Steal This Dinner
“There’s always going to be someone who is the naughty judge, someone who’s going to be the governor who double-crosses the people, and there has to be a me. If there isn’t a me, we’re in big trouble.”
———Abbie Hoffman
Chicago Seven defendant and counterculture dissident, Abbie Hoffman, once defined himself as “an orphan of America” and “a child of the Woodstock Nation”. The media recalls him as rising to national prominence by trying to levitate the Pentagon, for his protest throwing money at the New York Stock Exchange, or for wearing patriotism in an American flag shirt on national television. Hoffman once said, “Myths are the only news, and the only thing that stays true all the time is a lie.” And so it is with him. The Abbie Hoffman the world remembers is a fiction borne of media spin and personal mythology.
The man who once uttered the phrase, “Never trust anyone over thirty,” would have turned sixty-eight this November 30th . Most writers who quote that line forget to mention Hoffman was already over thirty, himself, when he first said it.
In 1986, Hoffman sat down at Sarge’s deli in Manhattan with filmmaker Nancy Cohen to shoot a documentary entitled, “My Dinner with Abbie”. This hour-long feature, filmed on the eve of Hoffman’s 50th birthday, is a provocative portrait of the man in his own words, a retrospective autobiographical summation of the self-proclaimed “Jewish Road Warrior’s” life. The winner of a Vermont Earth Peace Film Festival Award, best in category “Struggle For Human Rights and Justice”, it has recently been screened as a centerpiece for town meetings in postwar Iraq .
Throughout the filmed conversation, Hoffman comments on such varied topics as growing up in the sixties, democracy, differences between the genders, civil liberties, life as a fugitive, sex, his time spent in prison, fleeting fame, midlife crises, and death.
Abbie Hoffman died on April 12th, 1989, at age 52. His death was later ruled a suicide.
In commemoration of Abbie Hoffman’s birthday, I recently asked Nancy Cohen a series of questions about her experience during the filming of “My Dinner with Abbie”. Here is what she had to say:
“It was 1986, and I was doing photo styling for photographer Steve Borns. We were shooting for a health food newspaper, ‘Whole Life Times’. Abbie Hoffman was going to be on the cover. I was certainly looking forward to doing the job, as I had read “Soon To Be a Major Motion Picture” a few years before and it had inspired me.
Finally the day arrived. Here I was, talking to Abbie Hoffman, fixing his shirt, primping him for the photo, and the idea just popped in my head…Abbie ‘above ground’ near his fiftieth birthday, what a sublime moment to celebrate one of the icons of the youth-led protest movement of the Vietnam era. I worked up the nerve to ask him if he might be interested in some sort of film, and he said, ‘Maybe…why not?” According to Abbie, Barbara Walters had asked him to do the same thing and he had turned her down.
I talked my idea over with my then-boyfriend, fellow filmmaker Howard Katzman. He was interested in the project as well. Howard was always well-versed politically, and he was growing increasingly nauseous from the porn trailer and talk show work his roster was full of. Here was our chance to shoot a film that combined art with activism. What more could we ask for?
The ‘dinner’ concept came from the few moments I had studied acting with Andre Gregory. I was a big fan of his film, “My Dinner with Andre”, and thought it would make a nice homage.
I gathered my ideas and called Abbie after the photo shoot. I remember the cute message he used to have on his answering machine… ‘We ain’t home now robbers, so come and get it.” I arranged a meeting with him at my flat. I told him what I wanted to do and he agreed. He said he would do the film for a flat fee of one-thousand dollars. At this point I had no money or budget, but I knew once he agreed I would find a way to make it happen. In the end, Abbie was the only one to get paid. Everyone else at the shoot worked for lunch or deferred.
There was one point where I considered asking my friend, commercial director Joe Conforti, to direct it. Joe kindly invited us all up to his apartment. He served us a light breakfast of coffee, orange juice and bagels…but the bagels weren’t good Jewish bagels, they were the kind I grew up with in rural Pennsylvania , just white bread in the shape of a bagel. Abbie was impressed with Joe and his apartment, but I knew right away I had to do the film with Howard. This film needed an authentic Jewish touch, the right type of bagel, if you will.
It was Abbie’s idea to shoot at Sarge’s Deli. It was near his pad, and he didn’t want to commute. Also, he loved the food there, as you can see in the film. He had some pretty earthy eating habits. His fingers took the place of a fork. This was one of the problems we encountered during the editing. Howard wanted to make Abbie and me appear at least somewhat dignified…many shots of birthday cake frosting on Abbie’s gesturing hands ended up on the cutting room floor.
I hoped this film would reveal another side of Abbie Hoffman…a sensitive, perceptive and humane side. I wanted to show the side of Abbie Hoffman the media never got to see. Maybe he didn’t want them to see it. Maybe they wanted to believe it didn’t exist. One never can tell whenever mass-media is involved.
I had caught glimpses of Abbie’s emotional side in his writings. As a feminist, I was interested in how he felt about women’s issues. I thought we could discover the truth about Abbie by getting him to talk about his own childhood and family. I was making it my job to draw the real person of Abbie Hoffman out for the world to see.
I think Abbie decided to do the film with us because he trusted us. Being a cute girl didn’t hurt. Also, Howard was from Massachusetts , which bode well with Abbie. He knew we were committed artists who were still quite innocent to the tawdriness of the film business. He knew I was interested in many of his goals. At times during the interview he was impatient with my apparent lack of radical education. The truth is, I adored everything he did… at that age I just didn’t have the words for some of it. Having been raised by a movie theater-owner/rabbi who believed in Israel and who had no sons to worry about during the Vietnam War, I was not exactly raised on the cutting edge of extremist thought. But looking back, I think he knew the things I didn’t understand at the time, I would in the years to come.
I think Abbie truly hoped this film would make a difference… if not then, maybe at some time in the future. Everything he said those ‘so-many years ago’ seems even more relevant in today’s America , in today’s world. Perhaps that time Abbie was hoping for is now. I wish he were here to guide us. Imagine what he’d have to say.”
— written by Eric Taubert, 2004
