Hacker Cinema
Steal This Movie
2000 · Film · 107 min
Directed by Robert Greenwald
Five years after Yippie founder Abbie Hoffman goes underground to avoid a drug-related prison sentence, he contacts a reporter to get out the story of the FBI's covert spying, harassment and inciting of violence they then blame on the Left.
1 positive2 neutralfrom 3 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
3 comments on Hacker News
“When this book’s designer came up with the title, Copy This Book, she was playing off Abbie Hoffman’s guide to counter-cultural living Steal This Book (1971), just like Oakland-based hip-hop band The Coup did with Steal This Album (1998), later joined by Detroit punk rock band The Suicide Machines with Steal This Record (2001) and Armenian-American heavy metal band System of a Down with Steal This Album! (2002). Robert Greenwald made Steal This Movie! (2000) and Paraguay Press published an artist’s book by Dora Garcia entitled Steal This Book (2009).”
(Chapter 5.2 on writing)
So she thought of Abbie Hoffman… but when she suggested it my first association was System of a Down as well :)
For a decent overview of this, watch Steal This Movie, or look into the life and work of Abbie Hoffman.
The stated goal was to levitate the Pentagon, meaning to lift it in the air, and Hoffman claims that they actually did and many saw the Pentagon rise... but you're not supposed to take that seriously.
Hoffman was a prankster, and a self-admitted fadist. He went from straight laced voter registration in the racist South, to being a leader of the New Left and anti-war movement in the late 60's and early 70's.
He felt that the old and new left were both boring and their methods were outdated. He had a better understanding of the new media environment of television, and importantly that America was a post-literate society.
He adopted a lot of the ideas of the diggers from SF. He captured the attention of the media with his outlandish claims and antics, on purpose.
He was a pioneer in street theater. Some of his actions include:
Running a pig for president
Throwing money from the gallery in the NY stock exchange so that the traders on the floor could be photographed greedily picking it up, to illustrate the complicity and greed of wall street (through the investment in defense companies that profited from napalm) in what he saw as genocide in Vietnam
A free speech activist, he was arrested for writing the word Fuck on his forehead and for wearing an American flag motif shirt.
He was also tried for incitement of riot in the Chicago 7 trial. He turned the trial in a circus through things like coming into the trial dressed in judges robes and other antics.
He did all of this in an attempt to politicize youth and drug culture of the 60's and mobilize it against the war.
An anarchist, he published steal this book, a book chock full of practical advice for avoiding corporate employment and living free through cooperation and petty scams like methods of placing free phone calls. All of this was based on the idea that American middle class values were fundamentally morally bankrupt and hypocritical, due to it's support of what he saw as an active genocide in progress.
He was brilliant, charismatic and somewhere between brave and crazy. Women loved him, and he loved them. And he loved drugs.
A rare specimen, of the same stock as the founders of this country. A person motivated by extreme empathy and a sense of justice, and someone not afraid to die for his beliefs.
He was a man with the same kind of creativity and media insight of someone like David Ogilvy, he could have easily made a fortune on Madison Avenue.
Instead his got his head beat in and his nose broken registering black voters. All the money he made from sales of his book and his fleeting celebrity were donated to civil rights groups.
The FBI and COINTELPRO had him under near constant surveillance and eventually caught him in a drug deal.
He skipped bail and went underground, and eventually emerged in the 80's and started working on environmental campaigns and against the Reagan administrations support of the Contras in Nicaragua (which was expressly illegal due to the Boland Amendment).
He was found dead due to an overdose of sleeping pills, but many think he was murdered.
The movie version seems to have languished into even greater obscurity.
I'm rather fond of it, it's appropriately titled "Steal This Movie" and I believe Abbie would be glad for any of you to do just so.
There's also a lesser book called 'DO IT!' by Jerry Rubin, if you really want to immerse yourself in that culture. Abbie and Jerry had a falling out and their later lives looked very different. Jerry even ended up being an early Apple investor apparently.