Trumbo

Bryan Cranston plays Dalton Trumbo, a screenwriter who got blacklisted during the witch hunts for Communists in Hollywood during the late 1940s, early 1950s. The movie follows him mostly, along with a couple of other screenwriters, including Arlen Hird played by Louis C.K. The financial hardships, people writing shit on the walls of his home or throwing a soda in his face.

He finds work by writing and revising screenplays for some third-rate movie studio (run by John Goodman and Stephen Root), but word gets around. Then once people are approaching you to fix the scripts for their big budget, Academy-pleasing epics, you have a little leverage.

With movies like this, which focus on an actual person and period of time, I always wonder how accurate the picture we get is. Like when they say it's "based on true events", then how much did they change to make it more exciting? The scene where some lawyer from the Motion Picture Association for Upholding American Idiocy, I mean Ideals tries to pressure John Goodman into not using blacklisted writers is pretty enjoyable, but I have to wonder if it actually happened.

Was Hedda Hooper (played by Helen Mirren) really such a miserable, red-baiting, anti-Semitic sack of crap? Or does she just make for a convenient foil? Not that I have much (read: any) respect for someone that makes their career as a muck-raker, spreading a bunch of stupid rumors around for idiots, but it doesn't necessarily mean she's the Devil set loose on Earth.

There's a couple of scenes where Trumbo's fixation on fixing all these garbage scripts for John Goodman impacts his family life. Dismisses his oldest daughter's 16th birthday party as not worth stopping writing for some birthday cake. Those issues kind of get dealt with perfunctorily, if at all. He admits mistakes once, and everything is better the next time we see them. Diane Lane is kind of wasted as his wife, Cleo. Don't really see much of what she was doing to hold the family together while he's in prison, for example.

The whole stretch of him being in prison felt kind of weak, like it was there because they felt they needed to show it did happen, but otherwise, not much to it. Other than maybe that even convicts can get swept up in red-baiting nonsense. "This country put me in jail for 20 years, it's the greatest country on Earth!" OK, sure thing. I believe that's called Stockholm Syndrome, but maybe that didn't exist in 1951.

It's kind of odd, because Trumbo and Hird have a kind of philosophical difference where I think Hird is much more of a full Communist (not a Soviet, just a Communist), and Trumbo is more of a general workers' rights person. Like, one of them wants to tear down the system, and the other just wants to make sure labor gets a fair share. So there's a principles versus pragmatism thing there, where Hird at one point insists he wants to keep fighting in court, even though they'll lose, and Trumbo wants to win. Which I think is defined by continuing to work and showing the blacklist for the joke it is, but otherwise not fighting the unAmerican aspect of the whole House of Un-American Activities?

Yet Trumbo is just as easily locked in on doing things in his particular way, even if it's not pragmatic. When Buddy Ross offers them work, claiming that he'll just claim ignorance if called before Congress, Trumbo's the one who dumps cold water on it, rather than jump at the chance to make some dough. Maybe he's being pragmatic in knowing it'll fall apart before he makes any money, but it feels more like he can't trust Ross not to name names, and doesn't want to associate with him. Which feels very principled to me.