Not sure if I posted this here when the movie came out, but here is my
review of the Chicago 7 movie. Hint: it isn't favorable.
TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 REVIEW – Spoilers.
I was a journalist at the Chicago 8 (later 7) trial, reporting for
Ramparts Magazine. I was there, day by day, in the courtroom and in the
defense offices, for practically all of it. I was 22 years old, but the
memories of that trial are indelible. This weekend I decided to watch
the Aaron Sorkin movie, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” when it was
available to stream from Netflix.
There was some good acting in the movie. Sasha Baron Cohen did a
reasonably good rendition of the late Abbie Hoffman. Mark Rylance,
although he didn’t nail the late William Kunstler, did a decent job.
There was some witty dialogue at times. But that’s about all I have to
say positive about the movie.
When someone “does” a historical event, it isn’t expected that it be
accurate to every detail. It is historical drama, after all, not history
itself. I didn’t expect a treatment that used verbatim dialogue from the
trial transcript in every court exchange. But even though the trial was
51 years ago there are those of us who still remember it. Me, for
instance. I haven’t reached out to Bobby Seale, Rennie Davis (who was
still living when the movie debuted), John Froines, or Lee Weiner. Most
of the other principals in the trial have passed on. But when something
happened within the memory of humans who lived through it, it seems to
be a bad idea to mischaracterize what those people lived though so
completely as Sorkin did.
There’s so much wrong, I can only give examples.
The courtroom itself was a brutal federal mid-century modern edifice
designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It was almost a character in the
original trial. Judge Hoffman constantly reminded the defense lawyers
that they had to stand behind the lectern, which was where Mies van der
Rohe, had placed it when addressing the court or witnesses. He was proud
of the spartan authoritarian image that the courtroom projected. It
admitted no natural light. Abbie Hoffman called it a “neon oven.” The
entirety of the building and the courtroom seemed to serve the purpose
of illustrating the futility of human beings contesting the might of
federal government, or the “United States of America” as the prosecution
was and is termed in federal criminal trials.
Not in the movie. In the movie the trial was held in an old fashioned
courtroom, like maybe Miracle on 34th Street. There were
floor-to-ceiling windows. Lots of natural light. Not a big deal, but it
took something away from the dehumanizing power image that the feds were
projecting against the defendants.
There’s a bit of dialogue in the movie where Seale points out that Tom
Hayden was rebelling against his own father, rather than the government.
I wasn’t there for every exchange between Seale and Hayden, but I highly
doubt that happened. Whatever you think of Hayden, he was a dedicated
radical and a leftist. By the time of the trial he not only had
co-written the SDS founding document the Port Huron Statement, but had
been a community organizer for a decade in places like Newark. And Seale
respected (and still respects) the white radical counterparts in the
movement. But it makes a nice liberal moment for Sorkin to point out the
difference in what’s at stake between Hayden and Seale.
The movie shows Seale denouncing to the court the murder of Fred
Hampton. Nice touch. But Hampton was murdered – or lynched – by the
Chicago Police Department and the FBI on December 4, 1969. Seale’s case
was mistried on October 29. So, Seale was not in the trial at that
point. Seale is also shown accusing white radicals of being racist by
calling the trial the “Chicago 7” trial when he was still a defendant.
But that never happened. Nobody called it the Chicago 7 until after
Seale was mistried. The remaining defendants insisted on still calling
themselves the Chicago 8. Sorkin is accusing the white radicals of
something they never did. They never threw Seale under the bus.
Sorkin does show Seale repeatedly protesting his denial of counsel
because Judge Hoffman refused to grant a 6 week continuance so that
Seale’s lawyer, Charles Garry, could recover from gall bladder surgery.
That’s accurate so far. But Seale grounded this in the history of
slavery and the oppression of Black people in the United States. He
called out Judge Hoffman for having pictures of slave-owners, like
Washington and Franklin hanging on the wall behind the bench. Those
pictures were missing from the movie. Seale also quoted from the Dred
Scott decision, which held that Black people have no rights that White
people are bound to respect, and accused Hoffman, and the federal
government, of acting on that. Seale was absolutely accurate in this.
Sorkin omitted that.
Possibly the most ridiculous part of the movie shows Jerry Rubin in
tears because a Chicago Police Department plant had come on to him, he
fell hard for her, and was devastated not only that she would do
something like that, but that the government would train her to do that.
This was absolutely false. A female undercover cop followed him around,
but he never got involved with her. He wasn’t a 16 year old child jilted
by his first crush. He was near 30 and his long-time girlfriend, Nancy,
was with him practically every step of the way. (Nor was prosecutor
Schultz, who the movie Rubin felt betrayed by, ever in any sense
sympathetic. He was the mad dog of the prosecution a Daley stalwart.)
But Sorkin, having infantilized Hayden by attributing his radicalism to
his resentment of his father, infantilized Rubin also. Sorkin
indefensibly omitted the part that women played in supporting the
defense. (At one point a woman in the office is called “Bernadine”
supposedly referring to Bernadine Dorhn, who in reality didn’t work in
the office.)
Sorkin also portrays Hayden on insisting on respect for the court. Not
really. Every day Hayden would arrive in court before the session
started and ask the bailiff if the judge was still alive. Let’s not
forget Rennie Davis. Davis insisted on being respectful, according to
Sorkin, because his fiance’s parents would be upset if he weren’t and
would interfere with their relationship. This was a big deal because he
was living with them. He wasn’t. I remember the couple having their own
apartment.
There are other missteps. Sorkin completely omits Abbie’s confrontation
with Mayor Daley. Abbie came in one morning and found Daley sitting in
the witness stand before trial began. He walked up to Daley, put up his
fists in a mock-fighting pose, and told Daley that this whole thing
could be settled right away, one on one, man-to-man. As I recall even
Daley cracked up. Sorkin glosses over Lenny Weinglass’s work. He was the
most effective lawyer in the trial, a more than adequate counterpart to
Kunstler’s sometime grandstanding. Judge Hoffman never could get
Weinglass’s name straight, calling him Weinstein, and Weinreb. Even in
sentencing Weinglass for contempt, the judge misstated his name.
Weinglass calmly said that regarding the subject of respect, he had
hoped, after five months in trial, the judge would have learned his
name. This was powerful. Sorkin left it out.
The part about Hayden giving the speech for all the defendants at
sentencing was made up and atrocious. Sorkin simply had Hayden read the
names of the U.S. soldiers killed in the war, as if that was what this
was all the protest was about. That was not true at all. The protests
were more about what the United States was doing in Vietnam, to the
people of that country. The U.S. soldiers counted, but they were NOT the
main thrust of the demonstrations, or the trial. Rennie Davis powerfully
testified in trial about what was happening in Vietnam, and why the war
was illegal and unconscionable. Sorkin left that out. Hayden at no point
read off the names of U.S. soldiers killed in the war. The trial was not
a Vietnam War Veterans memorial before its installation in DC. And for
Sorkin to twist that is unconscionable.
In short, Sorkin brings in personal motives for white radicals Hayden
(his father) Rubin (his seduction by a cop) and Davis (his fiance’s
parents) for why they acted the way they did in the demonstrations and
subsequent trial. (He pretty much skimps on Seale’s own reasons for
being at the demonstrations.) This is a huge miss. You might disagree
with what they did, but don’t disrespect them by implying that the
demonstrations, and subsequent conduct at the trial had nothing to do
with what the United States was doing to the people of Vietnam.
Watch the movie if you want, but understand that although it uses real
names, it doesn’t depict the real people or their motives strategies and
sacrifices in opposing the government at that time.
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