THIS image, released by Dreamworks Pictures, shows Benedict Cumberbatch as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a scene from “The Fifth Estate.” AP
LOS ANGELES—In a world exclusive press conference via Skype from the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been holed up since June 19 last year, controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange correctly predicted that “The Fifth Estate,” the film about the organization that publishes news leaks and classified documents, would bomb at the box office.
While Julian had not seen director Bill Condon’s “The Fifth Estate” at the time of his recent press conference with about 37 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), he declared that the film would be “a box-office failure.”
Worst debut
The movie’s US opening box-office take of $1.7 million was described by Entertainment Weekly as “truly awful … the worst debut for a film opening in at least 1,500 theaters this year.”
Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrays Julian, uncannily looks like the blonde founder of what is considered this century’s most hotly debated organization.
Daniel Bruhl, fresh from his much-lauded performance in Ron Howard’s “Rush,” plays Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Julian’s right-hand man and disciple whose relationship with the Internet icon eventually unravels. Daniel wrote one of the two books on which the film is based, “Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website”; the other book is British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding’s “WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy.” Julian is not a fan of these two books.
Hostile endeavor
Julian, looking boyish with a short haircut, T-shirt and a hooded jacket bearing WikiLeaks’ logo, said, “‘The Fifth Estate’ is a movie that is based on two of the most popular books about WikiLeaks. There are other books in the other market but DreamWorks decided to purchase those two. They never approached us formally in any manner. They never accepted the forms that we gave. DreamWorks has not given (to) WikiLeaks defense fund and my defense fund—any proceeds or fees whatsoever. It is purely an opportunity, a hostile endeavor. The result is quite interesting.”
JULIAN Assange photo by RUBEN NEPALES
“The people like what we do,” Julian told the assembled journalists at HFPA’s headquarters in West Hollywood. “They always like the combative underdog, in stories that are fighting for principles against much greater forces.”
He thought the film did not portray that.
“The small number of people from the state department that dislikes our work and calls us an embarrassment—that does not make a cinema audience … It (the movie) is very unlikely to turn a profit,” he said.
Julian also slammed Alex Gibney’s new documentary, “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” which chronicles how the controversial organization was created and how it facilitated what was described as the largest security breach in US history.
He said, “Universal (Pictures) spent $2.5 million on making the Alex Gibney documentary. The bias is right there in the title, ‘We Steal Secrets …’ But no one claims in the entire documentary that we steal secrets, not even our critics … I don’t want to speculate on what personal or professional reasons that may have caused Mr. Gibney to go down that path. It is very clear from his interviews that he has a quite emotional engagement with me that is not proper for a journalist to have.”
New docu
But in the same breath, Julian praised a new documentary that WikiLeaks just put out. “We released ‘Mediastan,’ our documentary about our bringing out over 100,000 secret US government documents—very important to understand the history of the world—to over 100 media organizations in different countries.”
Aside from “Mediastan,” what does he like to watch? “A strange TV series called ‘Rake,’” he answered. “That’s great.” “Rake” is a US comedy-drama TV series described on IMDb.com as about “an outspoken and self-destructive criminal defense lawyer who takes on the most challenging cases.” The series stars Nicolas Bechtel, Jama Williamson and Marc Abbink.
As for films, he enjoyed Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood.” “That’s a good film,” he said. “Most of the US films that I see is to sort of watch how they might affect us. What was the model for ‘Argo’ or ‘Zero Dark Thirty’? What are the responsibilities of the filmmakers?”
“There has been a wide range,” Julian replied when asked who are among his surprising supporters. “It is very interesting to go through this experience and see who walks the walk and who just talks the talk. That has been fascinating. Yesterday, Graham Nash, from Crosby, Stills and Nash, came around. He made a song about Bradley Manning. Graham is perhaps an unexpected supporter but a good one.”
He named some supporters from Hollywood. “Peter Sarsgaard and his wife Maggie Gyllenhaal came around the other week. They are very good supporters … John Cusack has also been a strong supporter. He is on the board now of the Freedom of the Press Foundation that started off in California. They help us fight Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Discover, Western Union, Bank of America, Diners Club and Swiss PostFinance. It is extremely refreshing to see that among celebrities, there is always a variety who want to associate themselves (with WikiLeaks). But there are others who do even more under the surface than they do out on top.”
Yoko Ono is one of those talents. “Yoko Ono, seems to be common surface, if you don’t know her,” Julian said of the artist and widow of John Lennon. “She is a very public figure and you wonder if under the surface, she really means all that … I was very pleasantly impressed by her and her son, Sean Lennon. M.I.A., the rap artist, has been a strong supporter.”
Asked to talk about his “human side” for a change and what he does about bouts with loneliness, especially being cooped up in the embassy for so long, Julian answered, “I have something very passionate about. I’m very passionate about my work, my sources. We have over a dozen court cases going around the world.”
Fears
“I have my heart and soul in this work that I am doing,” he stressed. Then he opened up about his fears for his family. He has a son and a daughter. He is separated from his wife, Teresa. “Of course, I have a family and that situation is difficult. I have a family who had to move and change their names and who have been the subject of threats, of US right wing blogs calling for my son, for example, to be killed to get at me. We take security precautions to deal with it. I’m scared about it but we have to stand.”
(E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.)