Morgen seemed a likely choice for such an event. His movie chronicled the trial of the Chicago Seven, the free-wheeling activists whose protests during the 1968 Democratic National Convention prompted a police riot and became a touchstone for the movement to end the war in Vietnam. (The "10" in the title includes co-defendent Bobby Seale and the two lawyers who defended them, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass.)
Morgen thought the event may be a little too somber, something the subjects of his movie (which opens Friday in Salt Lake City) would have hated.
"I told the organizers, 'Listen, next time you're going to do this, get a keg, get a band,' " he said in a phone interview this week. "It's not really that much fun standing out here on the corner of Main Street in 20-degree weather. That sense of theater, that sense that politics can be fun and engaging is really important to communicate."
Morgen says he made "Chicago 10" to be engaging to a new generation of voters, for whom the events of August 1968 in Chicago aren't history but mythology.
"It's the story of the protest," Morgen said. "By not giving it the context of 1968 that one would expect in a traditional historical documentary, I think it enables the film to be more timeless and universal. Ultimately, it's a film that's as much about '68 in Chicago as it is about Seattle or Genoa or Tiananmen Square. It's an age-old story: There's a war, there's opposition to the war, and there's a government trying to silence the opposition."
To tell that story, Morgen takes some leaps away from dusty documentaries. Though the riots and protests were well captured by cameras, there were no cameras in the courtroom for the 1969 trial.
"I stumbled across an article about [Yippie co-founder] Jerry Rubin, in which he referred to the trial as a cartoon show, and the proverbial light bulb went off and it made perfect sense," Morgen said.
The movie depicts the trial through animation. Actors - including Nick Nolte as prosecutor Thomas Foran, Mark Ruffalo as Rubin, Hank Azaria as Abbie Hoffman, Liev Schreiber as Kunstler, and the late Roy Scheider as the cantankerous judge Julius Hoffman - read the transcript, and their voices were set to motion-capture animation.
Morgen himself put on the black spandex motion-capture suit with the sensors attached, performing 14 of the film's characters.
"The [motion] performance I'm probably most proud of is Judge Hoffman," Morgen said. "When we did the first animation tests for Judge Hoffman, he looked like an 84-year-old man who was moving like a 35-year-old." Then he had 20-pound weights put on his arms, legs, chest and head to slow his movements.
About 30 percent of the editing took place at a ranch owned by Morgen's parents in Oakley, Utah. (His parents fell in love with Utah when they came to Sundance in 1999 for the debut of "On the Ropes," co-directed by Morgen and Nanette Burstein.) This was in the winter of 2006, when Morgen's wife, Debra Eisenstadt, had her movie, "The Limbo Room," in the Slamdance festival.
"Stuart [Levy, the film's editor] and I would drive into [Park City] at night, and three nights in a row we'd try to go see a film at the Eccles and got shut out each time," Morgen said. "I thought, this is so ironic: I premiered my last movie ['The Kid Stays in the Picture'] here, we can't get into this theater, and with any luck we'll be here next year."
A year later, "Chicago 10" was the opening-night film at Sundance '07. The movie was sold to Roadside Attractions, which at first pushed for an August '07 release. But the political climate didn't seem ready for the movie, Morgen said.
"There was a real sense in the anti-war movement, and with a lot of Democrats, a sort of cynicism or a nihilistic feeling - that we just went to the polls and voted and they still sent in more troops," Morgen said. Releasing the film now ties into the election and the 40th anniversary of the 1968 convention this August, he said.
Morgen detects "a little less cynicism and a little more inspiration," thanks largely to the candidacy of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, and compares the young protesters of '68 to the college kids mobilizing today.
" 'Chicago 10' is ultimately a film about empowerment, about the fact that three or four guys can change the course of history," Morgen said. "The ultimate message is delivered by Jerry Rubin. He said, 'I'm not your daddy. I can't tell you what to do. Everyone's got to figure out what they want to do. You know what you need to do, and go out and do it.' "
movies@sltrib.com
