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Trumbo (Peter Askin, 2007)
Dalton Trumbo was a screenwriter who mostly worked for M-G-M and RKO Radio Pictures in the 1930s and 1940s. During that time, he earned a nomination for Best Screenplay for Kitty Foyle and wrote some other well-known flicks such as A Guy Named Joe, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. After WWII, he went before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and refused to name names of Communists or former Communists who were working in the entertainment industry. He was subsequently blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten, imprisoned, later moved to Mexico to get away from the ostracization he and his famiy felt and then began to successfully earn money by writing and getting paid for scripts by using fronts. In fact, two of these fronted films earned Oscars for Best Motion Picture Story, Roman Holiday and The Brave One. (Best Motion Picture Story is a category which the Oscars stopped handing out in the '50s; it basically meant Best original story upon which a screenplay was based.)
This film shows Trumbo in archive footage and home movies, but his words are mostly spoken by a number of famous actors. It's both a documentary and a love poem from a son to his father in the form of a play. Christopker Trumbo wrote the play and adapted it to the screen. The actors who speak his father's words include Michael Douglas, Donald Sutherland, Paul Giamatti, Josh Lucas, Joan Allen, David Straithairn, Brian Dennehy, Liam Neeson, Nathan Lane, and Dustin Hoffman. Kirk Douglas (in present day) and archive footage of Otto Preminger both talk about how they credited him for Spartacus and Exodus in order to try to break the blacklist. Although each of the famous actors is excellent and often very dramatic in speaking Trumbo's eloquent words about freedom found in our U.S. Constitution, the highlight for me has to be the hilarious section where Nathan Lane reads a letter which Dalton wrote to his son Christopher about the pleasures of masturbation. That's pretty much a laugh riot worthy of the hands (forgive the pun) of Richard Pryor. Another extremely-moving moment is when Dalton Trumbo himself talks about how the fall of Barcelona in Spain could have perhaps been prevented if we picked and chose our fights better, especially concerning the Fascists in the 1930s. This film is recommended to all who want to better understand the history of American politics, its effect on films and to see some of our current actors speak the words of an American who stood up for his rights during a dark era of American history. I'm not going to get into the idea about how as soon as WWII ended that we were immediately involved in a "Cold War". I don't like the idea that if our country is the best and brightest in the world that we used our enemies (Communist USSR and China) to defeat our other, Bigger, enemies (Germany and Japan) and then had to turn on "former allies". It makes me think that it's only the Constitution which sets us apart rather than our actual "deeds and ideals", and many countries have a constitution virtually similar to ours currently.
Dalton Trumbo has written some of my fave flicks [Spartacus, Exodus, Lonely are the Brave, Papillon (hk's loss)], and he also wrote and directed a very personal anti-war film called Johnny Got His Gun based on his own powerful novel. If you can stand how gut-wrenching it is, give it a watch and/or read. It probably delineates the Constitution and the loss of basic human rights better than any film I've ever seen, without even being "about that subject" at all.
Trumbo (Peter Askin, 2007)
Dalton Trumbo was a screenwriter who mostly worked for M-G-M and RKO Radio Pictures in the 1930s and 1940s. During that time, he earned a nomination for Best Screenplay for Kitty Foyle and wrote some other well-known flicks such as A Guy Named Joe, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. After WWII, he went before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and refused to name names of Communists or former Communists who were working in the entertainment industry. He was subsequently blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten, imprisoned, later moved to Mexico to get away from the ostracization he and his famiy felt and then began to successfully earn money by writing and getting paid for scripts by using fronts. In fact, two of these fronted films earned Oscars for Best Motion Picture Story, Roman Holiday and The Brave One. (Best Motion Picture Story is a category which the Oscars stopped handing out in the '50s; it basically meant Best original story upon which a screenplay was based.)
This film shows Trumbo in archive footage and home movies, but his words are mostly spoken by a number of famous actors. It's both a documentary and a love poem from a son to his father in the form of a play. Christopker Trumbo wrote the play and adapted it to the screen. The actors who speak his father's words include Michael Douglas, Donald Sutherland, Paul Giamatti, Josh Lucas, Joan Allen, David Straithairn, Brian Dennehy, Liam Neeson, Nathan Lane, and Dustin Hoffman. Kirk Douglas (in present day) and archive footage of Otto Preminger both talk about how they credited him for Spartacus and Exodus in order to try to break the blacklist. Although each of the famous actors is excellent and often very dramatic in speaking Trumbo's eloquent words about freedom found in our U.S. Constitution, the highlight for me has to be the hilarious section where Nathan Lane reads a letter which Dalton wrote to his son Christopher about the pleasures of masturbation. That's pretty much a laugh riot worthy of the hands (forgive the pun) of Richard Pryor. Another extremely-moving moment is when Dalton Trumbo himself talks about how the fall of Barcelona in Spain could have perhaps been prevented if we picked and chose our fights better, especially concerning the Fascists in the 1930s. This film is recommended to all who want to better understand the history of American politics, its effect on films and to see some of our current actors speak the words of an American who stood up for his rights during a dark era of American history. I'm not going to get into the idea about how as soon as WWII ended that we were immediately involved in a "Cold War". I don't like the idea that if our country is the best and brightest in the world that we used our enemies (Communist USSR and China) to defeat our other, Bigger, enemies (Germany and Japan) and then had to turn on "former allies". It makes me think that it's only the Constitution which sets us apart rather than our actual "deeds and ideals", and many countries have a constitution virtually similar to ours currently.
Dalton Trumbo has written some of my fave flicks [Spartacus, Exodus, Lonely are the Brave, Papillon (hk's loss)], and he also wrote and directed a very personal anti-war film called Johnny Got His Gun based on his own powerful novel. If you can stand how gut-wrenching it is, give it a watch and/or read. It probably delineates the Constitution and the loss of basic human rights better than any film I've ever seen, without even being "about that subject" at all.