A Hollywood Ending for Dalton Trumbo

A Hollywood Ending for Dalton Trumbo

Bryan Cranston stars as the flawed hero in ‘Trumbo,’ Jay Roach’s new film about the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter

Watch a film clip from "Trumbo," starring Diane Lane, Bryan Cranston and Elle Fanning. Photo: Bleecker Street

By Caryn James

Oct. 28, 2015 1:54 p.m. ET

 

In “Trumbo,” two outsized personalities square off. On the political left is blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, played by Bryan Cranston, who attacks the part with the overenunciated speech and savage wit that mirror the real man he portrays. On the right is the flamboyant gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, played by Helen Mirren in the array of colorful towering hats that were Hopper’s trademark. Zealously anti-Communist, she used her column, read by millions, to wield political as well as show-business power.
Vivid though the film’s characters are, “Trumbo” is as much about the tense era they lived in. One of the “Hollywood Ten” accused of spreading Communism through movies, Trumbo refused to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee and spent 11 months in prison. Afterward, he worked furiously to survive the blacklist, even though his self-absorption alienated his family. ( Diane Lane plays his loyal wife and Elle Fanning one of his three children.) He won two Academy Awards he couldn’t accept: for 1953’s “Roman Holiday” (using the real screenwriter Ian McLellan Hunter as a front) and 1956’s “The Brave One” (as the fictitious Robert Rich). Eventually, Kirk Douglas, a producer as well as the star of “Spartacus,” and Otto Preminger, producer and director of “Exodus,” gave Trumbo screen credit for those 1960 movies.

Trumbo is clearly the film’s flawed hero. The villain, says director Jay Roach, is the atmosphere that pervaded the era. “There is a pattern throughout history where fear can be exploited to whip up a kind of frenzy that can be used to smear your enemies,” he says. “That tendency is more the villain than any one person.”
In many instances, actors play well-known stars. Michael Stuhlbarg is Edward G. Robinson, David James Elliott is John Wayne and Dean O’Gorman is Douglas. In other scenes, Mr. Roach uses news footage from the period, including scenes of Ronald Reagan and Robert Taylor testifying before Congress.
Blending reality and fiction is a technique Mr. Roach also used in his HBO films “Recount” (2008), about the aftermath of the 2000 election, and “Game Change” (2012), about the 2008 Republican presidential campaign. (His comic hits include “Meet the Parents” and the “Austin Powers” trilogy.) He points to one scene in “Game Change” in which Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin watches a clip of Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live.” “It’s paradoxical,” he says. “It’s supposed to make the film more authentic and also remind the audience that this is a portrayal.”

A scene from ‘Trumbo.’

In “Trumbo,” he inserts Mr. Cranston into black-and-white footage of the HUAC hearings. At one point, “the film dissolves from black and white to color, and the edges push out to the widescreen format of the theater experience,” Mr. Roach says. “It’s a deliberate reminder that this is a movie. It’s not history, it’s not a documentary, it’s an interpretation.”
Writer John McNamara says Hopper wasn’t in early versions of his screenplay. The original heavy was Wayne, president of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, an anti-Communist group. When Mr. Roach came on, he made a succinct but crucial suggestion. “He said, ‘Your hero’s a Communist and right now your antagonist is the greatest American film icon ever. Pick one, otherwise you’re not going to get an audience,’ ” Mr. McNamara recalls.

‘Trumbo’ director Jay Roach, right, discusses a scene with Bryan Cranston, who plays blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Photo: Bleeker StreetHopper was added as a more nefarious adversary. She is seen threatening studio head Louis B. Mayer: Dismiss Communists from MGM or she’ll destroy him in print. Including her also created a fuller political spectrum. “Hedda Hopper is the far, far right. John Wayne is center right,” Mr. McNamara says. “Trumbo really is center left.”On the far left is Arlen Hird, a fictional amalgam of several people played by Louis C.K. “That character wanted to see the U.S. government torn down and replaced with a Communist government, which Dalton Trumbo did not,” Mr. McNamara says. With characters on the extreme right and left, “all of a sudden John Wayne looks kind of reasonable. And so does Dalton Trumbo.”Mr. Roach sees Robinson’s situation as emblematic. The actor, known for tough-guy roles in films including “Little Caesar” (1931), supported Trumbo’s causes for years, but finally gave HUAC names they already knew to save his career. “Robinson rationalizes to himself that he hasn’t actually cooperated. It’s heartbreaking to see him sell a little piece of his soul,” Mr. Roach says.“I don’t think it’s so simple as it’s sometimes described,” he says of the era. “There are degrees of nobility and cowardice. The story presents that question of: What would you do?”