<\/p>\n
\n\tFor many years, Michael Lynton<\/a> had absolutely no desire to revisit his decision to greenlight The Interview<\/a><\/em>, or the devastating North Korean hack that followed.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI buried it all,\u201d says the former CEO of Sony<\/a> Pictures Entertainment, \u201cthe anger, the embarrassment, the shame, the pain my family endured.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat is, until recently, when Lynton joined forces with longtime friend and former Treasury Department chief of staff Joshua Steiner to write a book <\/a>about mistakes and what causes them. In Lynton\u2019s case, he\u2019d said \u201cyes\u201d on the spot to the 2014 Seth Rogen<\/a> 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\u2019t Own You<\/em>, \u201cfor just a moment, I wanted to hang \u2014 as an equal \u2014 with the actors. I had grown tired of playing the responsible adult \u2014 of watching the party from the outside while I played Risk.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn 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\u2019s decision to open up about the traumatic event for the first time that has Hollywood\u2019s attention. As he writes, even President Obama had asked: \u201cWhat were you thinking when you made killing the leader of a hostile foreign nation a plot point?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLynton 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<\/em>, the chilling production exodus from Los Angeles and the $111 billion mega-merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n \n\tTalk to me about your decision to write this book. This was a mistake that you buried for years, one that you didn\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThe book is about more than just my mistake, but in my case, what happened was Josh Steiner, who\u2019s the co-author here, had the idea to write a book about mistakes. We\u2019ve known each other a long time. We\u2019ve been good friends for a while. And he said, \u201cLook, I know you have this mistake.\u201d At that point, it had happened, I don\u2019t know, five years prior. And he said, \u201cEvery time I try and introduce the subject to you, meaning, like, \u2018Do you want to talk about it?\u2019 you somehow deflect.\u201d And he was 100 percent right. This was a mistake \u2013 and the mistake is defined in the book as making the decision to go forward with The Interview<\/em>, which [resulted in Sony getting] badly hacked. But you\u2019re right in saying that six months after the hack was over, I wanted this thing in a drawer, never to see it again.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSo, what changed?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI realized when Josh said to me, \u201cLook, 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\u2019t 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\u2019s a professor of psychology as Johns Hopkins, maybe we can get rid of this shame that we\u2019re both harboring.\u201d And we went through that process and you want to know something? It worked. It actually worked. It\u2019s something that I\u2019m absolutely willing to talk about and be open about in a way that I was not willing to do in the past. And that\u2019s a big relief for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe book has been out in the world for about a week now. I\u2019m curious to hear what the most surprising feedback has been?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI think a lot of it was surprising. Some of what was surprising, and maybe I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised, was how many people asked, \u201cWhy would you do this? Why would you be this honest? Why would you confess to all of this stuff?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe insinuation there is that nobody out here in Hollywood wants to acknowledge their mistakes?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tYeah. And as we both know \u2013 and it\u2019s not just in Hollywood, although a lot of the response came out of Hollywood \u2013 it is not one\u2019s inclination or the go-to to say, \u201cI screwed up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNo? I hadn\u2019t noticed\u2026\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tNo. (Laughs<\/em>.) 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\u2019ve come forward to say, \u201cI felt very similarly.\u201d 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.\u00a0Again, maybe it shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n