18th January 2019
2015, USA 124 mins
In 1947 Dalton Trumbo (Oscar nominated Bryan Cranston) was Hollywood’s top screenwriter until he was blacklisted for his political beliefs. Trumbo went to prison for a spell and was forced to write under a pseudonym for many years. The film recounts how Dalton used words and wit to win two Academy Awards and expose the absurdity and the injustice under the blacklist which entangled everyone in Hollywood from gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) to John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.
It was not until 1960 that Trumbo broke the blacklist, when Kirk Douglas insisted that Trumbo’s name appear on the opening credits as the sole writer of Spartacus and Otto Preminger did the same thing that year with Exodus, another Trumbo script.
Directed by Jay Roach and written by John McNamara with an acclaimed supporting cast including John Goodman, Louis C.K. Diane Lane, Elle Fanning and Michael Stuhlbarg. Trumbo is the compelling and outrageous true story of how one man took on the Hollywood system.