American Anarchist

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.

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.

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.

Like some other reviewers, I fell most of the value in this was in the opportunity to hear Powell talk about his life, and its value is IN SPITE of Siskel's attempts to place blame on Powell for things that others did. If it weren't for the obvious agenda that Siskel was trying to push here, it would have been 7/8 stars for me.

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.