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The Trial of the Chicago 7: The Screenplay
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.
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.
- GenresNonfiction
176 pages, Paperback
Published October 20, 2020
About the author
Aaron Sorkin
23 books271 followersAaron Benjamin Sorkin is an American screenwriter, producer and playwright, whose works include A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, Sports Night and The Farnsworth Invention.
After graduating from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre in 1983, Sorkin spent much of the 1980s in New York as a struggling, largely unemployed actor. He found his passion in writing plays, and quickly established himself as a young promising playwright. His stageplay A Few Good Men caught the attention of Hollywood producer David Brown, who bought the film rights before the play even premiered.
Castle Rock Entertainment hired Sorkin to adapt A Few Good Men for the big screen. The movie, directed by Rob Reiner, became a box office success. Sorkin spent the early 1990s writing two other screenplays at Castle Rock for the films Malice and The American President. In the mid-1990s he worked as a script doctor on films such as Schindler's List and Bulworth. In 1998 his television career began when he created the comedy series Sports Night for the ABC network. Sports Night's second season was its last, and in 1999 overlapped with the debut of Sorkin's next TV series, the political drama The West Wing, this time for the NBC network. The West Wing won multiple Emmy Awards, and continued for three more seasons after he left the show at the end of its fourth season in 2003. He returned to television in 2006 with the dramedy Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, about the backstage drama at a late night sketch comedy show, once again for the NBC network. While Sorkin's return was met with high expectations and a lot of early online buzz before Studio 60's premiere, NBC did not renew it after its first season in which it suffered from low ratings and mixed reception in the press and on the Internet. His most recent feature film screenplay is Charlie Wilson's War.
After more than a decade away from the theatre, Sorkin returned to adapt for the stage his screenplay The Farnsworth Invention, which started a workshop run at La Jolla Playhouse in February 2007 and which opened on Broadway in December 2007.
He battled with a cocaine addiction for many years, but after a highly publicized arrest he received treatment in a drug diversion program and rid himself of drug dependence. In television, Sorkin is known as a controlling writer, who rarely shares the job of penning teleplays with other writers. His writing staff are more likely to do research and come up with stories for him to tell. His trademark rapid-fire dialogue and extended monologues are complemented, in television, by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's characteristic visual technique called the "Walk and Talk".
After graduating from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre in 1983, Sorkin spent much of the 1980s in New York as a struggling, largely unemployed actor. He found his passion in writing plays, and quickly established himself as a young promising playwright. His stageplay A Few Good Men caught the attention of Hollywood producer David Brown, who bought the film rights before the play even premiered.
Castle Rock Entertainment hired Sorkin to adapt A Few Good Men for the big screen. The movie, directed by Rob Reiner, became a box office success. Sorkin spent the early 1990s writing two other screenplays at Castle Rock for the films Malice and The American President. In the mid-1990s he worked as a script doctor on films such as Schindler's List and Bulworth. In 1998 his television career began when he created the comedy series Sports Night for the ABC network. Sports Night's second season was its last, and in 1999 overlapped with the debut of Sorkin's next TV series, the political drama The West Wing, this time for the NBC network. The West Wing won multiple Emmy Awards, and continued for three more seasons after he left the show at the end of its fourth season in 2003. He returned to television in 2006 with the dramedy Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, about the backstage drama at a late night sketch comedy show, once again for the NBC network. While Sorkin's return was met with high expectations and a lot of early online buzz before Studio 60's premiere, NBC did not renew it after its first season in which it suffered from low ratings and mixed reception in the press and on the Internet. His most recent feature film screenplay is Charlie Wilson's War.
After more than a decade away from the theatre, Sorkin returned to adapt for the stage his screenplay The Farnsworth Invention, which started a workshop run at La Jolla Playhouse in February 2007 and which opened on Broadway in December 2007.
He battled with a cocaine addiction for many years, but after a highly publicized arrest he received treatment in a drug diversion program and rid himself of drug dependence. In television, Sorkin is known as a controlling writer, who rarely shares the job of penning teleplays with other writers. His writing staff are more likely to do research and come up with stories for him to tell. His trademark rapid-fire dialogue and extended monologues are complemented, in television, by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's characteristic visual technique called the "Walk and Talk".
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 31, 2025
I love Aaron Sorkin! And I love this film!!!
December 23, 2020
The powerful film, one of my favorites of the year, motivated me to read this screenplay. I found it so relevant, timely, and impactful. As an activist who has felt that sting of watching police remove badges and name tags, who has heard this history from my hippie activist grandparents, and of collaborating with folks of very different tactics, this film (and screenplay) resonated deeply with me. It is not fully accurate to history, like most of Aaron Sorkin's work, and I highly recommend exploring this fascinating history further. Nevertheless, it was such a meaningful film and screenplay to me, and I recommend it very much.
watched-not-read
January 7, 2021After watching this movie, memories of 2011 strike me. I can't believe 10 years have passed already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnY9_...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnY9_...
April 14, 2021
Over the last decade, I’ve tried to read the Oscar-nominated screenplays each year, and in doing that, I’ve read a bit of Aaron Sorkin’s work. Both “The Social Network” and “Molly’s Game” were adapted from non-fiction works, and in both cases, I believe Sorkin wrote the best screenplay nominated that year. Ever since The West Wing, Sorkin has seen himself as a sort of important chronicler of the time, be it through politics, social media, or news, and sometimes, he gets lost in his own importance.
“The Trial of the Chicago 7” is the first film Sorkin has written in quite some time that wasn’t based on a non-fiction book, even though it is based on a real incident. What that means is that Sorkin isn’t reliant on any other media, which gives him the opportunity to tell this event as he sees fit. Sure, “The Social Network” and ‘Steve Jobs” took major liberties with their story, but those felt like they were still getting at the heart of the story, even if the events didn’t happen exactly as Sorkin wrote them.
For the most part with “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Sorkin does stick with the reality of what happened. This is especially effective during wrenching scenes like when Bobby Sands is strapped to a chair and gagged during his own trial. But there are many scenes that are clearly envisioned by Sorkin as a way to make this film a crowd-pleaser. Sorkin has always seemed to want to entertain first, but inform through witty dialogue and snappy, almost screwball comedy-esque rapid fire dialogue. But with “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” that isn’t needed. This story on its own doesn’t need any sweetening. The story is fascinating enough, but Sorkin gets in his own way. This is especially the case in the film’s truly absurd ending, which is one of the most insane things I’ve seen in a movie last year, and you don’t have to know the history of this trial to realize its complete Sorkin-y bullshit.
As a film, I think “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is fine. It’s a great story that deserves to be known by a larger audience, even if its in this mediocre form, and Sorkin mostly stays out of his own way, except in a few key points. But as a screenplay, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” shines. I don’t love this film, but it reads beautifully. Sorkin’s words are probably best read and rarely does the power of them on the page get matched on the screen for me.
Since the Academy Awards were announced, I’ve said that I pretty much don’t mind any film winning Best Picture, except “Mank” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” While I have my problems with how this script comes to life on the screen, on the page, this script is pretty powerful, and I can understand a little clearly why people do like this film. This is a flawed film, but its still yet another solid screenplay from Sorkin.
“The Trial of the Chicago 7” is the first film Sorkin has written in quite some time that wasn’t based on a non-fiction book, even though it is based on a real incident. What that means is that Sorkin isn’t reliant on any other media, which gives him the opportunity to tell this event as he sees fit. Sure, “The Social Network” and ‘Steve Jobs” took major liberties with their story, but those felt like they were still getting at the heart of the story, even if the events didn’t happen exactly as Sorkin wrote them.
For the most part with “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Sorkin does stick with the reality of what happened. This is especially effective during wrenching scenes like when Bobby Sands is strapped to a chair and gagged during his own trial. But there are many scenes that are clearly envisioned by Sorkin as a way to make this film a crowd-pleaser. Sorkin has always seemed to want to entertain first, but inform through witty dialogue and snappy, almost screwball comedy-esque rapid fire dialogue. But with “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” that isn’t needed. This story on its own doesn’t need any sweetening. The story is fascinating enough, but Sorkin gets in his own way. This is especially the case in the film’s truly absurd ending, which is one of the most insane things I’ve seen in a movie last year, and you don’t have to know the history of this trial to realize its complete Sorkin-y bullshit.
As a film, I think “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is fine. It’s a great story that deserves to be known by a larger audience, even if its in this mediocre form, and Sorkin mostly stays out of his own way, except in a few key points. But as a screenplay, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” shines. I don’t love this film, but it reads beautifully. Sorkin’s words are probably best read and rarely does the power of them on the page get matched on the screen for me.
Since the Academy Awards were announced, I’ve said that I pretty much don’t mind any film winning Best Picture, except “Mank” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” While I have my problems with how this script comes to life on the screen, on the page, this script is pretty powerful, and I can understand a little clearly why people do like this film. This is a flawed film, but its still yet another solid screenplay from Sorkin.
June 15, 2023
"The Chicago7 all are Jews, aren't they?". Richard Nixon speaking to Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman
That was just Nixon being his paranoid, anti-semitic self, just like this screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (If there's anything Nixon hated more than Jews it was Jewish liberals) is just Sorkin being Sorkin, the patron saint of American liberalism (A FEW GOOD MEN, THE WEST WING, THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT, etc.) Sorkin has taken the frame-up and subsequent 1970 trial of the Chicago 7, originally the Chicago 8; Black Panther Party (BPP) Chairman Bobby Seale was thrown into the mix even though he had never even met most of the other defendants, on the charge of "conspiracy to incitement to riot" and turned it into a showcase of how the American legal system, and ipso facto the American government really works for and to the benefit of the people, if you give it a chance. On a positive note, Sorkin acknowledges that there are evil people, and not just a few bad apples, working on behalf of the governments; Judge Julius Hoffman here, Colonel Nathan Jessup in A FEW GOOD MEN. But rather than question why the system throws up ogres like this Sorkin conjures up a white knight to defeat them; Lieutenant Kaffee in GOOD MEN, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark in THE TRAIL. (That Clark tapped phones and infiltrated left groups on behalf of Lyndon Johnson goes unmentioned in the screenplay.) Likewise, Sorkin briefs us that Chicago BPP chief Fred Hampton was murdered by the cops during the trial, but not that the Feds had passed on information to the Chicago Police Department on Fred's whereabouts. Starting to see a pattern? Sorkin blames evil dwarves, and not "The System", as the Chicago 7 called it, for every miscarriage of justice, and all those miscarriages can be corrected. Also missing is the zaniness during the trial, like the time Abbie Hoffman's girlfriend got up from her seat and screamed at Judge Hoffman, "You little prick!" I've watched several films based on the transcripts of the Conspiracy trial, and can safely say that this one is historically accurate, up to a point, and also politically useless. Weird factoid: Defendant Jerry Rubin, by the Eighties a self-described "small guy's capitalist" and Wall Street investor, was killed while jaywalking a few blocks away from my alma mater of UCLA. Jaywalking? Karma's a switch bitch, man.
That was just Nixon being his paranoid, anti-semitic self, just like this screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (If there's anything Nixon hated more than Jews it was Jewish liberals) is just Sorkin being Sorkin, the patron saint of American liberalism (A FEW GOOD MEN, THE WEST WING, THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT, etc.) Sorkin has taken the frame-up and subsequent 1970 trial of the Chicago 7, originally the Chicago 8; Black Panther Party (BPP) Chairman Bobby Seale was thrown into the mix even though he had never even met most of the other defendants, on the charge of "conspiracy to incitement to riot" and turned it into a showcase of how the American legal system, and ipso facto the American government really works for and to the benefit of the people, if you give it a chance. On a positive note, Sorkin acknowledges that there are evil people, and not just a few bad apples, working on behalf of the governments; Judge Julius Hoffman here, Colonel Nathan Jessup in A FEW GOOD MEN. But rather than question why the system throws up ogres like this Sorkin conjures up a white knight to defeat them; Lieutenant Kaffee in GOOD MEN, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark in THE TRAIL. (That Clark tapped phones and infiltrated left groups on behalf of Lyndon Johnson goes unmentioned in the screenplay.) Likewise, Sorkin briefs us that Chicago BPP chief Fred Hampton was murdered by the cops during the trial, but not that the Feds had passed on information to the Chicago Police Department on Fred's whereabouts. Starting to see a pattern? Sorkin blames evil dwarves, and not "The System", as the Chicago 7 called it, for every miscarriage of justice, and all those miscarriages can be corrected. Also missing is the zaniness during the trial, like the time Abbie Hoffman's girlfriend got up from her seat and screamed at Judge Hoffman, "You little prick!" I've watched several films based on the transcripts of the Conspiracy trial, and can safely say that this one is historically accurate, up to a point, and also politically useless. Weird factoid: Defendant Jerry Rubin, by the Eighties a self-described "small guy's capitalist" and Wall Street investor, was killed while jaywalking a few blocks away from my alma mater of UCLA. Jaywalking? Karma's a switch bitch, man.
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October 27, 2020Such an eye opening! Organizing vs structural injustice! When democracy fails to listen to to what people wants! and a jurisdictional system designed to favor the government!
"That's right, we're not goin' to jail because of what we did, we're goin' to jail because of who we are!"
"Mr. Hoffman, are you familiar with contempt of court? Abbie Hoffman: It's practically a religion for me, sir."
"We carried certain ideas across state lines. Not machine guns or drugs or little girls. Ideas. We had certain ideas. And for that, we were gassed, beaten, arrested, and put on trial."
"You've posed that question in the form of a lie."
"That's right, we're not goin' to jail because of what we did, we're goin' to jail because of who we are!"
"Mr. Hoffman, are you familiar with contempt of court? Abbie Hoffman: It's practically a religion for me, sir."
"We carried certain ideas across state lines. Not machine guns or drugs or little girls. Ideas. We had certain ideas. And for that, we were gassed, beaten, arrested, and put on trial."
"You've posed that question in the form of a lie."
October 23, 2022
Aaron Sorkin has always excelled at telling a story and keeping one's attention just with dialogue. This screenplay of the film "The Trail of the Chicago 7" displays his writing strengths and talents. Just reading the screenplay presents a vivid picture of events, even though it is all dialogue with no descriptive sequences. Each character has a unique voice and the story itself is very compelling. This is the type of book you put in the hands of a budding screenplay writer or emerging storyteller.
October 23, 2020
Deja Vu... Fierce! Not covered in my “Patriotic” (aka sugar coated) primary history education.
December 13, 2020
Greatest courtroom drama of all time!
March 17, 2021
I mean it was dope but like bro I hate reading about legal dramas some times :(
December 31, 2022
definitely not something i usually read but i really enjoyed it and it was so interestin
June 18, 2024
Decent 60's fanfic, but (per usual) gives my main man Rennie Davis short shrift, at least in the screenplay.
November 7, 2021
Sorkin scripts are like listening to a well composed song- it just hits all the beats to give you goosebumps.
Although this one does show a lot of his bad habits.
Although this one does show a lot of his bad habits.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews