TRUMBO / Bryan Cranston / 2015 was initially not too high on my November movie list - I'm not a Bryan Cranston groupie - but I heard a podcast interview with the director and I caught it at midnight in NYC a few days ago.
While watching the Trumbo/2015, I was thinking "B" - a little wooden in the biopic way. Also, part of the point is that Trumbo was a very unconventional protagonist - a grumpy abrasive egocentric.
However, interestingly, the movie grew on me in the days since and I dragged my teenage daughters to it. And I'm discussing it in this blog.
While watching the Trumbo/2015, I was thinking "B" - a little wooden in the biopic way. Also, part of the point is that Trumbo was a very unconventional protagonist - a grumpy abrasive egocentric.
However, interestingly, the movie grew on me in the days since and I dragged my teenage daughters to it. And I'm discussing it in this blog.
Doing a bit of research on Trumbo, you'll also come across a 2007 documentary also called TRUMBO (dir Peter Askin) which is a few dollars VOD on Amazon or even for free on Youtube. It was amazing. It's partly narrative, partly talking heads of his children and a few elders who knew him, vintage video, and interspersed heavily with readings of Trumbo's letters by a wide case of excellent actors - Brian Dennehy, Nathan Lane, Michael Douglas, Donald Sutherland. Some of the readings (actor desk and black background, Charlie Rose style) are just jaw dropping.
Dalton Trumbo was a native Coloradan, became a novelist in the early 30s, and by the early 40s was Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter, a millionair living on a ranch an hour or two north of LA. He was also a communist, cheering on every strike etc. The communist card backfired rapidly in '47, '48. He was one of the Hollywood 10 and spent a year in jail for contempt of Congress in 1950 after losing a lot of money on legal appeals. As the movie tells it, he learned he could write bottom-barrel cheap scripts under assumed names and ran a hectic business, nearly working himself to death in the mid 50s. One of his scripts, Roman Holiday, won an Academy Award (under the name of a friend), as did another (under a fake name). Emboldened, he began playing with the press rather than hiding from it. Around 1960, two blockbuster films appeared with his name as screenwriter (Exodus, Spartacus), and the blacklist was ended, at least for him. John F. Kennedy famously crossed an anti communist picket line to attend Spartacus. Trumbo soon wrote other noteworthy films, like Papillon.
Returning to the current 2015 Bryan Cranston movie, if you look past the sounds of wheels turning (1953...rip...1954...rip...1955...fight with wife...rip...teen daughter upset...escapades with contraband scripts...rip)...
...You get the following four kinds of goodness:
...You get the following four kinds of goodness:
* History of the period. For example, you see that the original HUAC actually investigated communists, whereas by McCarthyism they were just throwing completely ungrounded threats around, sort of like watching the progression of behavior over a couple years in Animal Farm...
* Character development. From dilettante pro-strike millionaire by his pool and horse stables, to prison inmate to starving guy trying to feed his family.
* A Classic Moral: Guy fights to change system, wins.
* Comic relief: Several showpiece scenes with John Goodman as a sleazy C-picture producer.
- Net-net, both Trumbo/2015 and Trumbo/2007 were wonderful experiences to watch.
