5 Great Moments in Hollywood Despot Dissing, Before 'The Interview'
You know the deal. Sony, crippled by a hack attack linked to North Korea and targeted by terror threats, has indefinitely shelved its let’s-assassinate-Kim-Jon-Un farce The Interview starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. There are no current plans to release the film domestically or internationally, on DVD or VOD, but the studio says it is exploring all options.
The drastic move has not gone over well in a town that thrives on free expression — and an industry that has for decades lampooned sitting despots.
With The Interview out of the picture, we thought it was the perfect time to revisit a quintet of films that had the cojones to crack such jokes.
1. The Great Dictator (1940)
Charlie Chaplin’s classic, scathing satire of Nazi Germany was as much an act of courage as cinematic genius. Chaplin risked his money and reputation on the film, which was a brilliant takedown of Adolf Hitler (rechristened Adenoid Hynkel) and his anti-Semitic fascism. And while the circumstances and stakes are vastly different, The Great Dictator has become the favored touchstone of critics of Sony’s decision to pull The Interview, including Steve Carell.
2. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
Everybody and everything is a potential punch line when it comes to Zucker-Abrams-Zucker movies, and the trio were at the top of their game with this gag-a-minute police parody. In the classic opening scene, our undercover hero Lt. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) single-handedly dispatches America’s enemy list of the day, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Ruhollah Khomeini, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, Muammar Gaddafi, and Yasser Arafat. If Kim Jong-il wasn’t still six years away from taking control of North Korea, we bet he would have been drubbed by Drebin, too.
3. The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Dude (Jeff Bridges)’s dream sequence in the Coen brothers ode to kegling and White Russians features Saddam Hussein doling out bowling shoes. The scene not only mocks America’s arguably most-reviled antagonist of the time, but also introduces Jerry Haleva as Hussein — the actor would go on to make a career of playing Saddam, including as the target in Jim Abrams’s Hot Shots! films.
4. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)
Trey Parker and Matt Stone owe plenty stylistically to the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker triumvirate, and here the South Park masterminds push all buttons and boundaries in their hysterically profane animated big-screen debut. Once again Saddam becomes comedy fodder, as Satan’s gay lover with a song in his heart and world conquest on his mind.
5. Team America: World Police (2004)
Ten years ago, Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, was the assassination target in Parker and Stone’s puppet-powered paramilitary comedy. The North Korean connection has renewed interest in Team America — the movie has been trending on social networks for the past two days, after being invoked by critics of Sony and re-booked into some theaters. Alas, Paramount Pictures has canceled the impromptu re-release, sparking backlash of its own.
