then, Hollywood is not generally known for its good taste.

And yes, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone did depict the grisly annihilation of Kim Jong Un’s daddy Kim Jong Il in the 2004 comedy Team America — but those were puppets. Somehow, puppets are a little easier to forgive. Or maybe Kim Jong Il had a better sense of humor.

Meanwhile, back to the present. All this Sony finessing was going on even as Rogen and Franco played up the Interview controversy to the hilt, rebuking Sony for “toning down” the movie’s assassination scene and chiding the world for failing to see that, hey guys, it’s supposed to be, you know, funny.

But once the FBI got involved in the leaked emails, that spin played itself out; Rogen and Franco were soon canceling TV interviews about The Interview. No more patriot act.

Some of the leaked emails reveal Sony execs sweating — debating whether to remove a few frames showing Un’s fiery hair and exploding skull fragments. You know, make it less “deathy.” This is the kind of micro-tinkering Hollywood probably had to do with sex scenes during the days of the Hays Code: make that petticoat a little longer, don’t let the actress lift both legs off the floor onto the bed, etc.

It’s tempting to say that Sony just can’t take a joke — but then again, they keep releasing both Adam Sandler movies and Seth Rogen-James Franco comedies, so it’s clear they had no sense of humor to begin with.

The funniest spectacle might be the other Hollywood stars —Rob Lowe (Rob Lowe?), Steve Carell, Patton Oswalt, Mia Farrow, etc. — coming out to chastise Sony for backing down. Like: “If you don’t let Americans see The Interview, ‘they’ win.” Well, “they” and probably a bunch of American moviegoers win.

The whole fiasco kind of has a Hollywood ring to it — the plight of Hollywood honchos scrambling to bury their dirty laundry before it all gets more media play is kind of a brilliant postmodern Hollywood scenario.

Except this is real. And no one knows, really, who’s been doing the hacking. And despite the timeworn line in Hollywood that “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” you’d better believe that Hollywood doesn’t believe it for a second.

So, what if they made a Hollywood comedy about two stoners who wanted to make a movie about killing Kim Jong Un, but North Korea didn’t get the joke and retaliated by releasing embarrassing hacked emails to the press? And then the two stoners, who at first acted like they were patriots for releasing an uncensored movie about killing an actual world leader on Christmas day, suddenly got all quiet and mumbly and said “No comment” to the media a lot once the FBI got involved? And then the studio, quaking in its boots, canceled the movie?

Nah, that could never happen.

Except it has.