Chicago 10: Drawn into a revolution

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-morgen28feb28,0,6811263.story
From the Los Angeles Times



'Chicago 10': Drawn into a revolution

By Gina Piccalo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, February 28, 2008

When writer-director Brett Morgen first waded into the voluminous records of the infamous Chicago Seven trial of 1969, he was blown away by the sheer theater of it all. The charismatic, radical Abbie Hoffman -- whose Yippie movement elevated him to rock-star status -- led tens of thousands of peaceful Vietnam War protesters to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which resulted in bloody clashes with Chicago police and National Guard troops. Within weeks, he and seven others were charged with conspiracy and inciting a riot among other crimes. And then a trial of the absurd began.

It's a story that has been so mythologized by the media and dozens of books, films and documentaries that Morgen knew his interpretation had to transcend baby boomer nostalgia and eschew the traditional talking head format to give the most gripping account of this historic turning point -- but emphasize the ridiculousness of it all too.

The result is a dynamic documentary "Chicago 10," which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and is set to open theatrically Friday. It melds animation and contemporary music -- Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys -- with gripping archival footage to give an immediacy and an urgency to the 40-year-old story.

"The reason filmmakers will always be drawn to that trial is [that] it's Shakespearean," said Morgen, during a recent interview at the Chateau Marmont. "You can't believe that this actually happened.""Chicago 10" refers to the initial eight antiwar defendants -- including Hoffman (voiced by Hank Azaria), Jerry Rubin (Mark Ruffalo), pacifist David Dellinger (Dylan Baker) and Black Panther Party co-Chairman Bobby Seale (voiced by Jeffrey Wright) -- and their two attorneys Leonard Weinglass and William Kunstler. Prosecutor Thomas Foran is voiced by Nick Nolte, and Judge Julius Hoffman is voiced by the late Roy Scheider.

The film opens with archival footage of the hippie movement -- the oft-seen undulating flower children and fist-in-the-air protests -- paired with scenes of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley ordering 25,000 police and National Guard troops to "shoot-to-kill" protesters and the bloody riots that ensued. Meanwhile, there's Abbie Hoffman meandering through a park, blithely telling a TV reporter that his Yippie protest in Chicago and the tens of thousands of young people committed to it is "all conceived as a total theater.""Ultimately [the protest] was the biggest piece of political theater ever staged on American soil," Morgen said. "They had a cast of thousands. Jerry and Abbie predicted what was going to happen -- Norman Mailer references it in his testimony. All they had to do was show up and [the police] were going to go berserk. They couldn't handle it. They couldn't handle that someone was different than them."

From there, the story moves back and forth between the animated version of the trial -- the odd motion-capture animated characters exaggerating the surreal nature of the event -- and actual footage from the riots."I'm not a historian," Morgen said. "I don't even think of myself as a documentarian. I'm a filmmaker and a director first. And I like to acknowledge the subjectivity of the media. In animation, you're creating something that can't be objective history, but creating something more steeped in mythology. It really seemed to make sense on so many different levels."

The film depicts the shocking real-life scene when Judge Hoffman had Seale gagged and bound because the defendant repeatedly requested the right to address the court. In another moment, Rubin and Abbie Hoffman shut down proceedings by arriving to court in judicial robes. Morgen was still riding the wave of his acclaimed Robert Evans documentary "The Kid Stays in the Picture" when producer and Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter marveled at the fact that young people weren't protesting the Iraq war more forcefully. Carter suggested Morgen consider a documentary on the famed trial of 1960s radicals."For two years, I wrestled with how I was going to pull this off," Morgen said. "I was reading a book -- the Abbie Hoffman bio 'Steal This Book' -- and there was a line from Jerry Rubin in there that said the trial was a 'cartoon show' and it was like oh yeah! Animation!"

Executive producer Ricky Strauss said he hopes that the film might inspire viewers -- particularly the under-30 crowd -- in this historic election year."There are amazing similarities between that time and today," said Strauss, president of Participant Productions, the socially conscious company that partnered on the film with River Road Entertainment.Since last week, Participant, Vanity Fair and distributor Roadside Attractions have hosted four "citizen summits" after free screenings. Each of these events -- in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago -- features a panel of local activists talking about affecting social change. The last summit is tonight in New York."Ultimately," Morgen said, "it sort of forces you to ask yourself: What am I doing? Am I doing enough? Do I have the courage to do what people did in Chicago?"

gina.piccalo@latimes.com

Chicago 10 opens February 29th.