罗德曼看不上《刺杀金正恩》

2013年2月,51岁的原美国职业篮球队明星罗德曼(Dennis Rodman)在刚满30岁的北朝鲜独裁者金正恩的邀请下,首次访问这个世界上最封闭的国家,这时金正恩刚继位一年多,性情凶残古怪,却是绰号大虫的古怪球星罗德曼的忠实粉丝,两人的情谊成为举世瞩目的奇葩。

之后,罗德曼密集访问北朝鲜多达六次,2013年12月,金正恩聘罗德曼为北朝鲜国家男子篮球队主教练,以备战2016里约热内卢奥运会。

美国编剧Dan Sterling根据罗德曼与金正恩的交往,添加上中央情报局的暗杀阴谋及北朝鲜内部政变等噱头,写出了一部搞笑电影,这就是2014年12月25日上映的大片《刺杀金正恩》。影片把金正恩粉罗德曼改为金正恩粉《今夜胡闹秀》(Skylark Tonight)主持人大卫•史凱拉克,把篮球运动改为一场现场直播的脱口秀节目。

黑客攻击索尼影业和美国院线可能遭受恐怖袭击令世人对该片大吊胃口,人们观看《刺杀金正恩》后毁誉不一都在情理之中,值得关注的是罗德曼对这部影片的反应。

作为故事原型,这位与金正恩关系最为密切的美国人在影片上映当日接受CNN访问时表示:“我对这部电影不做评论,这仅仅是部电影。但如果你想看到真实的东西,看到那里发生了什么,去看我的纪录片《平壤大爆炸》(Big Bang in Pyongyang)吧。我的电影一月下旬在以独特和创新见长的诗兰丹斯(Slamdance)电影节与观众见面,那才壮观呢。”

就在罗德曼与金正恩的友情成为世间奇葩之后,总部位于曼哈顿的杂志dujour.com对罗德曼有过一篇长篇采访《罗德曼的启示》,转载如下

 Rodman’s Revelations

After his controversial trips to North Korea caused an international firestorm, the NBA Hall of Famer mostly shunned the media. Now Dennis Rodman is ready to talk

He’s early. It’s just after 10 a.m. at the Turnberry Isle Miami in Aventura, Florida, and in walks Dennis Rodman—all six feet seven inches of him, wearing a tattered baseball cap emblazoned with “Cheetah Gentlemen’s Club,” a wrinkled cotton T-shirt, black nylon track pants and a pair of impossibly large boat shoes with laces tied in haphazard knots. The oversized women’s sunglasses he wears will remain secured to his face for the duration of the interview.

Rodman, 52, is initially standoffish. “Let’s make this quick,” he says quietly. But once he starts talking, he opens up and over the next two hours delivers as promised, with a frank conversation about North Korea, the nation that has consumed his life for the past 15 months. For the uninitiated, the story goes like this: As part of a documentary series they were creating, producers at the media company Vice gained access to the Communist country—which is off-limits to Americans—by catering to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s obsession with the Chicago Bulls. The producers reached out to Rodman, inviting him to North Korea for an exhibition basketball game alongside three members of the Harlem Globetrotters. Rodman agreed.

Rodman’s first trip to North Korea took place in February 2013. Since then, he says he’s visited six times. He calls Kim a “friend for life,” and as a result has been condemned by some in America as a traitor and a dupe. But however you judge him, the provocative basketball player is now a potential source of information about a country that is inaccessible to most of the world. From the outside looking in, we see only Kim Jong-un’s appalling human-rights record and his country’s notorious famines, state executions and other abuses—but Rodman has a different perspective.

DuJour: Starting from the very beginning—can you talk about what it was like the first time you set foot in the country?

Dennis Rodman: It’s nothing like you’ve seen over here. Not even close. It’s funny, because when I first went there it was so…Communist. Dry and dreary and like, I don’t know. Everything is so dead. Like The Walking Dead. But the third time I went there, wow. [Pyongyang] changed a lot. New buildings were popping up and [Kim] is building all these new condos and hotels. He built the largest water park in the world, a ski resort and this big bowling alley. He’s doing everything for these people. You could go bowl for a quarter all day or go swimming all day for like 50 cents.

DJ: So in your view he’s “for the people,” yet he’s almost universally regarded as a hostile dictator. How do you reconcile that?

DR: He’s for the people. I wish they had somebody that could actually come back with me. You’ve got a five-foot-one president in a small country that scares the shit out of people on this earth. And people here want to know, “Is he this tyrant? Does he kill people?” I’ve been around him and his compound, I’ve been to his vacation spots. If I would have seen something negative about him, I probably would have come back and said so.

DJ: I realize you’re not a foreign-policy expert, but when you’re visiting, don’t you think they’re only showing you the part that they want to show you?

DR: I know the media very well. It can work against you, it can work for you. And for me, I’ve been dealing with negative publicity all my damn life. But when it comes to politics, I never got involved in that shit.

DJ: It’s hard to shock Dennis Rodman. But did that happen at any time in your trips?

DR: It was only one thing. When I walked into that stadium [for the first game], I sat down, and this little guy walks in. The Harlem Globetrotters were playing and I was sitting on the bench, and he sits right beside me. Seriously, I didn’t know who this f-ker was! People were sitting there kissing his hand and crying and giving their babies to him. I couldn’t believe these people—men and women sitting there crying for 25 minutes—and this kid’s like yay tall! They had this little chant and all the people were on their knees bowing down to this guy. That’s what shocked me right there. I’ve been around—I’ve seen a lot of leaders—but not like that. That’s how I actually met Kim.

The other thing I was really shocked at was when I went to see the grandfather and the father in the mausoleum. It’s about five times bigger than Aventura Mall. The whole thing, I swear to God, it’s five miles in diameter. You cannot run, you cannot walk, you have to get in this escalator. The grandfather is in the middle of the room with all his pictures and stuff, and he’s frozen. That’s a true story! You can’t never bow in front of his head, you have to go around him and bow. I’m like, “Damn! This shit looks real!” They said yeah, he’s frozen forever. The father’s frozen, same thing. Each room is that big and the room after that is for [Kim]. That’s what tripped me out. 150,000 people go in a day. They have to wear black suits. You see them crying the whole time. That’s what trips me out about the country. They all cry.

DJ: How would you describe Kim Jong-un’s personality?

DR: When he’s around his people, he’s just like anybody else. He jokes and loves playing basketball, table tennis, pool. They love American ’80s music. They do karaoke to it. He has this 13-piece girls band with violins. He gets a mic and they play the whole time. He loves the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. Oldies. When I first went, the live band only played two songs for four hours: the theme songs from Rocky and Dallas.

DJ: Is he image conscious?

DR: His wife is. They’ve been married two years. She don’t dress like a typical [North] Korean. She likes Gucci, Versace. She dressed really cool. And Kim dressed pretty much in black, gray, brown. He made me two suits. They come right there and make a suit for you in two hours.

DJ: What have your interactions been like with his family?

DR: I’ve been around his whole family; I’ve held his baby. No one’s ever held his baby before but me. I got pictures of me holding his infant. I gave [his daughter] a little Rodman jersey, we took pictures of it. Me, him and her and his wife. I have a lot of pictures of that in my safe-deposit box.

DJ: How did the second exhibition game, on his birthday, come about?

DR: He was making fun of the Harlem Globetrotters, saying he didn’t want a circus the next time. We were on this big-ass yacht—it’s like a Lady Moura, a 400-foot yacht, like a cruise ship. And we were having dinner and I said, “I should throw a basketball game here. Just me and I’ll bring a lot of athletes. When is your birthday?” And he said January 8, so I said, “Let’s do it on your birthday.” And he jumped up in the air, started clapping and telling everybody, “Oh my God! He’s throwing a basketball game for me!”

DJ: So you put a group together of seven retired NBA players and brought them over. Afterward, some of the players say they were misled about the trip. They thought they were going to play for charity. Is that true?

DR: Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. They knew.

DJ: And they got paid…

DR: Who paid ‘em? I paid ‘em! I paid them before they went over there.

DJ: Roughly how much?

DR: $30,000 to $35,000 each.

DJ: So you said, “It’s Kim Jong-un’s birthday, I’ll give you $35,000 for three days, do you want to come?” And they all said yes?

DR: Yeah. They didn’t realize we had a camera rolling 24-7 [for a BBC-produced documentary]. [Filming] them saying, “Oh, I love North Korea!”

DJ: Do you get any money from the North Korean government? An appearance fee?

DR: No, there’s no money. I do it for free.

DJ: Has Kim Jong-un discussed anything political with you?

DR: I’ve never told this to anyone, but the last time I was there, they just came out and started saying stuff about what they want from Americans. How they want to rewrite the peace treaty, they want us to get the ships out of South Korea. He’s saying the reason why they have the nuclear bombs is because they know that Americans think they can take over. He says, “I don’t want to bomb anyone. But we keep our nuclear weapons because we’re such a small country—that’s the only way we can defend ourselves.” They just want people in America and the government to know they don’t hate Americans. They want to work with Americans. They just want them to abide by the agreement that they wrote up years ago.

DJ: So up until that point you had never talked politics?

DR: No, it was more casual, just joking and laughing. But when I heard that [political discussion] me and my friend were like, Oh my God, now it’s getting serious. That’s the first time I ever heard that. That takes it to a whole different level.

DJ: And how did you respond?

DR: He said, “Well, we just want to try to straighten this out and try to open the doors with Americans.” I thought that I was going to get engaged in trying to negotiate some type of deal with the Americans. And after all of that, we came back for a dinner, and the first thing he said was, “Don’t worry about it. That’s OK. Don’t do that. We don’t want you to get involved.”

DJ: You’ve said in the past that Kim Jong-un wants President Obama to call him. Can you elaborate on that?

DR: He really, really wants to talk to Obama. He can’t say it enough. He wants to talk to him to try to open that door a little bit. He’s saying that he doesn’t want to bomb anybody. He said, “I don’t want to kill Americans.” He loves Americans.

DJ: Have you ever seen anything alarming in your time there?

DR: It’s just like any other country, you go to Russia, Germany, you’re gonna see soldiers all over the place. You see soldiers that carry guns and sit at the airports. It’s just like that.

DJ: But the difference is that in North Korea there are hundreds of thousands of people suffering and starving in labor camps.

DR: You name any country in the world… Which country does not have that shit? Every country has that.

DJ: When you hear that people are dying of malnourishment and being overworked—have you been in the fields, have you seen that?

DR: I’ve seen it. They work for peanuts. But like I said, he’s not like his grandfather or father. He’s not like that. He’s actually trying to change it. He’s actually doing cool things for these people, and that’s why they love him so much.

DJ: And the accusations about him having his family members killed…

DR: You could say anything here about North Korea and people would believe it. The last time I went there, when they said they killed his girlfriend, they killed his uncle, they just fed him to the dogs… They were standing right behind me.

DJ: You’re saying that the uncle that the North Korean government itself confirms was executed is actually alive?

DR: He was standing right there.

DJ: Are you ever concerned about your safety when you’re over there?

DR: I love my country. I love my country to death. And there’s no other place in the world I’d rather live. But if I go to North Korea—the next time I go to North Korea—the fear for me of not coming back… It won’t be because of North Korea. So I’m just letting you know right now… [long pause] That’s the real truth. Read between the lines on that one.

DJ: So you think the American government would have a problem with you coming back into the country?

DR: When I go there, it’s going to be a problem coming back. Because they could actually stop me from coming back. They could actually pull my passport. They already told me that. They’re afraid of me because I know so much.

DJ: “They” being…?

DR: Americans. Our government. They’ve got to be careful what they say, what they do, so I respect that. But for me, I mean, it’s freedom of speech. I’m not hurting anybody, I’m not putting anybody in danger, I’m just telling what I see. I have that leverage now that no one in the world has.

DJ: Is it true you’re being indicted by the U.S. Treasury?

DR: They want to indict me. And I’m like, “For what?” Treason. They’ve threatened me. They said I gave his wife a fur coat, a dress, I gave all these gifts. I was like, “I did? No I didn’t!”

DJ: Have you ever asked the U.S. government for support?

DR: I said six months ago [to the government], “Why don’t you guys help me?” They didn’t even give me a f–king response, so I was like, f–k it. I just wish people would actually take advantage of the situation that I have, instead of ridiculing me about everything I do. It’s so unfair. It’s very hard to try to do something like that in North Korea by yourself when the government don’t want to help you.

DJ: Why do you think that is?

DR: If Magic Johnson went over there, it would have been a whole different story. He would have had so many people helping him to do some good stuff for the world. But I did this all by myself. I want to go back and take a couple people with me so they could actually see it and say, “Hey, you know what? It’s actually true what he’s been saying.”

DJ: Who do you have in mind?

DR: I asked Oprah to go with me next time. I’ve asked quite a few people.

DJ: Does this make you more interested in politics or less?

DR: People put me in a category as this diplomat, this ambassador, which I don’t want to be. This is a sports thing. In 10 to 15 years, this is going to be historical. Watch. Because I went there for sports. No one’s ever done that! It’s using sports to open the doors for communication around the world. Going through sports, not through politics. So that people can see North Korea in a great light. That little kid is changing North Korea for the better, and once we see that, maybe he’ll just loosen up and start opening the door for the people of the world. That’s it.


附维基百科对罗德曼与金正恩交往的记录

2013年3月26日,罗德曼以私人旅游为名义,率领一支由哈林篮球队成员和部分前职业球员组成的篮球代表团访问了朝鲜,时间持续一周,旨在拍摄纪录片以及开办儿童篮球训练营。访朝期间罗德曼还与金正恩一同就餐、观看友谊赛,结下“纯粹的友谊”。众所周知,在金正恩于瑞士秘密留学期间,其最喜爱的运动就是篮球,而且是芝加哥公牛队的拥趸,甚至建议父亲推动朝鲜篮球运动员李明勋加盟NBA,因此他与罗德曼一见如故并非没有根据。

此后罗德曼分别于9月、12月两度再次访问朝鲜。罗德曼声称自己不是政客或者美国政府的大使,只是以金正恩朋友的身份与他友好地交流、图点乐子。在第三次访朝期间,罗德曼在友谊赛中场为金正恩演唱生日快乐歌,并且接受金正恩邀请,将在今后三年担任朝鲜男篮国奥队主教练,冲击2016年巴西里约热内卢夏季奥运会。

但同时有知情者透露,罗德曼多次访问平壤,不仅仅是为了训练朝鲜篮球队或者推广篮球运动这么简单,而是他在朝鲜受到的优待超乎寻常,其中包括朝鲜政府为罗德曼提供色情服务,不过这一说法并无可靠来源证实,基本可认为是韩国的政治宣传。

2012年7月25日,朝鮮公開李雪主為金正恩夫人。2013年3月,李雪主生下一女,罗德曼透露該女孩的名字為金朱愛。




评论

此博客中的热门博文

傅高义《邓小平时代》大陆版被删了些什么?

两位噶玛巴:一位受困印度,一位游走世界

盛雪:李竹阳获救彰显加拿大人权大国形象