Dear Mr. Morgen,
Your film wasn’t half bad, but there comes a point when you gotta realize that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to make a movie about the sixties if you think that they don’t normally translate well on film. The people that are going to go see your film are the people that already know who Abbie Hoffman is and know about the ’68 National convention. Just because you have Eminem and Rage Against the Machine--covering the MC5 (when the MC5 is on the screen, c’mon! –Which makes some of us wonder, who are you going to get to cover Nirvana songs for your Kurt Cobain movie?) doesn’t make it more contemporary or accessible to younger audiences.
For that matter, when visiting an art school, you should know the people in your audience are kids that are learning and used to the idea of critique. So when you ask us what we truly thought of your movie, chill out, don’t start sprouting off some cover-up line that you are working in Brechtian tradition. You’re going around thinking that everyone has no clue what you are talking about and that by using rotoscope, oh sorry, motion capture, that will make it fresh. It’s history, and ultimately you can’t go rewriting it to make it “the most commercial and marketable” (as you advised us to do). Do you really think Hoffman or Rubin would agree with these comments?
But I mean, hey, good job on getting that Silver Hugo for Documentary, but maybe it’d be better if you stuck to your own advice and made fictional films.
Yours Truly.
The Society
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2 comments:
There are many ways to tell the story of the 1968 DNC. It was a complex event over the course of a week, shaped by organizations who had sharply different ideologies even if they were allies, peopled by thousands of actors, in multiple locations: innumerable private and public dramas played out in Chicago in August of 1968.
"Chicago 10" is a way of slicing the history and, yeah, Abbie would have loved the film. He would love it because he is the film's central character and because "Chicago 10" presents the Yippie point-of-view about Chicago '68. A fairer reading of the history would show that the Yippies were utter failures at organizing a Festival of Life in Chicago in 1968 and only the clumsy violence of the cops overshadowed Yippie ineptitude. A fairer reading would recognize that after Tuesday of Convention Week Abbie and Jerry were only minor characters in Chicago '68 and it was the Conspiracy Trial that elevated them into the central roles they thought they deserved.
The limitation of using the Conspiracy Trial as a lens on the 1968 DNC is that the role of the Yippies gets exaggerated and the equally interesting story of what was going on inside the convention hall is reduced to the faceoff between Ribicoff and Daley.
Very few people who see "Chicago 10" know much about the 1968 DNC. How could they? The mythology about the event has grown so thickly. "Chicago 10" doesn't help cut through that, but maybe it will spark some to find out more. Or maybe not.
You're really right. A lot of people don't know what really went on. Hell, I don't, I wasn't there. And there is an extreme nostalgia behind it. That is where my personal interest lies.
I hope the film does spark interest, but parts of it really bothered me.
And you're also right, Hoffman probably would've loved it.
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