The excellent Trumbo examines a black time in Hollywood history. In the 1950s when the Cold War was just beginning it’s ugly reign, the perceived threat of an invading Communist regime threw most Americans into a panic. As the Red scare spread, it hit the entertainment industry particularly hard, as those with any affiliation with what was deemed “unpatriotic” were placed on a blacklist and lost their livelihoods.
The film follows one blacklisted screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), part of the Hollywood 10, who decided to fight back using the only weapon he had at his disposal: his words. After being demonized by the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), led primarily by the hugely popular gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren), and even sent to jail for a time for contempt, Trumbo came out swinging. He continued to write in any way he could, finding like-minded, low budget producers to buy his scripts under aliases and also buy the work of his blacklisted friends. Trumbo even won two uncredited screenwriting Oscars (for Roman Holidayand The Brave One) during this time. The man never gave up, and when he finally received credit for his work on Spartacus in 1960, Trumbo’s in-your-face coup was instrumental in dismantling the Hollywood blacklist.
At the film’s press conference, stars Cranston, Diane Lane (who plays Trumbo’s wife, Cleo), Elle Fanning (who plays Trumbo’s oldest daughter, Niki), Michael Stuhlbarg (who plays Edward G. Robinson) and director Jay Roach all discuss the impact Trumbo made on the industry, how the blacklist history relates to today’s climate, and more.
Step 1: Learn about the Hollywood blacklist
Elle Fanning: “Actually before the script I didn’t even know that the blacklist existed. For me, it was shocking learning that part of history. After I read it I asked my parents about it and they were like, ‘Yeah this actually happened.’ I couldn’t believe it. But in getting to play Niki Trumbo was really special. I hope I did her justice. Before filming, she was so open and willing to answer anything and she would send you back these paragraphs to the answers to my questions to specifically to the relationship that she had with her dad and how it was definitely a very unique one. She’s such a strong girl. It was exciting to play.”
Diane Lane: “I’d heard of the Hollywood 10. I didn’t really know what that was. I knew it was tied to the blacklist. I didn’t realize that they were all writers, primarily. I knew Dalton Trumbo’s name, but I didn’t realize he had written and had not gotten credit for his writing for two of his films. I didn’t realize he wrote Roman Holiday. I did know he wrote The Brave One, but I didn’t know the story behind it. It takes a while to rectify history because you have to have people who are passionate enough to do it. When you see the healing of the wounds that come from rectifying history, and telling the story of the victims and not just the way history is portrayed by time marching forward and the version of America that the media wants to present to itself on a conveyer belt, it just feeds itself. It’s a self-feeding machine. We need to bump up against it occasionally and get it off course to remind ourselves that we have to look at what we’ve done so we don’t repeat it.”
Step 2: Capture Trumbo’s voice
Bryan Cranston: “It really had a double entendre to that. The voice of Trumbo. There is a lot of source material and videotapes and audiotapes on that. But you can kind of get lost in that and if you only focus on that you could start down a road of interpretation. And so I wanted to be very careful not to do that. That being said, he was a very flamboyant character with contradiction and irascibility and passion, and he was very prolific. He was a beautiful, wonderful big character and dramatic. So it’s kind of an amalgam of research to read the books about him, talk to the people that knew him. You are almost like a detective assembling clues. Every time I start a show or a character, he’s always outside of me. I always envision him out there somewhere and I feel like the more research I do and the more I talk to people and go back into the script the closer he gets to coming in and then at some point you just have to have trust and faith that he becomes a part of you. Not just the sound of him or how he carries his body, but his sensibility and his point of view and that sort of thing.”
Step 3: Realize the most challenging part of playing Trumbo
Cranston: “The cigarettes. I stupidly thought that well I’ll definitely not smoke real cigarettes because then I’ll protect myself from ingesting nicotine and tar and all the carcinogens. But then I realized I’m still inhaling smoke, I’m still smoking these herbal cigarettes. There were many times when we were looking for places that I thought, ‘Oh man maybe I don’t have to smoke in this.’ But if you have a cigarette in your hand and you’re playing that character, even if you are off screen, I’m not focusing on not inhaling. I’m focusing on doing the scene and so I catch myself inhaling even off screen and so it became an issue. Getting hoarse and not feeling great. But [Trumbo’s daughters] Mitzi and Niki said their dad was a chimney. He often lit one to the other, as we’ve known some people to do that, so it was a challenge, more of a physical challenge.”
Step 4: How to work for extensive periods in a bathtub
Cranston: “The challenge of working in a bathtub is not to get prune-y fingers. Not to drink too much before you get into the bathtub. You know what I mean? It becomes very pragmatic when you think about it. And also, after a while in staying in there for about an hour, or two, or three or whatever it was and then kind of sheepishly asking, ‘Can I have another bucket of hot water?’ Because the bathtubs we used they weren’t a part of those bathrooms. We brought those tubs in so we just plugged up the drain and they had to fill it with hopefully hot soapy water and then you discreetly place that desk so that no one sees something they shouldn’t. Believe me no one should see this.”
Step 5: Play the hell out of Edward G. Robinson
Michael Stulhbarg: “I did watch his films. I was particularly stuck on Key Largobecause that is where we start this film, 1948, 1949. Where he was physically because he put on a little weight at that time. It was a combination of things. Bryan had this wonderful but frightening idea of actually showing him in a film and then bringing back at the end. There wasn’t a lot in the script that demanded me to be [Edward G. Robinson] in character, except that one part. I listened to his voice, a lot, and looking at a number of his films. Sometimes you just open yourself up to all kinds of possibilities, information, stimuli. And you don’t know what’s going to stick to help you take that next step in bringing that person to life. I didn’t feel like I needed to mimic him too much. Just something about his rhythms and listening to him. That stuck with me. Also YouTube clips of him when he wasn’t acting, just being himself. And learning about his art collection and his private life, which was really hard. You understood why he wanted to work all the time. Not to just pay for the paintings but also because of his private life, which you could read all about in his autobiography. He just seemed like a really lovely guy. And there was an aspect of genuineness. He was everybody’s friend. There was this thread of generosity or love that followed him his entire life. I kind of went crazy for the guy.”
Step 6: Have fun with the period fashion
Elle Fanning: “I would say so, yeah, definitely. When I read the script the first time, I didn’t know I’d be playing so many ages. I just assumed that I would be playing just the teenage section. Then when I met with Jay, he was like, ‘No, you’ll be 13 to like 30 years old.’ Okay. When you’re wearing those clothes and the hairstyles from the period, we had inspiration from magazines from that time. So each day, I’d come in and we’d say, ‘Yeah, I like this hairstyle.’ And we had specific photos of Nicki as well. It was exciting. Every character I play, it’s always pretending and make-believe. When I was really little with my sister, we’d play around the house and create these crazy characters. Then when I realized that was a job you could do, I was really excited to do that!”
Diane Lane: “I mean, in some ways, it’s like being a transvestite to be a woman because you get to just dial up how much is required or how much you feel. And if you don’t want to play, you just put your hair back, don’t wear makeup and schlump off to the grocery store and say, ‘I’m a dude today’ I just didn’t want to invest in being a woman because it takes work… It takes a village, honestly, to achieve the looks we have. [Costume designer] Daniel Orlandi is amazingly gifted as a costumer, it was great fun to have his inspiration and excitement about it all. [Turns to Jay Roach] He’s worked on many films with you, right? So you guys are the right team, you trusted the right guy. So anyway, it’s really fun to play different eras. I love the looks of women as we go back in time, but I don’t love the politics that women had to endure as we go back in time. The foundations were very uncomfortable, but they looked great!”
Step 7: Understand Trumbo is a cautionary tale
Cranston: “The film, first and foremost, is entertainment, and I think through entertainment we will have more people possibly taking the message that is behind it. I think anytime that a government sets out to oppress civil liberties that the citizens need to be very concerned about that, speak out, and stand up for their rights. So that is the cautionary tale. Hopefully, this generation, the younger generation, will be able to learn by that and remember that, and see its parallels when they pop up. Jay pointed out very astutely last night that some people may equate what happened during the point of the movie to the Benghazi hearings now – spending millions and millions of dollars and months and months of time and energy and focus… So it’s there. It’s out there to be experienced.”
Step 8: Be heroic
Jay Roach: “I’ve always been interested in how ideas are spread, particularly dangerous ideas. Ideas that come from a bizarre logic that’s from spin doctors. You can see it in other films that I have done like Game Change and Recount. The idea of people sitting around in a room, and saying, ‘I know, let’s take a genuine fear and external threat like totalitarianism Communism and apply it to some of our political enemies and destroys their careers and make them look like they are going to hypnotize Americans through mainstream movies like Roman Holiday. [Laughter]That logic is fascinating. Hedda Hopper had 32 million readers and she could sell that notion and get friends and colleagues to turn on each other and literally try to destroy each others’ lives. These movies to me are therapy. I get so anxious, ‘Could this happen again?’ And yes, it could happen again. We have other external threats that can get extrapolated to suppress people – like terrorism. The way people use terrorism to infringe on civil rights now that is not that different than using totalitarianism Communism to form another totalitarian conformist thing.
Roach added, “These ideas were kind of the big intellectual things, but then I fell in love with [Dalton Trumbo] and his writing, and his heart and soul. The letters he wrote from jail to his wife and kids, and some of the funny ones he wrote to his enemies. He just had so much life and passion and he wasn’t cynical. And one of the most remarkable things he did in my mind was he turned writing into a super power. Instead of succumbing to this oppression, he not only wrote his own screenplays in the black market, he enabled and encouraged other writers to join in. And did actually vouch for them to producers like the King Brothers, telling them if they don’t deliver, I’ll rewrite the scripts for no additional money. And in doing so, he and his friends wrote some of the better movies of that time… Wits and words and language and great characters. And I think that was truly a heroic thing.”