Former NBA Dennis Rodman has very publicly cozied up to North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un in the past, leading a "basketball diplomacy" mission in the repressive nation and singing "Happy Birthday" to its ruler.
Credit: Jennifer Brett
Credit: Jennifer Brett
But he's had nothing to say since hackers evidently working on behalf of the rogue nation forced the U.S. film industry to its knees over "The Interview."
No media," the flamboyant athlete's representative said in response to an interview request from WND.com. "I can understand why you'd want to talk to him, but he's not doing any media."
In an interview with USA Today earlier this month, though, Rodman criticized the spoof comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco as tabloid reporters who stumble into a plot to take out Kim:
“When I came back [from North Korea] they were talking about making that movie. That’s a shame. It’s such a shame. They blast me, when I’m the one who went and talked to him four times. Now all of a sudden they’re going to make a joke about the guy. Nobody’s giving them flack at all. They make a joke about it, ‘You want us to go over and kill him?’ and they say yes. That’s supposed to be funny. That’s the kind of thing that’s a Catch-22. You’ll blast me but you won’t blast this. At least I made history and that’s why you made a movie about it. You made a comedy out of it.”
The movie had been scheduled for a Christmas Day release, but Sony Pictures canceled the release after a slew of large theater chains yanked it from their line-ups amid anonymous threats of violence and a series of hacked data releases.
"Hollywood has done Neville Chamberlain proud today," actor Rob Lowe tweeted, referring to to the British Prime Minister who thought appeasing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler would be a good idea. Instead, Hitler invaded Poland, World War II broke out and Sir Winston Churchill supplanted Chamberlain.
Late Wednesday the Associated Press reported that "federal investigators (had) connected the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. to North Korea, though it remained unclear how the federal government would respond to a break-in that exposed sensitive documents and ultimately led to terrorist threats against moviegoers."
