American Anarchist

William Powell wrote the Anarchist Cookbook when he was 19, naive, and angry at the government for their violent oppression of the 60s counter-culture movements. He wanted to be a published author and thought writing a manual of techniques to resist oppression would find an audience. He didn't realize what kind of audience it would eventually find, nor that his book would continuously come back to haunt him for the rest of his life.

Powell, age 65 in the film tells of domestication into family life and his life-long passion for helping teach children with learning disabilities, while he optimistically hoped that his first book would quietly die the death of a passing fad. Unfortunately, that was not the case, which Charlie Siskel tries to drive home repeatedly to the point of seemingly bullying Powell in a sanctimonious, holier-than-thou exposition as he lists case after case of violent incidents where the cookbook was involved.

I found this film scary and saddening because it is a salient example of how a naive mistake made during a person's youth can indefinitely and permanently damage their life on an ongoing basis. The low score is mainly the fault of the filmmakers who did not seem to have a clear idea of what to do and hence resorted to harping on different ways of shaming a man for actions that he has not engaged in, endorsed, or even condoned for almost 50 years.

The filmmaker showed absolutely no class or ethics on the making of this film, and worse yet does not even seem to recognize how poorly put together his line of questioning is. He asks leading questions and shows extreme bias. He even includes a point where Mr. Powell questions him on his rhetoric. The film itself seems well made, but the filmmaker needs some serious help in understanding how to conduct an interview.

When I was 19, I worked in a hippie bookstore that carried "The Anarchist Cookbook." We kept it behind the counter, along with other naughty books ("The Joy of Lesbian Sex"; even "The Satanic Verses".)

At the time, we all thought it was very, very COOL-- and naturally, deliciously subversive-- that we were selling this book.

Point being: 19.

This film bothered me tremendously, most of all for Siskel's indignation, which somehow seemed irrelevant to me. Of COURSE the book is atrocious. Of COURSE the book has motivated many a disturbed individual to commit heinous acts-- one here in Salt Lake City, in fact, where Mark Hoffman (the "Salamander Letters" forger) purchased the book from that hippie bookstore, and used it to make bombs that killed two people in 1985.

My point is, viewers get it. Powell gets it. Powell's wife gets it.

But I am not so sure about Charlie Siskel. At one point the filmmaker presents a barrage of horrific acts committed by people in possession of "The Anarchist Cookbook." (was I the only one who wondered why we were all being flogged with this theory, considering what can now be so easily found on the Internet?) We even get to hear that Senator Feinstein think Powell's book should be "removed from the internet." (Huh?)

The best part of the film is the backstory about Powell's troubled boyhood. This part of the film is genuinely moving, and made me think of Frank Conroy's lovely and dark book, "Stop Time." Powell tries again and again to gently articulate that there is something to be learned-- a connection worth exploring-- between alienated youngsters in a damaged world, and dangerous ideas and rhetoric. Powell tell us, "my skeleton is not in the closet," and continues (with amazing forbearance, I thought) to explore the impact of "The Anarchist Cookbook."

Towards the end, Powell lights up briefly and long enough to describe the subject of one of his other books. Siskel goes at him with his thesis doggedly, and one last time, before the camera lights on Powell's baffled, bemused countenance.(I could just hear Siskel going, "Gotcha!"). This film felt to me like a dumbed-down version of a much, much more complicated history and story.

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

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.