The Trial of the Chicago 7: The Screenplay

Aaron Sorkin

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781982163242
• eBook ISBN: 9781982163259
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

The brilliant screenplay of the Academy Award–nominated film The Trial of the Chicago 7 by Academy and Emmy Award–winning screenwriter and director Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin's film dramatizes the 1969 trial of seven prominent anti-Vietnam War activists in Chicago. Originally there were eight defendants, but one, Bobby Seale, was severed from the trial by Judge Julius Hoffman—after Hoffman had ordered Seale bound and gagged in court.The defendants were a mix of counterculture revolutionaries such as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and political activists such as Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, and David Dellinger, the last a longtime pacifist who was a generation older than the others. Their lawyers argued that the right to free speech was on trial, whether that speech concerned lifestyles or politics. The Trial of the Chicago 7 stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Frank Langella, and Mark Rylance, among others, directed by Aaron Sorkin. This book is Sorkin's screenplay, the first of his movie screenplays ever published.

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7

Written by

Aaron Sorkin

	FADE IN:
1	LYNDON JOHNSON addresses a television camera (FILE FOOTAGE)	1
	LYNDON JOHNSON I have today ordered to Vietnam the Air Mobile Division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from 75,000 to 125,000 almost immediately. This will make it necessary to increase our active fighting forces by raising the monthly draft from 17,000 to 35,000 per month.
	MUSIC crashes in that will take us through the prologue--a		*
	nation coming off the rails.		*
2	INT. LOTTERY DRAWING - DAY (FILE FOOTAGE)	2
	A few well-scrubbed young men from the Youth Draft Advisory Committee stand over a goldfish bowl containing capsules. One of the young men pulls a capsule and reads it as if someone’s won something-- YOUNG MAN June 3rd. All those whose birthday falls on June 3rd--
3	INT./EXT MAILBOXES - DAY/NIGHT	3
	We see a SERIES OF TIGHT SHOTS of different kinds of mailboxes being opened--rural, suburban, apartment building, etc., all of it under-- REPORTER #1 (V.O.) President Johnson announced new monthly draft totals increasing to 35,000 per month-- REPORTER #2 (V.O.) 43,000 per month-- REPORTER #3 (V.O.) 51,000 per month-- REPORTER #4 (V.O.) 382,386 men between the ages of 18 and 24 have now been called to duty.
4	EXT. RURAL MAILBOX TREE - DAY	4
	A line of mailboxes sit on the side of a rural road. One of them is open. We move down and see mail scattered at the feet of a young black man, 18, slumped down on the ground, his induction notice shaking in his hands. MARTIN LUTHER KING (V.O.) It should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity of life in America today can ignore the present war--
5	INT. BALLROOM - NIGHT (FILE FOOTAGE)	5
	KING continues-- MARTIN LUTHER KING If America’s soul becomes poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam”, And we HEAR the rifle shot that killed him RING OUT as we FLASH CUT TO:
6	FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH--(FILE FOOTAGE)	6
	Three men pointing in unison to where the shot came from.
7	EXT. CAMPAIGN RALLY - NIGHT (FILE FOOTAGE)	7
	It’s pouring rain and Robert Kennedy is talking to a crowd of people who have just heard the news-- ROBERT KENNEDY (V.O.) What we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• The Trial of the Chicago 7
• About the Author
• Copyright