American Anarchist

I have just watched the film and was sufficiently disturbed by the interviewer attempting to attribute the current state of the world to a book that Bill Powell wrote as a shocked reaction to the world as it was 50+ years ago. The book was written/assembled from information that was freely available in a public library, which makes who responsible for its availability? It is clearly wrong to me to attempt to blame the Columbine killings on the the book as unhappy people bought guns and then killed those that they thought had done them wrong. How is that possible? (American law is the answer).

The filmmaker was a guy trying to work a premise and fulfill a hypothesis that has no grounds. Bill Power and his wife seemed the nicest people in this film.

Seven out of 10 because I was interested in the history of this book, being exposed to bits of it as a young, ignorant adolescent. I agree wholly with other reviews on how biased the interviewer was, and how this story, which could have been very interesting, was turned into a blame and shame game. There is absolutely little to no evidence to suggest that the 'Cookbook' alone or even in part drove anyone to commit terrible acts against fellow human beings. Anymore than there is evidence to suggest that metal music or violent comic books did. I'm not sure what the interviewer's end game or motivation is, but to put it bluntly, he's kind of a dick.

All this documentary does is blame this old man over and over again. I own a copy of the book and like hundreds of thousands of other people, that's where the story ends. Very hard to finish due to the fact that it focuses on shaming the author for a full hour instead of delving into the actual book itself and more about why it was written. Terrible

William Powell wrote the Anarchist Cookbook when he was a teenager. Now in his sixties, he is a retired school teacher, who has spent most of his responsible adult life trying to help teach difficult to reach children. In this documentary, he talks about his radical years in the late 60s and his life subsequent to the book's publication. A simple man, who apparently struggles with certain implications of the book and some personalities who have found it inspirational, Mr. Powell seems to have made a good life for himself apart from his youthful foolishness. Charlie Siskel's documentary about the man would have completely failed were it not for the subject itself, which saved the film from its maker's lack of ethics and film-making talents. The editing was atrocious, and a good thirty minutes of irrelevant information could have been cut from it. Worst of all, Siskel bullies Mr. Powell repeatedly, pressing again and again to make the man feel guilty about tragedies such as the OK City bombing and the Columbine shooting. Both Mr. Powell and his wife take Siskel to task for his relentless passive-aggressive attacks, but he continues through the end of the film. While I enjoyed hearing from Powell, I was constantly brought back to Siskel's agenda to demonize him, which coated the entire documentary with a layer of muck and left a bad taste in my mouth.

American Anarchist is exactly the type of "documentary" i hate to watch. Director is totally biased and he spends 80 minutes trying to prove his point. And the point is: William Powell, a 65 year old teacher who lives in France is responsible for almost every mass shooting in the US. Because he wrote a book about how to make explosives and how to use guns when he was 19.

It's not an easy movie to watch because it's so one sided and judgmental. At some point you feel like you're watching someone being ambushed and coerced into saying things he doesn't want to say.