Trumbo | |
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Directed by | Jay Roach |
Written by | John McNamara |
Based on | Dalton Trumbo by Bruce Cook |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Jim Denault |
Edited by | Alan Baumgarten |
Music by | Theodore Shapiro |
Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 124 minutes [2] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $10 million [3] |
Box office | $13.3 million [4] |
Trumbo is a 2015 American biographical drama film directed by Jay Roach and written by John McNamara. The film stars Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Louis C.K., Elle Fanning, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G. Robinson, Dean O'Gorman as Kirk Douglas, and David James Elliott as John Wayne. The film follows the life of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, and is based on the 1977 biography Dalton Trumbo by Bruce Alexander Cook. [5]
The film was shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2015, [6] and was released on November 6, 2015, by Bleecker Street. The film received generally positive reviews, with Bryan Cranston being nominated for several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor. [7]
Dalton Trumbo is a screenwriter whose talent places him among the elite of Hollywood. However, his active membership in the Communist Party of the USA draws the contempt of staunchly anti-Soviet entertainment-industry figures such as columnist Hedda Hopper and actor John Wayne.
Trumbo is one of 10 screenwriters subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) regarding Communist propaganda in Hollywood films. They refuse to directly answer questions, confident that a liberal majority on the Supreme Court will overturn their convictions for contempt of Congress. Trumbo's friend Edward G. Robinson, who supports the cause, sells Vincent van Gogh's 1887 painting Portrait of Père Tanguy to raise money for their legal defense fund. The unexpected deaths of Justices Wiley Rutledge and Frank Murphy ruin Trumbo's plan to appeal. In 1950, Trumbo serves 11 months in Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky.
As the Hollywood Blacklist expands to exclude more communists and communist sympathizers from working in the industry, Trumbo and his comrades are abandoned by Robinson and producer Buddy Ross, who disavow them to protect their careers. Trumbo is released from prison, but he remains blacklisted and his finances – and family life – become increasingly strained. He resorts to giving the screenplay for Roman Holiday to his friend Ian McLellan Hunter, to take credit and a share of the money, and eventually the Academy Award for Best Story. Selling his idyllic lakeside home and moving to a house in the city, he goes to work as a pseudonymous screenwriter for the low-budget King Brothers Productions, also farming out the writing of B-movie screenplays to fellow blacklisted writers. He puts his wife Cleo and teenage children to work as his support staff, adding to domestic conflict. King Brothers' film The Brave One , an original story by Trumbo under a pseudonym, receives an Academy Award he cannot claim. His blacklisted friend Arlen Hird dies from cancer, destitute, but an attempt by Hedda Hopper's allies to intimidate the head of King Brothers into firing Trumbo fails completely.
Industry suspicion of Trumbo's ghostwriting develops, but he is careful not to confirm it. In 1960, actor Kirk Douglas recruits him to write the screenplay for his epic film Spartacus , and director Otto Preminger recruits him to script Exodus . Both men publicly credit him as the screenwriter, despite Hopper's futile efforts to intimidate Douglas into dropping Trumbo. By early 1961, the effectiveness of the Blacklist had been broken to the point where newly elected US President John F. Kennedy publicly endorsed Spartacus, and Trumbo and others are able to begin rebuilding their careers. Ten years later, finally receiving his due accolades from Hollywood, Trumbo speaks about how the Blacklist victimized them all: those who stood by their principles and lost their jobs, and also those who compromised their principles to keep them.
On September 18, 2013, Bryan Cranston joined the cast to play Dalton Trumbo. [9] On April 14, 2014, Helen Mirren joined the cast to play Hedda Hopper. [10] On August 7, 2014, Diane Lane, Elle Fanning, John Goodman, and Michael Stuhlbarg joined the cast. [11] On August 13, 2014, David James Elliott, Peter Mackenzie, and Roger Bart joined the cast to play John Wayne, Robert Kenny, and Buddy Ross, respectively. [12] [13] On September 6, 2014, Louis C.K. joined the cast to play Arlen Hird. [14] On September 22, 2014, Dean O'Gorman joined the cast to play Kirk Douglas. [15] On October 16, 2014, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje joined the cast to play Virgil Brooks. [16] Principal photography began on September 15, 2014, and ended on November 6, 2014. [17] [18]
On August 13, 2014, it was announced that Bleecker Street would distribute the film. [19] The film had its world premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2015. [2] The film had a limited release on November 6, 2015 before going wide on November 25. [20]
Trumbo grossed $7.9 million in the United States and Canada and $5.4 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $13.3 million. [4]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 74% based on 205 reviews, with an average rating of 6.70/10. The site's critical consensus states, "Trumbo serves as an honorable and well-acted tribute to a brilliant writer's principled stand, even if it doesn't quite achieve the greatness of its subject's own classic screenplays." [21] Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 60 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [22]
Peter Debruge of Variety gave the film a positive review, saying, "Trumbo may be clumsy and overly simplistic at times, but it's still an important reminder of how democracy can fail (that is, when a fervent majority turns on those with different and potentially threatening values), and the strength of character it takes to fight the system." [23] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times gave the film a negative review, saying "Part biopic, part historical gloss, Trumbo tells a great-man story with a patchwork of fact and fiction, mixing in the odd bit of newsreel with a great many dull, visually flat and poorly lighted dramatic scenes." [24] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Trumbo is breezy and pithy without ever undercutting the seriousness of the subject. A certain degree of wit is appropriate in a writer's story, just as any Hollywood tale must at least have a whiff of absurdity, or else it can't be true." [25] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Trumbo is a corny, well-made B-movie about an A-list screenwriter who had to take jobs writing B-movies after he was blacklisted, but eventually worked his way back to writing A-movies with Kirk Douglas a.k.a. Spartacus as his champion." [26]
Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, saying "What makes the movie work are the lively performances, both from the supporting cast and from Cranston, who sheds the mimicry and pontificating of earlier scenes to turn Trumbo into a wry, self-deprecating and somewhat cheeky older man, even if he continued to stand up for what was right." [2] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Cranston's performance is the motor that runs Trumbo, and that motor never idles, never flags in momentum or magnetism or idealistic scorn." [27] Alonso Duralde of TheWrap gave the film a positive review, saying "Roach and McNamara fall victim to the occasional phony biopic moment or straight-up moment of didacticism, but overall Trumbo is a lively history about the day-in-day-out drudgery of survival during oppressive times. Screenwriters are so rarely taken seriously by the film industry that it's a nice switch to watch them be the heroes." [28] Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying "Roach's film may be light in places, even sugarcoated in others, but any reminder of the past and its impact on the future is a welcome one. Plus, we get a good Cranston performance in the bargain." [29]
Despite generally positive reviews, several reviewers criticized the film for being historically misleading or ideologically manipulative. Godfrey Cheshire of the Roger Ebert Journal wrote that Trumbo is "another of those simplistic, made-to-order films about the Hollywood blacklist in which the blacklisted movie folks are all innocent, in every conceivable way." [30] Cheshire decried the film's insinuation that the House Committee on Un-American Activities created the Hollywood blacklist and that "Sen. Joseph McCarthy had something to do with Congress' pursuit of Hollywood." [30] Cheshire also criticized the film for mainstreaming communism: "it invites us to see the Communist Party USA as just another political party rather than as the domestic instrument of a hostile and ultra-murderous foreign tyranny." [30]
Other critics raised similar historical concerns. While the film portrays Trumbo as "a New Deal liberal hero defending civil liberties", Ron Capshaw in The American Spectator stated the real Trumbo was an outspoken supporter of Soviet-style communism, including Joseph Stalin and North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung. [31] The conservative Pat Buchanan questioned the appropriateness of portraying Trumbo as a "martyr to the first amendment" while overlooking his support for regimes that actively suppress free speech. [32] Armond White of National Review went a step further, accusing director Jay Roach of "unrestrained partisanship" for whitewashing the history of communism to invent a hero that supports Roach's political views. [33]
Bryan Cranston received numerous award nominations for his portrayal of Trumbo, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
The film depicts actor Edward G. Robinson betraying his friend Dalton Trumbo and others by naming them as communists before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Robinson testified four times before the committee and eventually stated that he had been a dupe of communist front organizations. [46] According to the transcript of a hearing on April 30, 1952, Robinson gave the following testimony: "Well, you had Albert Maltz, and you have Dalton Trumbo, and you have—what is the other fellow, the top fellow who they say is the commissar out there?", and after being prompted by his questioner (Mr. Walter), Robinson continued: "Yes, John Howard Lawson. I knew Frank Tuttle. I didn't know Dmytryk at all. There are the Buchmans, that I know, Sidney Buchman and all that sort of thing. It never entered my mind that any of these people were Communists." [47] His testimony is re-enacted in the film, but with alterations, including to some of the names and their order. For instance, instead of John Howard Lawson, the composite character, Arlen Hird, is identified as "the commissar". [48]
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including Roman Holiday (1953), Exodus, Spartacus, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). One of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of alleged Communist influences in the motion picture industry.
Kirk Douglas was an American actor and filmmaker. After an impoverished childhood, he made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films and was known for his explosive acting style. He was named by the American Film Institute the 17th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema.
Roman Holiday is a 1953 American romantic comedy film directed and produced by William Wyler. It stars Audrey Hepburn as a princess out to see Rome on her own and Gregory Peck as a reporter. Hepburn won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance; the film also won the Academy Award for Best Story and the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.
Spartacus is a 1960 American epic historical drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas in the title role, a slave who leads a rebellion against Rome during the events of the Third Servile War. Adapted by Dalton Trumbo from Howard Fast's 1951 novel of the same title, the film also stars Laurence Olivier as Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus, Charles Laughton as Sempronius Gracchus, Peter Ustinov as slave trader Lentulus Batiatus, and John Gavin as Julius Caesar. Jean Simmons played Spartacus' wife Varinia, a fictional character, and Tony Curtis played the fictional slave Antoninus.
Marsha Hunt was an American actress with a career spanning nearly 80 years. She was blacklisted by Hollywood film studio executives in the 1950s during McCarthyism.
Bryan Lee Cranston is an American actor. He is best known for portraying Walter White in the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad (2008–2013) and Hal in the Fox sitcom Malcolm in the Middle (2000–2006). He has received a number of awards, including six Primetime Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and two Golden Globes, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award.
The Committee for the First Amendment was an action group formed in September 1947 by actors in support of the Hollywood Ten during the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). It was founded by screenwriter Philip Dunne, actress Myrna Loy, and film directors John Huston and William Wyler.
Albert Maltz was an American playwright, fiction writer and screenwriter. He was one of the Hollywood Ten who were jailed in 1950 for their 1947 refusal to testify before the US Congress about their involvement with the Communist Party USA. They and many other US entertainment industry figures were subsequently blacklisted, which denied Maltz employment in the industry for many years.
The Prowler is a 1951 American film noir thriller film directed by Joseph Losey that stars Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes. The film was produced by Sam Spiegel and was written by Dalton Trumbo. Because Trumbo was blacklisted at the time, the screenplay was credited to his friend, screenwriter Hugo Butler, as a front.
John McNamara is an American writer, producer, showrunner and television creator. He attended East Grand Rapids High School located in Michigan and attended the University of Michigan and New York University. While at NYU, he wrote two children's books published by Delacorte Press and a teleplay for the CBS Afternoon Playhouse.
The Hollywood blacklist refers to the mid-20th century banning of suspected Communists from working in the United States entertainment industry. The blacklist began at the onset of the Cold War and Red Scare, and affected entertainment production in Hollywood, New York, and elsewhere. Actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other professionals were barred from employment based on their present or past membership in, alleged membership in, or perceived sympathy with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), or on the basis of their refusal to assist Congressional or FBI investigations into the Party's activities.
Michael Stuhlbarg is an American actor. He is known as a character actor having portrayed a variety of roles in film, television and theatre. He has received several awards including nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and a Golden Globe Award.
Dean Lance O'Gorman is a New Zealand actor, artist, and photographer. He played the dwarf Fíli in the Hobbit trilogy and the Norse God Bragi/Anders Johnson in the fantasy series The Almighty Johnsons. He also portrayed Kirk Douglas in Trumbo (2015).
Christopher Trumbo was an American television writer, screenwriter and playwright. Trumbo was considered an expert on the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist. His father, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, was blacklisted by Hollywood for nearly a decade for refusing to testify to Congress, as one of a group known as The Hollywood Ten.
Trumbo is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Peter Askin, produced by Will Battersby, Tory Tunnell, Alan Klingenstein, and David Viola, executive produced by Jim Kohlberg, and written by Christopher Trumbo. It is based on the letters of Christopher Trumbo's father, Dalton Trumbo, an Oscar-winning screenwriter who was imprisoned and blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten, ten screenwriters, directors and producers who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the Hollywood film industry.
Peter Askin is an actor, director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing the 2007 film Trumbo, a documentary about the Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who was blacklisted for being a member of the Hollywood Ten. For the film, he worked closely with Trumbo's son, Christopher Trumbo.
All the Way is a 2016 American biographical drama television film based on events during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Directed by Jay Roach and adapted by Robert Schenkkan from his 2012 play All the Way, the film stars Bryan Cranston, who reprises his role as Johnson from the play's 2014 Broadway production, opposite Melissa Leo as First Lady Lady Bird Johnson; Anthony Mackie as Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King Jr.; and Frank Langella as U.S. Senator Richard Russell Jr. from Georgia.
Robert Presnell Jr. was an American screenwriter. He became the director of radio shows such as I Love a Mystery and The Orson Welles Show.