2007 — fuck off and die

Here’s to 2008, mate.

And following on from Rosario Dawson in This Revolution and Charlize Theron in Battle in Seattle comes Sacha Baron Cohen in The Trial of the Chicago Seven: “Sacha Baron Cohen will portray Abbie Hoffman, a figure from the 1960s counterculture who used a series of pranks to campaign against the war. Baron Cohen is expected to be paid about £3m for the film” (John Harlow, No more jokes as Borat turns war protester, The Sunday Times, December 30, 2007). The article gives a typically garbled account of the trial, Hoffman, and his significance; a better account may be found elsewhere (including the period he spent underground from 1973–1980, re-emerging to give an interview with Barbara Fucking Walters / 60 Minutes!) in Marty Jezer’s Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel.

On a slightly more modest scale, the life and times of Ian Bone, another troublemaker (still making trouble), is being made into a film:

Anarchist’s life to be filmed
James McCarthy
Wales On Sunday
December 30, 2007

AN anarchist once dubbed “the most dangerous man in Britain” is to have his life story turned into a film. Swansea University graduate Ian Bone’s father used to be a butler to a member of the aristocracy. But his son went on to found outrageous newspaper Class War in 1983, which campaigned for the overthrow of capitalism. It supported strikers, carried snaps of beaten policemen and once ran a picture of Margaret Thatcher with an axe in her head on its front cover. It led to The Sunday People newspaper labelling Mr Bone Britain’s most dangerous man and he even appeared on the Jonathan Ross show…