Frank Langella will discuss his role in The Trial of the Chicago 7 and more in 92Y talk
Who: Frank Langella, Roger Rosenblatt
What: Livestreamed discussion
Where: 92nd St. Y online
When: Thursday, December 3, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: One afternoon at my first job out of college at an independent publishing house in New York City, I discovered a small flood in the boiler room. I instantly began trying to save a few boxes that were being overwhelmed by water. One of the boxes I found was filled with items, I quickly learned, from what was supposed to be a book to support the appeal of the Chicago Eight, the publication of the official court transcripts to try to overturn their convictions and sentences. An acetate of Galley One announced, “More than 22,000 pages and more than 4 1/2 million words of testimony — the outstanding theatrical event in American legal history.” Galley Two explained that the book would be “a crucial reference work in five volumes, a history-making trial, with wide-ranging political and cultural implications.” The political and cultural implications included what was believed to be government interference in preventing the book from being published, so all that remains is this ephemera — and now Aaron Sorkin’s compelling and revealing if uneven and one-sided Netflix adaptation, The Trial of the Chicago 7.
In the film, two-time Obie winner, four-time Tony winner, and Oscar and Emmy nominee Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon, Dracula, The Americans) stars as Judge Julius Hoffman, who ruled over the trial of Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), John Froines (Daniel Flaherty), Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) in a rather unique way, letting his biases show as he cited defendants and lawyers over and over again for contempt and had Seale bound and gagged. On December 3 at 7:00, Langella will discuss the film, as well as his career onstage and onscreen as a whole, in a 92nd St. Y livestreamed conversation with writer and critic Roger Rosenblatt. Admission is free with RSVP.