Sacha Baron Cohen, who many of us know and love as Borat and Ali G, will be abandoning his usual comedic personas to play a hippie opposing the Vietnam war in the upcoming Steven Spielberg drama, "The Trial of the Chicago Seven."

According to the Sunday Times, "’The Trial of the Chicago Seven’ follows protesters who disrupted the 1968 Democrat party convention with an anti-Vietnam-war “carnival” that turned nasty. Demonstrators threw bricks, police responded with tear gas and the centre of Chicago was engulfed in flames. Curfews only escalated the violence.

After the clashes, independent investigators blamed eight police officers and eight protesters including Hoffman, who had already disrupted the New York Stock Exchange with showers of fake money.

The police were not charged but the protesters were accused of inciting a riot. One was jailed for contempt, leaving the seven to fight the charges.

It was, said the late writer Norman Mailer, who testified for the seven, a noisy televised clash between the old order and the burgeoning counterculture.

Hoffman went on to become an irascible celebrity who, later diagnosed with a bipolar disorder, killed himself with pills in 1989.

Wow!  I cannot wait to see this.  I believe that Cohen can pull it off - there’s genius under the silliness.

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