Today's Fresh Air was an interview with the director of Chicago 10.

NPR: Political History Gets Animated in ‘Chicago 10’ -

(Morgen): The riots in Chicago, you can’t even really call them riots because I think the proper terminology is that they were police riots. It was really the police going berserk, and for five days, they senselessly attacked the demonstrators in a manner that was as vicious, in my mind, as the Rodney King beatings, just on a massive scale.

So, three months after the convention, Nixon won office and one of the first things that John Mitchell did was indict the leaders of the anti-war movement, for conspiracy: with crossing state lines with the intent to start a riot. This was, ironically, a new law that was part of the Civil Rights act. The Chicago 8 are the only people who have ever been tried under the Civil Rights act and … – were the first people ever tried under it and the only people ever tried under it.

Listen to the audio portion from the movie. Then to the clip of the actual courtroom tapes.

Nick Nolte nails the character of the US attorney in his portrayal. Scheider, for all the kudos of his director, does not. In the original courtroom tapes, the judge simply sounds like an old man, like the judge in Oh, God! Scheider’s imitation is too menacing to be credible.

What do you think? Give it a couple of hearings because I was almost sold on the first listen.