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ABBIE
HOFFMAN’S REPUTATION IS VINDICATED IN STEAL THIS MOVIE!
 Founder
of the Yippies in the 1960s, Abbie Hoffman is sympathetically
portrayed in the biopic Steal This Movie!, produced
and directed by Robert Greenwald. Early in the film, Abbie
(played by Vincent D’Onofrio) is registering African Americans
to vote in Mississippi in 1965, only to receive a punch in
the face from a police officer of a small rural town. By 1967
he spearheaded the movement against American involvement in
the Vietnamese Civil War, ran a "free store" so that poor
African Americans can obtain donated clothing in New York
City, and was a self-styled "cultural revolutionary" advocating
free love, free land, free housing, free medical care, and
free marijuana. In 1968 Hoffman became one of the Chicago
Seven, charged with incitement to riot in the streets outside
the Democratic National Convention after repeatedly being
denied a permit to demonstrate peacefully in a nearby public
park. When Richard Nixon became president, FBI Director Herbert
Hoover was ordered to set up a "Cointelpro" (counterintelligence
/ propaganda) operation to harass and neutralize the anti-war
and Black Panther movements. Arrested and brutalized many
times and ultimately charged with an offense that meant possible
life imprisonment, Hoffman was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted
list for nearly two decades while abandoned by most of his
erstwhile Yippie compatriots, who preferred fame or family
(but returned as consultants on the film). For nearly a decade,
he went underground, changed his name to Barry Freed, drifted
from town to town, but ultimately could not resist becoming
prominent in a grass roots movement, Save the River, to stop
pollution on the St. Lawrence River. Since his new prominence
meant that the FBI would inevitably track him down, he surrendered
to the authorities, which were no longer so concerned about
his views.
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To
tell the story, the film focuses on a journalist (a composite
of several) seeking to write a story about Abbie. The journalist
interviews Abbie, his wife Anita (played by Janeane Garofalo),
and his pro bono attorney Jerry Lefcourt (played by Kevin
Pollak), so retrospective accounts are dramatized almost
in the manner of a docudrama. Rich in personal information
about Hoffman, we can only admire his genius at unusual
forms of protest, such as throwing dollar bills onto the
floor of the New York Stock Exchange, but he was also manic
depressive. His promiscuity is portrayed as inevitable,
given his high level of energy in manic phases, while deeply
in love with his wife Anita, who comforted him during depressive
phases. In Abbie’s own words in the film, the movements
he supported so dramatically eventually produced a powerful
civil rights movement, a pullout from Vietnam, the sexual
revolution (and the gay rights movement), and the environmental
movement. We could add that he also exposed fascist governmental
operations and hypocritical limousine liberals, removing
the shades from the eyes of an entire activist generation.
Many lines in the film are based on epigrams from his famous
publication Steal
This Book! (1971), personal accounts from To
America with Love: Letters from the Underground (1976)
which he and Anita co-wrote, and Marty Jezer’s biography
Abbie
Hoffman: American Rebel (1992). The film project
began with the approval of Anita, who was a consultant to
the filmmakers before she died (from cancer) in 1998, nine
years after Abbie committed suicide. Steal This Movie!
makes clear that Hoffman was flamboyantly trying to narrow
the gap between masses seeking democracy and elites preferring
oligarchy, an agenda that is very much before us today.
As a film that reveals so much truth about the politics
of the 1960s and 1970s while vindicating posthumously the
memory of a true democratic revolutionary, the Political
Film Society has nominated Steal This Movie!
for two awards -- as best film exposé and as best film promoting
the need for increased democracy. MH
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