the Spielberg/Sorkin film about the trial of the Chicago Seven

oui

From Variety (in article about Sorkin/Clooney Guantanamo movie):
Sorkin, who most recently penned "Charlie Wilson's War," is working on a film about the formation of the social network Facebook. He's also prepping for production on DreamWorks pic "The Trial of the Chicago 7," to be directed by Ben Stiller.

“Paul Greengrass is to pick up the reins of the much-delayed Aaron Sorkin-scripted film The Trial of the Chicago 7,” reports the Guardian‘s Andrew Pulver. “The project, which was originally to be directed by Steven Spielberg, follows events in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago, which was beset by violent protests and battles with police.”

Gotta get Michael Shannon in there.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jul/24/paul-greengrass-aaron-sorkin-trial-chicago-7

This goes back 12 years ago?!

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/09/sacha-baron-cohen-leads-an-all-star-cast-in-first-the-trial-of-the-chicago-7-teaser

I still always expect SBC to sheepishly add a "....ma wiiife?" even when he's doing "serious" roles, though for this movie it would probably constitute an improvement

SBC seems too old for the role now. He's almost 50. Hoffman was in his early 30s.

no way it's going to improve on Steal This Movie

This man wrote about American politics for half a decade pic.twitter.com/Fhv1MJoD8Y

— Valondar (@VK_HM) September 25, 2020

He's almost 50. Hoffman was in his early 30s.

Hollywood has never cared about this

Sorkin ended up directing, which reduces my interest to nearly zero, saved by Mark Rylance as Kunstler.

Sorkin's ignorance of the trial explains the political sophistication of his earlier work.

This is getting a week-long opening at a nearby rep theatre...Really disliked the first half. It got somewhat better after that, and there's a good scene with Michael Keaton as Ramsey Clark, but overall, the blandest treatment of a great subject I've seen since Eastwood's Hoover film.

I like the documentary they made on Kunstler a while back, so I found it difficult to gauge Rylance's performance on its own merits. It just didn't feel like I was watching Kunstler...and just to be totally irrational, I'm okay with Anthony Hopkins as Nixon.

This was entertaining and good if you are not comparing it to other films about the trial or are super knowledgeable about history.

The end was annoying -- partly because that wasn't how the trial ended, and also they did the thing with the "what happened to the people" titles and they only list the "main characters" -- like, would it kill everything to have end titles about the futures of Davis, Dellinger, and the other two dudes who just went from being defendants in one scene to in the audience during sentencing in the next without any exposition that they were cleared of charges?

Sorkinisms: The Trial of the Chicago 7 Edition pic.twitter.com/y9Xy9lBjCP

— Kevin T. Porter (@KevinTPorter) October 17, 2020

Sorkin should start doing coke again

I havent watched this yet, hopefully tomorrow but Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden is some wtf casting. i kinda wish theyd stop trying to make Eddie a thing. or maybe it’s just me?
On the other end of the spectrum Jerry Rubin gets the glowup with Jeremy Strong LOL (i love strong, looking forward to seeing him in this)

i expect sorkinarianism, am not averse to that though - that being said I kinda wish he couldve just written it but worked w a director who maybe was passionate about this story & could bring something extra?

Yahya Abdul Mateen as Bobby Seale is some good casting tho am excited by that

It's not just you, no other actor turns me off a film as much as Eddie Redmayne

unfortunately we've got this endless production line of annoying af upper-class ex-Eton alumni like Redmayne who have dominated the UK acting profession for decades now, and they seem to get posher and posher on a scale where Hugh Grant would be considered common as fuck in comparison. He's horrible enough to put me off watching anything he's in as well, the little shit.

He's not in this enough to kill it; it's a supporting role. Sorkin's dialogue, though, does its best to kill us.

Watching The Danish Girl was one of the most grueling film experiences of my life.

"Sorkin's dialogue, though, does its best to kill us."

lol, I thought that might be a problem

I got confused and thought you were talking about Eddie Marsan

Eddie says Thatcherism was a "mixed blessing" because his folks made a killing buying their London council house for peanuts, the guy is a colossal melt and an idiot + not exactly the best advert for social mobility in the UK acting profession! Just because he appears in a garbage Sopranos rip-off it doesn't mean there is not a vast surfeit of creepazoid public school mediocrities who seem to be our main export to the US. Oh yeah sorry I forgot about that other w/c hero james corden!

sorry for triggering u calzino

THere was an interesting tv version of this trial back in the 80s that turned up on Channel 4 in its earlyu days. I remember the escalating restraint on Bobby Seale

xp

never apologise VG!

Eddie says Thatcherism was a "mixed blessing" because his folks made a killing buying their London council house for peanuts, the guy is a colossal melt and an idiot

his portrayal of Hayden has similar elements btw -- I guess it depends on your politics, but, he definitely makes Hayden "melty" in this context, and kinda an idiot tbh.

It's like this movie is a composite of a bunch of disparate tropes, and the Hayden/Davis stuff often appears like something out of one of those Anderson films that someone like Treeship really likes (sorry treesh) with wholesome affluent white suburbanites ... as opposed to the Hoffman/Rubin scenes which play a bit like Cheech & Chong or Bill & Ted or Jay & Silent Bob meet radical leftism!

big swing and a miss on Kunstler in this

I thought it was not good but just about right for multitasking

I read all the reviews and articles after having watched this Friday night while eating takeout from a collectively-run comradely mexican restaurant, had a long work week, it was 90 degrees outside. ... y'all are probably watching this with way more discernment than I did.

I've got this on for something to have on, and a protest crowd is chanting "our streets!" over and over in call and response, instead of the form I've seen at every protest ever, "whose streets?" "our streets!". unless I'm wrong and this chant has evolved over the decades (which I will allow is possible), this small detail might indicate how much Sorkin understands these events / this millieu

nice to see virgil texas in his first film role though

horrible ending of course

Sorkin writing dialogue for / in any way handling a depiction of Fred Hampton is extremely wrong

The exit titles might as well have read "Abbie Hoffman killed himself. Tom Hayden was re-elected six times and was loved by all."

This is awful. Steal This Movie actually was better.

Ok the slow clap ending was lazy & bad, plus the titles was such a cheat.
the binary of putting Abbie & Jerry’s sad deaths up against Tom just becoming a senator (oh gee did he live forever?) was fucking cruel & stupid & reductive - and to sarahell’s point give the whole eight! do it all or dont do it.

But I think to Sarahell’s point if you didnt know any history & you watched this you’d get some broadstrokes, it’s not terrible by any means ~in that sense~ ...maybe more people will learn about what really went down

But the dialogue ~was~ often very lame.

I think that, even though it was expected, it was a bummer to see the shading removed from Hoffman, Rubin & Hayden & Davis etc & just have them as empty caricatures really deadened its effectiveness.

But I was also thinking if not Sorkin then god forbid they might have tapped Redford or (ugh) Stone & then the movie would have had no hope at all so maybe middle of the road is the best you can hope for in this case? idk.

The riot recreations were really good & Langella was so fucking great as that crackpot sadist of a judge. Seale being bound & gagged even in this Sorkin version still no less disquieting and terrifying

oh and “maybe more people will learn about what really went down” i mean people will go read more after watching the movie

an Oliver Stone Abbie Hoffman movie, that's the best idea ever

oliver stone NOW though? you dont get JFK Stone, he’s long gone.

you can't handle an Oliver Stone Abbie Hoffman movie! (sorry Sorkin joek)

also, after reading a bunch of stuff -- if I were one of the "other two guys" or someone with an interest in their legacy, I'd be pissed. The movie makes them look like college kids that are kinda dumb, as opposed to being almost 30 years old, with one being a college professor and the other a doctoral student. They totally could have still been portrayed as "out of their element" in terms of the trial, but in a different way. I am annoyed by this now that I know. Watching the movie, I didn't know who they were in reality, so it didn't bother me.

the binary of putting Abbie & Jerry’s sad deaths up against Tom just becoming a senator (oh gee did he live forever?) was fucking cruel & stupid & reductive

haha yeah -- they did kinda downplay Hayden's biggest "accomplishment" was being married to Jane Fonda for a long time (in terms of public recognition). Was half-expecting the movie to include a wink-wink allusion to Jane Fonda.

Though Rubin's death was kinda ... idk ... it was less sad and more absurd ... also dude got super rich and became kinda an asshole iirc? He died when I was in college, and I remember the response being "kinda sad but mostly lol" though I might totally be mis-remembering or have had a skewed sample due to the fact that there were people who viewed Rubin as a sell-out.

Was half-expecting the movie to include a wink-wink allusion to Jane Fonda

they did! "are you a friend of Jane Fonda" or something to that effect

oh shit!!! i missed that!

You come to expect that portrayals in these kinds of movies will fail by being too broad or too reductive or whatever...but again I just don't understand how they got Kunstler so...wrong?

The character in this movie is basically beleaguered, tired, having to reign in Hoffman and Rubin, "what have I gotten myself into?" etc. It's just grossly wrong. Kunstler was a giant, a firebrand, provacateur—even physically imposing—and I can only guess Sorkin felt they needed to dull him down to throw that pair into relief? Stupid.

as opposed to making the young prosecutor a sympathetic guy, as opposed to the huge raging asshole he apparently was irl

yes!

An alternate take: https://youtu.be/nTzYgiL2HiM

Before knowing anything about the real young prosecutor guy, I was watching this going, "this has to be some creative liberty going on here ... this is the historical equivalent of showing republican senators voting against Trump"

This was entertaining, stupid crap. I loathed the ending.

yeah the last three or so minutes were by far the worst. I will allow that as aforementioned the staging of Seale's gagging was quite effective.

xp blatherskite --oooooooooh Elliot Gould as Hoffman!!!

I think Gould is Weinglass in this

yup

Loggia as Kunstler >>> Rylance for sure, though this staging and editing style is all so painfully 1987 TV

in the youtube posted? the one where the actor playing Abbie Hoffman looks a lot like Elliot Gould?

the very same

okay I should get myself to that other thread for confusing actors with one another.

tbf the hyper grainy video quality is not much help!

iirc i *think* that HBO movie is available on Prime too so maybe slightly better quality

A movie I mentioned above, which is probably the best account you'll get of the trial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6PSsZfhDw0

(Even with Dershowitz.)

yeah that's a good doc

Before knowing anything about the real young prosecutor guy, I was watching this going, "this has to be some creative liberty going on here ... this is the historical equivalent of showing republican senators voting against Trump"

― sarahell, Monday, October 19, 2020 7:25 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes, the second he was introduced and had reservations about the case I was just like "fucking bullshit".

this was somehow worse than it should have been despite the bar for historical courtroom drama for me being pretty low. I was just looking for something workmanlike, this was below that bar. SBC was far too old to be playing Hoffman also

that's what happens when you stay attached to a project for 10 years of whatever

still, he was good, as was Langella as the prick judge

i think ruminating on it overnight i’m more annoyed than i was

i love rylance so much & he was really great in this BUT
Kunstler was CRAZY TALL and embodied a human tornado even standing still so why is he being portrayed by an actor literally half his size with a completely different presence

and even the theatrics of the trial was watered down...Ginsberg’s om chant, Judy Collins singing, Kunstler’s Viet Cong flag...none of it’s there, which in itself loses something of the manic intensity of this time period ... it kinda bugs me even more now that all that stuff is removed.

Like if you were there, and you watched this movie, would you recognize any of it? or anyone?

and it’s not that it’s sanitized so much as ...it’s so much more lifeless. and maybe a little dishonest? Compared to what they all were like in the room, or out in the world.

i dunno.
i think i’m going through something guys, lol

For me, it was the lifelessness. I can put up with embellishment and inaccuracy (within reason) if the film has other compensations--I didn't think this one had much.

yeah thats whats sticking in my craw the most now

I suspect The Social Network takes lots of liberties, but I can watch that over and over...Did Sean Parker actually ever say "Drop the 'The'--just 'Facebook'"? Maybe, maybe not--who cares, it's a great moment.

Did Sean Parker actually ever say "Drop the 'The'--just 'Facebook'"? Maybe, maybe not--who cares, it's a great moment.

the thing is, most of these dudes were super articulate and interesting in real life, like, the idea that they felt the need to "re-write" Fred Hampton and some of Hoffman and Rubin's exploits just seems absurd to me. Like the latter dudes were kings of content creation. At least they kept the judge robes/cop uniform bit. ... Can't believe the movie omitted Pigasus in its entirety. Like, having this fictional undercover cop seduce Rubin ... but no fucking Pig for President, which actually happened?

if the goal was to make a relatively "feel good" simplified version of this historical event ... why the FUCK would you CUT OUT the fact they ACTUALLY BROUGHT A REAL LIVE PIG to the rally and had a ceremony announcing its candidacy??!!!!

I too am going through something ... so pissed right now about Pigasus

What I meant was that I don't mind if playing around with facts works dramatically. It didn't work here at all.

Pigasus high on the list of unforgivable omissions sarahell otm

https://d3h6k4kfl8m9p0.cloudfront.net/stories/ho4KrnLgJHCP3-gjRGSj-Q-small.jpg

https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/PA-12408291.jpg

this thread has a Dr. Morbius sized hole in it now ... :(

;_;

I have rarely felt more like Roger Ebert than I did while watching this film. It is probably bullshit for all of the reasons stated in this thread, and I'm sure there is some documentary that does these people and this story a much greater service than this film does, but as a slick Hollywood courtroom drama, I was involved and entertained. There is no way this is among the eight best films of this or any other year, but it is an example of the kind of movie that Hollywood does well--or at least used to do very well: I can imagine myself going to see it with my parents 25 or 30 years ago and all of us being caught up in it. Pile on me if you like, but please let me reiterate that I have no doubt that I am wrong about this movie and you are all correct.

Wow at PSH and Will Smith being some of the early potential casting.

Interesting Sorkin and Fincher chat.

xp I agree with you!

never saw Steal This Movie

actually didn't *hate* Sorkin's weird scolding bs but that was mostly due to performances and hey the guy can occasionally reel you in

i just watched this though and it's kind of rad? unfortunately some (certainly not all!) of the animated vignettes & voice perfs are clunky and the soundtrack is kind of uh not great. but a ton of nicely compiled video & audio footage (probably all available on youtube now). same guy who did the Robert Evans Kid Stays in the Picture fyi. anyway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_10_(film)