ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY:The Trial of Chicago 7has been a long journey for you.
And I said, “Sure, count me in.”
I had no idea what Steven was talking about, I just said yes to working with him.
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The election he was talking about was 2008.
And here we are, 12 years late, but still arriving ahead of a pivotal election.That’s right.
And it was a piece of history that I thought should be told in a feature film format.
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And no, it didn’t; the times changed to mirror the script.
He was talking about 1968.
Then, protests got demonized as being un-American, Marxist, communist all things they called the Chicago 7.
Art Streiber for EW
What was the research part of this like?
Did you get to meet any of these men?
But certainly the colorful characters were sitting there waiting.
Most ensemble dramas are these sprawling films with the cast split up and telling different stories in different places.
But a lot of your movie takes place in a courtroom with all your actors and hundreds of extras.
It’s coverage, and the coverage is important."
It was just a great group of people to work with.
Speaking of the actors, how did you go about putting together this fascinating and unconventional group?
So I had a lot of sympathy for the extras.
But if those are the biggest problems you’re having, you’re doing well.
Obviously we had planned out those riots down to the inch beforehand.
And playing the Chicago police officers was mostly off-duty Chicago police.
So we had to get creative with mixing stock footage in with original camera footage.
I don’t know if you noticed, but I leaned away from ’60s iconography in the movie.
We were as horrified as everyone else, as chilled as everyone else.
Daley including actually the crime that they were charged with.
These eight men on trial are tied together but are far from the same.
How did you go about showcasing so many different sides of this story?
And I thought that was a good point for Bobby to make.
As the film cuts to black, we hear protesters chanting, “The whole world is watching.”
I think after Nov. 4, we’re going to be too exhausted to want to see this.
Listen, we’ll be okay on Dec. 4, but we are going to need a water break.
People are going see that language and actions have been recycled, 50 years later.
We’re better now than we were then."
But we’re not.
I don’t find it the least bit unpatriotic or anti-American it’s the opposite.
They reached high and they slipped on banana peels a lot, but they were the good guys.
What’s happened with athletes in just the last few weeks has been astonishing and inspiring.
Additional reporting by Chancellor Agard.
