Trailer
Plot summary
Yippie founder Abbie Hoffman has spent five years in hiding to avoid a prison sentence on a drug charge. He reaches out to a reporter to make known the FBI's covert spying on the Left, its harassment of activists, and its inciting of violence that the Bureau then blamed on them. The reporter doubts him and seeks out other accounts: Anita Hoffman, Abbie's wife, raising their son on welfare in New York City, and Gerry Lefcourt, his attorney. What they recall goes back to the couple's early years and their turn to activism.
Cast
- Stephen Marshallas Louis Wertzel
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Steal This Movie (2000)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Abbie and Anita Hoffman’s son filed suit against Lions Gate Films in September 2000 to block further distribution, protesting his portrayal in the film as a child as “a wimpy, quiet, sulking and effeminate ‘mama’s boy’” and accusing the film-makers of implying he may be a homosexual; he later dropped the suit, saying the characterisation was made in good faith.
- The film’s title is itself a play on words: it echoes Hoffman’s 1971 counter-culture guidebook, which was titled Steal This Book.
