The title of this New York Times article says it all: “Makers of Sony’s ‘Concussion’ Film Tried to Prevent Angering N.F.L., Emails Show.”
Apparently, hackers recently published some purloined emails written by SONY executives, in which the executives discuss toning down the upcoming movie “Concussion” (about head injuries suffered by pro football players) to avoid upsetting the N.F.L.
Example from the article:
Dwight Caines, the president of domestic marketing at Sony Pictures, wrote … an email on Aug. 6, 2014, to three top studio executives about how to position the movie. “We’ll develop messaging with the help of N.F.L. consultant to ensure that we are telling a dramatic story and not kicking the hornet’s nest.”
The movie stars Will Smith, who plays the real life Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist who examined the brains of deceased football players and identified the medical condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. (To read my previous posts about football concussions, click here, here and here. Pro football players go on to develop CTE as well as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s.)
I’d like to make two points about the current article. First, the word “lethal” appears a few times, as in this passage:
The trailer for the movie, due out in December, was released Monday. It prominently showed Smith as Bennet Omalu, whose pioneering work diagnosing a disease known as C.T.E. — a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head — led to one of the N.F.L.’s biggest crises: A possibility that the game itself could be lethal.
Second, the article cites other cases where the N.F.L. pressured Hollywood studios to stop portraying pro football in a negative light, including one show’s insinuation that football might be…well, a lethal sport. For example:
In 2013, N.F.L. officials complained to ESPN executives about a documentary, “League of Denial,” that it had produced with “Frontline,” detailing the league’s response to the dangers of head trauma. ESPN stopped working on the project with “Frontline,” which later broadcast it.
I find most of Hollywood’s current fare rather tepid. The SONY executives’ emails quoted in this New York Times article show how too many chefs produce lackluster soup.
