“My little birds are everywhere” – Lord Varys
15 April 2015 by Catherine Holdsworth in Business and finance, Game of Thrones on Business
In our ever more connected world it can be hard to know what is private and what isn’t. Recently many people have discovered to their horror that what they thought were private messages or photographs have been hacked and shown to the whole world. Perhaps it’s time to take some lessons in circumspection from Game of Thrones.
Sony Pictures learnt the lesson the hard way a few months ago when its IT system was hacked and private emails published online. Many stars that you thought were loved the world over were picked apart and scrutinised by Sony executive Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin. Never mind the trouble with the film The Interview, even Angelina Jolie, the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, was not immune from being a victim, having been the subject of a derisive email by Rudin. With all the bankable power that Jolie has, not to mention the influence (she is part of the ultimate power couple, has inspired many women to get their breasts checked and includes international politicians among her close friends) surely it is better to keep her on side? But clearly Pascal and Rudin, perhaps naively, assumed that their emails were private, otherwise there’s no way they’d have made low jibes about President Obama, joking about ‘black’ films he might enjoy. It has been revealed that Amy Pascal has quit her job after the fall out. Clearly her granny never told her that if she couldn’t say anything nice it was better not to say anything at all.
There are no emails in Game of Thrones, but that doesn’t mean there’s any such thing as a truly private conversation. As Petyr Baelish points out to Ned soon after his arrival in King’s Landing there are three major networks of spies operating (and who knows how many minor ones). Varys, Cersei and Baelish himself all run sophisticated spying operations and nobody, however innocent they may appear, is above suspicion – he points out that a small boy, a gardener and even a Septa (a holy women) are all listening on somebody’s behalf. But it’s hard to hatch plots if you can’t talk to anybody for fear of being overheard and just as Scott Rudin clearly had to get his frustrations with Jolie off his chest somehow, Ned has to share his qualms about the legitimacy of Joffrey’s inheritance of the throne with somebody. Unfortunately Ned did pick just about the worst co-conspirator he could. Naively believing that he can trust Baelish he shares his thoughts with him – this is despite initially thinking him untrustworthy and being told by Baelish himself not to trust him. Unless you’ve been asleep for the last four years you’ll know the truly devastating consequences of Ned’s unwisely shared secrets. While the Sony execs have kept their heads we’re guessing that Scott Rudin will be avoiding any parties attended by Ms Jolie for some time to come.
A final side note here is that if you know that you’re being spied upon you can control the game yourself by sending out a little misinformation. Tyrion demonstrates this by placing a different rumour with each of several people he suspects of working against him. By finding out if the rumours travel and where they end up he is able to work out who the spy is (it’s that snivelling old weasel Grand Maester Pycelle). So if Rudin wants to get back in Ms Jolie’s good books perhaps he could find some way to ‘accidentally’ let it be known how much he admires Angelina for her charity work – unguarded Tweet (oops did I really say that?) or careless conversation in Chateau Marmont perhaps …?
