Michael Lynton on Seth Rogen, The Studio, Sony Hack and Warner Bros.

For many years, Michael Lynton had absolutely no desire to revisit his decision to greenlight The Interview, or the devastating North Korean hack that followed.

“I buried it all,” says the former CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, “the anger, the embarrassment, the shame, the pain my family endured.”

That is, until recently, when Lynton joined forces with longtime friend and former Treasury Department chief of staff Joshua Steiner to write a book about mistakes and what causes them. In Lynton’s case, he’d said “yes” on the spot to the 2014 Seth Rogen comedy about a group of journalists who make a screwball plan to assassinate the leader of North Korea because, as he writes in From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn’t Own You, “for just a moment, I wanted to hang — as an equal — with the actors. I had grown tired of playing the responsible adult — of watching the party from the outside while I played Risk.”

In the newly released book, Lynton, who left Sony in 2017 and now serves as the chairman of Snap Inc., details how that decision unleashed one of the worst cyberattacks in corporate history, and reveals what he has learned about himself in the years since. But it is not just his story. In fact, the book tackles mistakes made by other prominent names, from Joanna Coles to Malcolm Gladwell, and, as notably, why they occurred. Still, it is Lynton’s decision to open up about the traumatic event for the first time that has Hollywood’s attention. As he writes, even President Obama had asked: “What were you thinking when you made killing the leader of a hostile foreign nation a plot point?”

Lynton Zoomed in from his home in New York to discuss his steadfast commitment to releasing the film as well as his thoughts on the latest Rogen comedy, The Studio, the chilling production exodus from Los Angeles and the $111 billion mega-merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Talk to me about your decision to write this book. This was a mistake that you buried for years, one that you didn’t want to discuss with anyone, and then you write a book all about it and go on a press tour where you have to discuss nothing but. 

The book is about more than just my mistake, but in my case, what happened was Josh Steiner, who’s the co-author here, had the idea to write a book about mistakes. We’ve known each other a long time. We’ve been good friends for a while. And he said, “Look, I know you have this mistake.” At that point, it had happened, I don’t know, five years prior. And he said, “Every time I try and introduce the subject to you, meaning, like, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ you somehow deflect.” And he was 100 percent right. This was a mistake – and the mistake is defined in the book as making the decision to go forward with The Interview, which [resulted in Sony getting] badly hacked. But you’re right in saying that six months after the hack was over, I wanted this thing in a drawer, never to see it again. 

So, what changed? 

I realized when Josh said to me, “Look, if we both opened up to one another about what our mistakes were and actually tried to understand why we caused them, why we don’t want to deal with them and perhaps brought in a professional to help us [make sense of] this stuff, which we did with Alison Papadakis, who’s a professor of psychology as Johns Hopkins, maybe we can get rid of this shame that we’re both harboring.” And we went through that process and you want to know something? It worked. It actually worked. It’s something that I’m absolutely willing to talk about and be open about in a way that I was not willing to do in the past. And that’s a big relief for me. 

The book has been out in the world for about a week now. I’m curious to hear what the most surprising feedback has been?

I think a lot of it was surprising. Some of what was surprising, and maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, was how many people asked, “Why would you do this? Why would you be this honest? Why would you confess to all of this stuff?”

The insinuation there is that nobody out here in Hollywood wants to acknowledge their mistakes?

Yeah. And as we both know – and it’s not just in Hollywood, although a lot of the response came out of Hollywood – it is not one’s inclination or the go-to to say, “I screwed up.” 

No? I hadn’t noticed… 

No. (Laughs.) And I get that. Listen, I was a part of that community for a long time. And then the other thing is there were a lot of people who’ve come forward to say, “I felt very similarly.” Meaning, I also had that feeling that I wanted to belong. I also feel like I was never really part of it. And that surprised me even more. Again, maybe it shouldn’t.

Have you heard from folks who were at Sony at the time or involved with the film itself?

Not that many, to be honest. I mean, I’ve spoken with Amy [Pascal, who was head of the studio at the time], but beyond that, not that many folks. 

Seth Rogen recently told me that the worst thing about the whole mess is that The Interview “was not viewed as a good movie.” I’m curious if that aspect of it ever tweaks you? You weren’t fighting for Schindler’s List or Citizen Kane…

So, a couple things around that. First of all, I would say that, after the fact, and Seth should be happy about this, and he probably sees more of it than I do, people at least come up to me and say, “When I finally saw The Interview, it was hilarious and I really loved it.” I’ve not once had anybody say to me, “You want to know something? That movie wasn’t funny.” So, Seth made a funny movie, and in that respect, a good movie. 

I suspect he’d be happy to hear that…

But Seth’s made a lot of very good movies. I’m sure this fits somewhere in the grouping, but I have no idea where. But the other part, which is an important part, is that Seth was very adamant about us getting the movie out, and we were very adamant about getting the movie out. We had our disagreements at the time, but, and I believe in this very, very strongly, once you make the decision as a company that you’re going to release something, you don’t get to pick and choose, “Oh, this one is excellent and therefore we’re going to put it out” or “that one isn’t excellent,” particularly when censorship is involved. If a third party, which is exactly what happened here, namely the government in North Korea, comes forward and says, “We don’t want you to put this movie out,” and they threaten you, you have to put the movie out at that point. You just have no choice in the matter. And sometimes it’s around a really great work of art, although most of the time that’s not the case, and sometimes it’s just a funny movie like The Interview. But it’s not about the movie, it’s about the principle.

I was surprised to hear you say in a previous interview that you and Seth didn’t talk after everything went down, and I’m curious why not? And in the process of writing and releasing this book, has anything changed?

Yeah, I think we probably should talk. I admire what Seth does. I was irritated at the time because I felt that the employees of Sony should have been thanked [by him for working so hard to release the movie]. But part of the reason I suspect neither one of us did it, certainly why I didn’t [reach out], is exactly what I was referring to earlier, which is when this thing was over, I didn’t want to talk to anybody about it. And I didn’t, including, by the way, to Amy Pascal. She and I remarked on that, that we’d never really talked about it until recently.

So, I think it probably is a good time to come back together again with Seth and talk it through. He probably had his impressions of what went on. I know I had my impressions of what went on. I am glad that we finally got the movie out. I wish we had had it in more theaters but the big theater circuits weren’t willing to take it at the time. But it’s probably a good time now to talk about it, particularly because he’s got this big television show, The Studio, and I’ve put a few episodes on and some of it seems to borrow a little bit from that time. 

Seth has said it was the exposure to folks like you at the upper echelon during the whole Interview saga that inspired him to make The Studio.  

That makes sense. Because when we were talking about it and we were trying to edit the final scene and all the rest, there were a lot of conversations about how a studio operates and what our responsibilities are, and Seth had an opportunity to see that.

Did you watch the show with a pit in your stomach? Perhaps you see a resemblance, if not to you, to the challenges of the role that you were in?

Again, I’ve only seen a couple of the episodes. I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t seen it fully, maybe because up until recently, I didn’t want to look back at that time. But what I’ve seen does not make me uncomfortable. 

Well, good. A lot of people who work in this industry will tell you they have to watch the show through their fingers because it can be very unnerving to see their behaviors reflected back…

In the two episodes that I watched, while they weren’t entirely realistic, because obviously it’s satire, so it’s taken to a different level, it’s very realistic. Tonally, it’s spot on. Spot on. 

Back to this mistake, as you call it. What would you have done differently? Is it as simple as, you wouldn’t have gone to the table read?

I think the mistake was that we had, as a lot of people at various studios have, a real process for green-lighting movies. You typically get a group of people around the table, and they represent the different components of a picture: finance, marketing, creative, everything else. You deliberate and you come out with a decision. Here, because it was in a competitive situation [with Universal] and we had to make the decision in the moment, and a lot of people other than me were already decided on making the movie, including Amy, it all came down to that minute and I made the decision in the moment. I think one of the lessons of the book to me, and what I might’ve done differently, is try to understand what you’re feeling in the context of that moment. Had I properly understood that I had been in the job then for over 10 years and I was a little tired of being the suit, the person in the room who was Mr. No, I would’ve perhaps said, “Okay, fine, let’s kick this to an afternoon conversation where we bring that group of people together [and then make a decision].” But I didn’t, and obviously that was a mistake. 

That idea that you’d grown tired of being the guy who says “no” struck me as deeply sad. When did that become the job? 

I don’t know. I came to the industry at a certain moment in time, but I’ve talked to people who are 20 years my senior, who have been around a lot longer than I have and have been much more successful than I have, and those people, to a person, pretty much say, “If you’re not saying no the vast majority of the time, you’re not doing your job.” And many went a step further to say, “And once you say no, if they don’t come back three or four times and persist, then you realize, whether it’s internal to the studio or external to the filmmakers, you’re not really doing your job to test the mettle and the desire of the folks.” So, I think it’s been around for a while – at least since we’ve had the modern studio system, which you could date to the ‘80s really. 

We’re sitting here just a few days after it became official: Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are set to merge. What do you think the larger industry impact will be, and should this town be as scared as it seemingly is? 

From an industry perspective, I understand why it’s scary. I understand why people inherently don’t like change. I do think the theatrical window is going to become much more of a luxury item going forward, and that’s problematic for people. But I think the biggest thing that’s nervous-making, I would imagine, is the lack of production going on in Southern California. What’s going on in LA now is deeply concerning. 

You recently called L.A. a “sunny version of Detroit.”

Yes. I was out there in the fall for a little bit and went to a couple of studios for lunch. It was crickets. There’s nothing going on.

I’ll admit, hearing it described that way was chilling…

It’s scary because it’s the second largest city in America and we don’t want it to fail. And I don’t think it has to. I think there are ways to try and bring it back, but I do think maybe it’s a good idea that people are made nervous by me saying it’s the sunny version of Detroit. And listen, I don’t want Detroit to become the whipping boy in all of this, but we do know what Detroit looked like when it went through that.

So, what needs to happen to avoid that outcome?

I think there needs to be a financial incentive for the industry to stay, and the incentives have to go beyond just tax incentives. I think there’s some of the union stuff that has to be dealt with as well. By way of example, if you compose and record outside the United States, there’s a different set of financials to what you do inside the United States. I think the industry will really have to look at itself and understand how can you set it up differently so that you can bring [production] back to Southern California. And there’s probably a way to do it, but I think action needs to be taken proactively. 

I’m curious, what do you miss most and least about being in that top job?

I love the people I worked with. I really enjoyed the folks at Sony, and I liked working with the community in general. And it was both highs and lows, stuff worked and stuff didn’t work, but I loved it, and I still do watch a lot of movies and television. And I actually like the community aspect there, too, despite the fact that, as I learned, it’s a little bit of a false community and they’re not always there when you need them.

I suspect your phone doesn’t ring as often once you’re not in that job, which can be jarring.

Yes. You rent the seat, 100 percent. I think the part that I don’t miss is the ego and the upset and the emotionally charged conversations that I’m happy to be doing without – or doing less of, I should say.

Anything else you want to add before signing off?

Just that the point of the book is that the idea of exploring one’s mistakes, while not something that you’d naturally go to, turns out to be a very good idea. And the book is helpful to do that. Because everyone has a mistake. You do too, I’m sure.