The Trial of the Chicago 7

Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin on the set

Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin

The Chicago 7 minus David Dellinger

Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7             B-                                                                              USA  Great Britain  India     (129 mi)  2020 ‘Scope  d:  Aaron Sorkin

A look back at a moment in history, at the height of the anti-war and Civil Rights movements, when the United States government tried to put a list of prominent outspoken activists who barely knew each other on trial for conspiring to initiate violent riots in Chicago during an eventful summer of 1968 simultaneous to the election of the Democratic candidate for President, Hubert Humphrey, who vowed to continue the war and was subsequently annihilated by Richard Nixon in the election (while the popular vote was close, Nixon won by over 100 Electoral votes), bringing in a new wave of repressive tactics, with the intention of removing the leftist guard, namely Black Panther Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), eventually dropped from the case in a mistrial, Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), who comes across clean as a boy scout, Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), a nebulous, shadowy character, David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), the ever peaceful conscientious objector who slugs a federal marshal in court, crossing into absurdity, as that’s something he would never have done, Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), ever confrontational, given a Lenny Bruce style stand-up comedic role, touring college campuses during the trial to raise money for the defense, Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), second banana to Hoffman, always stoned, John Froines, and Lee Weiner, two add-ons who were eventually acquitted, who were all viewed as a threat to the government.  While they organized protest marches and rock concerts at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, clashes broke out between protesters and the police turning into a full-scale riot, complete with tear gas and police beatings.  The press, already there to cover the Democratic convention, captured the overreaction by police and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley’s handling of the situation.  Due to the embarrassment brought to the city for its own outrageous behavior, eight men and two defense counselors were blamed as scapegoats.  The trial itself lasted 10-months, received heightened press coverage, becoming something of a public spectacle, where the 60’s counterculture movement was really on trial, so they brought in various artists to testify by performing anti-war songs, including Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, and Country Joe McDonald, also writers Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg testified, as well as Timothy Leary and Jesse Jackson.  The trial itself was nothing short of a fiasco, filled with disruptions, outbursts, histrionics, and accusations, where the film version is a rather homogenized and cleaned-up version of what actually happened, as any trial that carried on as long as this one did, scrutinized by daily press briefings, was actually much more ostentatiously out of control than is suggested here, with many more threats from the bench from constant interruptions, routinely handing out a total of 159 contempt citations, citing lead attorney William Kunstler with four years in prison for addressing him as “Mr. Hoffman” instead of “Your Honor,” Abbie Hoffman received 8 months for laughing in court, Tom Hayden one year for protesting the gag and shackle treatment of defendant Bobby Seale, and Lee Weiner two months for refusing to stand when Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) entered the courtroom, a judge who had previously ruled in the Lenny Bruce censorship trials.  Perhaps the most egregious judicial offense was ordering barbers of the Cook County Jail to cut the long hair of the defendants and defense attorneys that he found so offensive.  The film didn’t get into the senility of the judge, age 74, a concern many had at the time.  In fact there were so many judicial errors committed during the trial that all convictions and numerous contempt citations were quickly overturned on appeal, with no new charges filed, finding the judge had exhibited a “deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense,” making the whole trial a mockery of justice.  This was clearly evident to the public and the press even as the trial was dragging on, not so much to viewers of this film, which isn’t in the same league as Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) and compares poorly to Brett Morgen’s animated CHICAGO 10 (2007) which uses actual trial transcripts, as opposed to Sorkin straining credulity through artistic license by offering a more polite and conciliatory rewrite of history that diffuses the hard corps radicalism of the times with an invented bipartisan utopia, where he just never gets the tone right, veering into the ridiculous and the absurd.    

Like other Sorkin movies, including David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), the opening sequence is usually the most riveting moment in the film, which is the case here as well.  Shocking viewers at the outset is the Kafkaesque moment when a politically motivated Attorney General John Mitchell (John Doman) sends for U.S. Attorney Thomas Foran (J.C. MacKenzie) and his leading federal prosecutor Richard Schultz (straight arrow Joseph Gordon-Levitt), basically assigning them the case, using the untested Rap Brown Law, which had been tagged onto the Civil Rights Bill earlier that year by conservative southern Senators making it illegal to cross state lines in order to incite a riot, a blatant attempt to suppress black activism.  What stands out, however, is the rabidly zealous nature of Mitchell who is hellbent on sending these leftist radicals to jail, viewing the trial as a kind of payback.  But it’s a contrast in cultural attitudes and understandings, where under the scrutiny of Ramsey Clark (Michael Keaton, a wild card) as Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson, they believed no crimes were committed, and that any evidence of riots were instigated by the Chicago police.  Yet under Nixon as President, his new Attorney General John Mitchell was livid about finding wrongdoing even when there was none to be found, with history suggesting they were the actual wrongdoers, as 48 top government officials were eventually convicted of crimes in the coverup of Watergate, including John Mitchell, who was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury while sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison, with the President resigning in disgrace before an inevitable impeachment.  While this sequence does beg the question, who starts riots on the streets, police or the protesters, the question is still relevant today, with Trump’s Attorney General William Barr threatening to revive this same Rap Brown Law against George Floyd protesters, believing crossing state lines to incite violence is a federal crime, but stopped short when it was discovered right-wing extremists actually infiltrated the peaceful Black Lives Matter protests to commit violent acts in order to undermine their public standing.  Clearly this is governmental overreach, setting boundaries on first amendment rights by suppressing the rights of dissent, mirroring Trump’s own Presidential declaration in 2017 that the press was the enemy of the people, speaking the typical jargon of autocrats and dictators.  With this opening conversation, however, the tone is set, subsequently introducing the major players, who appear without much of a build-up, where the idea of a 60’s counterculture may be foreign to viewing audiences half a century later.  Battle lines were tested in the summer of 1968, still struggling with enforcing Civil Rights legislation, dazed by the riotous aftermath of political assassinations, wearied by an unpopular war in Vietnam causing more than a thousand deaths per month, stunned by a rejection of women’s rights and female empowerment in the workplace, while bigotry and age-old prejudices were being challenged by a younger generation that rejected those demeaning practices outright, even as they continued to be practiced throughout mainstream society and in all middle-class homes.  Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were household names to anyone growing up, as they advocated a different kind of freedom than the conservatism of the 50’s, with Hoffman publishing Steal This Book, which may as well be an irreverent counterculture guide to activism, while Rubin’s DO IT!: Scenarios of the Revolution was less popular, yet still culturally impactive, leading two decades later to Nike’s massive advertising campaign, “Just do it.”  Drugs and rock music were the real cultural signposts, along with Timothy Leary’s psychedelic manta, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” all of which advocated a new type of thinking.  This background is streamlined out of the film, yet it explains why ten thousand strangers would travel to Chicago to camp out in the city parks without permission during the Democratic convention, facing a police-orchestrated riot as anti-war protesters tried to demonstrate for a candidate that would advocate an end to the Vietnam War.  Little did they know they would get their heads bashed in. 

What inevitably happens with Hollywood rewrites of history is that they bear so little in common with actual history, and Sorkin fails to deliver, toning down the rhetoric and flippant comments, removing the radical element, attributing less offensive words at the trial that were never spoken, bringing a Black Panther presence into the courtroom when none existed, even suggesting Fred Hampton sitting behind him acted as Bobby Seale’s attorney, which is completely fabricated, then altering the timeline of Fred Hampton’s murder, The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971).  While there’s some element of truth to Bobby Seale’s comportment in the courtroom, continually interrupting, demanding to act in his own defense because his own lawyer is sick in the hospital, a motion continually refused by the judge, who wrongly links him to William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), whose calm, laid-back demeanor couldn’t be farther from the flamboyance of Kunstler, the attorney for the other 7 defendants, despite Kunstler’s repeated insistence that he does not represent Seale, who is eventually led out of the chambers where he is brutally beaten, shackled, and gagged, and brought back into the courtroom, where the prosecution requests a mistrial.  In truth this pattern continued for several days, with Seale continually making muffled sounds under his gag, before a mistrial was declared and Seale was removed from the case, but he was immediately imprisoned to serve four years for 16 counts of contempt of court.  It was a month after the mistrial when Fred Hampton was murdered.  Certainly one of the eye-openers of the trial was the degree that each defendant was undermined by an undercover cop assigned directly to them, befriending them, recording them, turning their words against them in the courtroom, which was also the case with Fred Hampton, as it led to his death.  This courtroom testimony revealed the presence of undercover FBI programs known as COINTELPRO, a secret spy operation against American citizens, used to target and smear Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders as well.  Despite this disinformation campaign designed to destroy reputations, Sorkin finds humor, inventing a situation where Jerry Rubin falls madly in love with his female undercover cop, still thinking wistfully about her even after she’s gone.  Similarly, Sorkin concocts an absurd scenario where Rubin and Hoffman accidentally run into Richard Schultz with his two young daughters, where Hoffman allegedly tells the girls “Your dad’s a good guy,” then telling Schultz, “We don’t have any beef with you.  We know you’re doing your job and you don’t think we’re criminals.”  Nothing could be further from the truth, as they were declared enemies, but in the liberal world of Hollywood, no divide is too large, as all fractured relationships can be healed.  Mirroring events of today, all the defendants of the trial would rage against the unethical practices of the FBI and systemic police brutality, decrying systemic racism in the criminal legal system, yet in Sorkin’s world it’s just a case of a few bad apples creating the appearance of rot, suggesting everything can be fixed.  It’s a cheap catharsis for naïve viewers.  One would have to ask, why did the government insist on burying the reports that confirmed most of the damage done in the 1968 Democratic convention disruptions was the result of excessive police violence, not the behavior of the protestors?  Or how could the blatant mistreatment of Bobby Seale happen in an American courtroom?  The hard truth is the system works as it was intended, repressing the existence of anyone who poses a threat to existing norms of wealth, property rights, and white advantages, where white supremacy has been entrenched into the status quo long before the Civil War.  Does anyone really think a few reforms can alter what hundreds of years have established as precedent?   Radicals in that era advocated a complete overthrow of the system.  Referring to the United States as Amerika, compiling detailed instructions on how to lead an armed struggle against the police, calling them “pigs,” Abbie Hoffman writes in his book, “We are not interested in the greening of Amerika, except for the grass that will cover its grave.”      

Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the ...  Afterword by Tom Hayden, from Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Seven, edited by Jon Wiener, 2006 (pdf)

No Way Out (1950)

Joseph Mankiewicz (left), Linda Darnell, and Sidney Poitier

Sidney Poitier and Mildred Joanne Smith

NO WAY OUT                      A                    

USA  (106 mi)  1950  d:  Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Ain’t that a lot to ask of us — being better than them when we get killed proving we’re just as good?

—Lefty Jones (Dots Johnson)

Joseph L. Mankiewicz comes from a distinguished family, as his older brother Herman was a co-writer of CITIZEN KANE (1941) along with Orson Welles, while he is the great uncle to Ben, a regular host introducing films for TCM.  A prolific writer, director and producer, he was one of Hollywood’s most literate and intelligent filmmakers, winning Best Director Academy Awards two years in a row for A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949) and ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), the second director to accomplish that following John Ford’s awards for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941), though Mankiewicz is the one and only writer/director to win successive Academy Awards as both a screenwriter and director for the same films.  He built a successful career as a screenwriter in the 30’s and 40’s for Paramount and MGM before getting the opportunity to direct in the mid 40’s for 20^th Century Fox under Darryl Zanuck, where his films developed a smart reputation for distinguished wordplay, where he had a lifelong affection for the New York theater scene.  By the time he made this film, Mankiewicz was also President of the Screen Director’s Guild during the rise of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklist of 1947 when the industry was attempting to eradicate Communists from their ranks.  He opposed mandatory loyalty oaths for Guild members, which led to an attempted coup by Cecil B. DeMille to have him recalled from office (DGA Quarterly Magazine | Spring 2011 | Features - Loyalty Oath), but the bid failed.  Few members opposed the oath, which was eventually written into the by-laws the following year, but they resented the compulsory aspect of it.  Nonetheless, it played a significant role in Mankiewicz refusing a second term and deciding to leave Hollywood the following year.  For whatever reasons, in a career that spans from 1929 to 1972, his name is not usually included in the pantheon of great American directors, where he is heralded more in Europe than he is at home, honored with a lifetime achievement award and an accompanying film restrospective at the 1979 Venice Film Festival.  Made at the height of his success, career-wise, what distinguishes this picture is the direct assault on the invidious effects of racism, hiding nothing, as it’s not shrouded in subtlety, where the N-word and all variations of heinous racial slurs are brazenly on display, opening the floodgates for vicious race hatred, one of the few Hollywood films to deal so realistically on such a sensitive topic, especially since black filmmakers have been virtually absent from Hollywood after the 1940’s.  Richard Widmark gets top billing as an avowed white supremacist spewing racial vitriol throughout the film, most of it targeting a single black doctor at a hospital, where the horrendous verbal assault is so incredibly offensive that nothing like this could be made in films today.  Few other directors would ever attempt to do what Mankiewicz, to his credit, excels at, co-written by Lesser Samuels, who was also a co-writer on Billy Wilder’s equally devastating ACE IN THE HOLE (1951), basing the material on his son-in-law’s experience of being a lone black doctor at that time, mirroring Jackie Robinson’s experiences breaking the color barrier in baseball, having to endure a constant stream of vicious racial attacks.  Under Mankiewicz’ direction, Widmark isn’t viewed so much as a criminal sociopath, but an extreme reflection of a larger community, which makes the film more compelling.   While Hollywood had taken a few stabs at movies depicting racism, like Elia Kazan’s PINKY (1949) or Stanley Kramer’s HOME OF THE BRAVE (1949), both of which represent liberal attempts to sympathize with the black plight, but at the expense of realism, as these are clearly white views on the black experience that reveal much more about the white perception.  Mankiewicz’ film is far more complex, notable for being the screen debut for actor Sidney Poitier (who has an uncredited role in an earlier film), who lied about his age to get the part, claiming he was 27 when he was only 22, playing a black doctor fresh out of medical school, and the object of Widmark’s ire. 

   

Interestingly, the film also features a deaf character, whose limitations figure prominently into the storyline, requiring several actors to learn sign language in order to communicate.  Despite the care and precautions in shaping the story, the film was banned outright or scenes cut out in order to be shown in certain cities around the country, fearing racial unrest, playing well in big cities, but failing miserably in small towns, while most theaters in the South refused to screen the picture under any circumstances.  Wasting little time, the film gets right into it, with white doctors at the County Hospital led by chief medical resident Dr. Daniel Wharton (Stephen McNally) seen congratulating the first black doctor at the hospital and welcoming him to their ranks, Dr. Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier, who is really the lead character, but receives fourth billing), who just passed the state board examination to earn a license to practice, signing on as a junior resident for another year at the hospital where he trained.  Eager to work his first night shift in the hospital’s prison ward, two brothers are brought in after getting shot trying to rob a gas station, Johnny and Ray Biddle, Dick Paxton and Richard Widmark, both shot in the leg.  While Johnny is more gravely wounded, seemingly disoriented, unable to feel a lit cigarette lying on the palm of his hand, Ray is adamantly against treatment from a black doctor, immediately hurling startling racial epithets at him, the likes of which we rarely hear in movies.  First examining his eyes, thinking he may have a brain tumor, the patient dies on the table when Brooks attempts to administer a spinal tap, with Ray immediately blaming the black doctor for his brother’s death, calling it outright murder.  The ferocious tone of hatred and contempt is stark and to the point, so potently realistic that Brooks begins to question his own actions, wondering if perhaps the relentless assault to his character threw him off momentarily.  Wharton warns him not to second guess himself, reminding him that he acted professionally, but doesn’t go as far as saying he would have done the same thing, suggesting there may have been other factors.  Feeling slighted by the character assassination, Brooks wants to perform an autopsy to confirm his diagnosis, but Wharton indicates state law requires consent by the family.  When the two doctors approach Ray, he grows wildly agitated at the thought, claiming the doctors are in cahoots with one another, that they would mischaracterize the results just to get Brooks off the hook, reiterating he’s nothing more than a murderer.  Just a decade after the film was made, the theme of the 60’s was racial tolerance, with school integration a focal point in alleviating the vast economic disparities, but now since the election of Trump the sentiment has changed 180 degrees, where the theme of the modern era is back to racial intolerance.  It’s confounding how much a picture made 70 years ago brings to light a fresh perspective on a longstanding issue that still plagues us today, as Widmark’s ingrained white supremacist views, with a susceptibility to believe in unproven conspiracy theories, are perfectly in line with the most vociferous Trump supporters of today, especially those wielding automatic weapons while shouting anti-government slogans, mirroring Trump’s cry of “Fake News,” which is how the Ku Klux Klan has altered and resurrected their inflammatory fanaticism, shrouding their abominable racial views in anti-government rhetoric.  With the slogan “Make America Great Again,” Widmark’s voracious anti-black views are precisely what many of the most ardent Trump followers have in mind.  It’s impossible to watch this film today and not think of all the vile white supremacists who have crawled out from every rock and crevice in the past few years, where there has been a surge in white nationalist violence (White nationalist hate groups have grown 55% in Trump era ...).  For them, Widmark’s Ray Biddle is their proud spokesperson and role model. 

Seeking other family members who might  consent to an autopsy, Wharton and Brooks discover from police records that the deceased was married to Edie Johnson (Linda Darnell), openly suspicious of the visitors, but their kindness towards her takes her by surprise.  Darnell actually steals the film, claiming this was the only role in her lifetime that she was proud of, also appearing in John Ford’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946), but Darnell loathed Westerns, with unfortunate circumstances following her throughout her career, plagued by extortion letters, a fraudulent business manager that stole her money, her reputation tainted from ugly tabloid fodder provided by her own mother, largely exploited by the industry, living a sad life that included a longtime affair with the director, who never left his wife, so she never received the kind of appreciation and respect she was seeking, yet she is excellent in this film, carrying herself with a little attitude and swagger that no one else exhibits, and it’s apparent immediately.  Edie actually divorced Johnny over a year ago and has no love lost for the entire family, having grown up in a white slum neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks called Beaver Canal, feeling it never leaves you even after you escape, as it has a way of making people feel cheap.  Ironically, the music playing on the radio in her rented single room is the sophisticated black jazz of Duke Ellington.  She visits Ray to persuade him to order the autopsy, but his twisted mind brings her back to her old worthless life, including an ill-advised affair they had together under his brother’s nose, telling her the doctors played her for a “chump,” as they only want it to cover up their crime, that Johnny never would have died with a white doctor, instructing her to contact Rocky (Bert Freed) in Beaver Canal, who stirs up racial animosity, planning a race riot that evening in the black neighborhood they describe as “Niggertown.”  Brooks has a sympathetic wife Cora (Mildred Joanne Smith in her lone movie appearance), living with his mother (Maude Simmons), sister Connie (Ruby Dee) and brother-in-law John (Ossie Davis), married in real life, the first picture that they worked together.  When blacks get word of what’s in store that evening, they make their own plans to initiate an attack to catch the white rabble rousers off guard.  The confrontation leaves plenty injured, with Brooks tending to a white patient at the hospital until a white woman orders him to “Keep your black hands off my boy” before spitting in his face.  After a dramatic pause, a stunned Brooks exits the premises and disappears.  Edie, meanwhile, shows up at Wharton’s doorstep in a state of drunken dismay, tended to by Wharton’s black housekeeper Gladys (Amanda Randolph, superb in her role), angry that she’s black, but too drunk to do anything about it.  By morning they’re best of friends, as Gladys simply exudes personality and has a folksy way of putting anyone at ease.  This relationship is at the heart of the film, as it reveals quite simply that once fears and differences are set aside people from differing backgrounds have a lot more in common than they suspect, finding it easy to like each other, so Edie actually represents positive growth, exhibiting signs of hope.  The same can’t be said for Ray, whose venomous hate drives his every action, escaping from the police, then kidnapping Edie, beating her into submission to call Brooks and set him up at a place where Ray will be waiting.  While there are some contrivances, it’s important to realize how well this material was actually handled in an era when no one else displayed half the insight or artistic dexterity with such a provocative subject matter.  In the same year that Mankiewicz was showered with a record 14 Academy Award nominations for ALL ABOUT EVE, winning six awards, this little film fell under the radar and is rarely mentioned, yet it’s dramatic impact is stunning, with Widmark and Poitier, friends in real life, offering stellar performances that hold up over time, portraying the opposite ends of the spectrum, both angered and frustrated by their limited influence, with circumstances challenging their manhood and self-respect.  Poitier’s dignified performance shattered stereotypes, but he wasn’t playing that idealized black man so early in his career, instead remaining conflicted, filled with exposed insecurities and flaws that leave him more human, making this a rare film experience, told intelligently and with bold assurance from Mankiewicz, who is perhaps the only American writer/director who could do justice with this material, allowing multiple revelations at every turn.  Along with John Cassavetes’ Shadows (1959), Michael Roemer’s Nothing But a Man (1964), Howard Alk’s The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1979), Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991), and more recently Raoul Peck’s 2017 Top Ten List #3 I Am Not Your Negro, this belongs on a short list of the best films ever made about being black in America.