The Sunday Times is reporting that "Borat" and "Sweeney Todd" star Sacha Baron Cohen has been cast as Abbie Hoffman in the Steven Spielberg-directed The Trial of the Chicago 7.
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Hoffman is a figure from the 1960s counterculture who used a series of pranks to campaign against the Vietnam war.
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The Trial of the Chicago 7 follows protesters who disrupted the 1968 Democrat party convention with an anti-Vietnam war "carnival" that turned nasty. Demonstrators threw bricks, police responded with tear gas and the center of Chicago was engulfed in flames. Curfews only escalated the violence.
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After the clashes, independent investigators blamed eight police officers and eight protesters including Hoffman, who had already disrupted the New York Stock Exchange with showers of fake money.
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The police were not charged but the protesters were accused of inciting a riot. One was jailed for contempt, leaving the seven to fight the charges.
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Hoffman went on to become an irascible celebrity who, later diagnosed with a bipolar disorder, killed himself with pills in 1989.

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