Great biopic about Dalton Trumbo and 'the Hollywood 10'. Trumbo was one of 10 screenwriters subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (right after WW2) regarding alleged Communist propaganda in Hollywood films. They refused to directly answer questions, confident that a liberal majority on the Supreme Court would overturn their convictions for contempt of Congress. But that didn't happen, and then their lives fell apart, in a number of ways.
Trumbo soldiered through though, and continued writing screenplays anonymously for movies that would win Oscars in the 1950s. The movie captures the McCarthyist hysteria of the time, when 'Communist' implied you were 'un-American' and 'taking orders from the Kremlin'; something that is all too relevant again today.
Louis C.K. (the comedian) is in it, and he's pretty good. So is John Goodman, who is irreverent as always! The lead was played by Bryan Cranston, who was nominated for Best Actor at the 2015 Oscars but lost out to diCaprio in The Revenant (whatever!).
From here I went on to find out that Trumbo later worked with a number of 'subversive' stars - including Donald Sutherland and Burt Lancaster - to write and produce Executive Action, a movie about the assassination of JFK. I haven't seen it, but from what I've read about it, it was even more explosive than Stone's JFK, which caused a scene in 1991. Trumbo's JFK movie was made in 1973, released two weeks before the 10th anniversary of the assassination, then rapidly pulled from theaters and disappeared down the memory hole...
Trumbo soldiered through though, and continued writing screenplays anonymously for movies that would win Oscars in the 1950s. The movie captures the McCarthyist hysteria of the time, when 'Communist' implied you were 'un-American' and 'taking orders from the Kremlin'; something that is all too relevant again today.
Louis C.K. (the comedian) is in it, and he's pretty good. So is John Goodman, who is irreverent as always! The lead was played by Bryan Cranston, who was nominated for Best Actor at the 2015 Oscars but lost out to diCaprio in The Revenant (whatever!).
From here I went on to find out that Trumbo later worked with a number of 'subversive' stars - including Donald Sutherland and Burt Lancaster - to write and produce Executive Action, a movie about the assassination of JFK. I haven't seen it, but from what I've read about it, it was even more explosive than Stone's JFK, which caused a scene in 1991. Trumbo's JFK movie was made in 1973, released two weeks before the 10th anniversary of the assassination, then rapidly pulled from theaters and disappeared down the memory hole...
