Ecology, Climate Change, n'est ce pas? Goes to relevance, your honor. Plus Ginsberg said Abbie and Jerry's Festival of Life contained no plans for violence. Even Pigasus, the oinker the Yippies nominated to run for president during the festival, was spared in the end, retiring to a farm with his Mrs. and a piglet, I'm told.He asked if I could contact [William] Burroughs and ask Burroughs to come to teach nonverbal, nonconceptual feeling states. [And, I'm thinking: bow and arrow lessons.]
MR. WEINGLASS: Now you indicated a school of ecology. Could you explain to the Court and jury what that is?
THE WITNESS: Ecology is the interrelation of all the living forms on the surface of the planet involving the food chain---that is to say, whales eat plankton: larger fishes eat smaller fish, octopus or squid eat shellfish which eat plankton; human beings eat the shellfish or squid or smaller fish which eat the smaller tiny microorganisms
MR. FORAN: That is enough, your Honor.
THE COURT: Yes. We all have a clear idea of what ecology is.
Write on, brother! And he did, and he made deadline.MR. KUNSTLER: I call your attention to the next day, Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of August, between 3:30 and 4:00 P.m. approximately. Do you know where you were then?
THE WITNESS: Yes, I was in Grant Park. I felt ashamed of myself for not speaking, and I, therefore, went up to the platform and I asked Mr. Dellinger if I could speak, and he then very happily said, "Yes, of course."
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state what you did say on Wednesday in Grant Park?
THE WITNESS: I merely said to the people who were there that I thought they were possessed of beauty, and that I was not going to march with them because I had to write this piece. And they all said, "Write, Baby." That is what they said from the crowd.
And Timothy Leary and Jesse Jackson, and others, testified as to mind set, because remember, Aaron, the trial was about their thoughts. A Yippie Manifesto was available to read, if you wanted a taste of their mindset. It could have been a rekindling of the Festival of Life, but you toned it down, you clowned around factual details. What was with that muthafuckin' Fred Hampton scene in the courtroom -- that never happened in real life! And what was up with token defendants Lee Weiner and John Froines exchanging:
FROINES: ...for the life of me, I can't figure out what the two of us are doin' here.
WEINER: I feel exactly the same way, but this is the Academy Awards of protests, and as far as I'm concerned it's an honor just to be nominated.
Huh? (He looks around for cues.) Was that in the court transcripts? Or were you priming the academy pump, Aaron?
Why is there no backgrounder on the judge, who you mischaracterized. Jerry Rubin's girlfriend at the time, Nancy Kurshan, writes in Counterpunch that "The Judge was meaner and more idiosyncratic than portrayed. (Kurshan's is an excellent read, BTW.) He really looked like Mr. Magoo and was a nasty piece of work." It might also have been mentioned that he presided over the Chicago obscenity trial of Lenny Bruce. He was a prick, and his depiction should have been more full-blooded.
There's so much you could have done to make it a better movie -- even adding something token, since you were making sh*t up anyway, like pointing out the curiosity of how two crucial LBJ decisions led to Kennedys being murdered (and, come to think of it, where was LBJ's mindset on the night of Chappaquiddick? Does it have an alibi?). Just for kix, why not show sell-out Jerry Rubin in the end, after becoming a Wall Street broker, getting run over jaywalking? Just an image of him getting flipped, Karma sucks. That kind of thing. You could have Abbie committing suicide to a vision of you casting Borat to play him in some future movie, flaunting his new Boston accent (what range! acting!), and showing his cardboard abilities (the "shitty little fairy" recalled the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.) Whoever casted Borat can get stuffed.
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