For a brief time Dalton Trumbo was the highest paid writer in Hollywood, which also meant he was the highest paid writer in the world.
He was a family man, a wealthy and proud American communist whose career was sidelined by The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.
A new film called Trumbo, starring Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, tells the story of how the Academy Award winning screenwriter was reduced to penning scripts for b-movies like The Alien and the Farm Girl.
“Under the first amendment you have the right to free speech and Trumbo felt very strongly about that,” says Cranston.
“He thought it was un-American and unconstitutional for the House Un-American Activities Committee to hold these hearings and demand under threat of contempt of Congress that people answer these questions.
The questions were things like: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? And, if so, to save yourself, renounce it now and tell us who else was a member.
The committee wanted these people to give names so they could go after more people.
“It’s fundamentally wrong and he felt that was wrong and unconstitutional to ask that question,” says Cranston of Trumbo’s reaction.
Trumbo didn’t name names and paid a heavy price, losing his lofty Hollywood perch and almost his family.
“In a way I relate to Trumbo,” says Cranston, but admits he’s not sure what he would do if his career was ever placed in a similar kind of jeopardy.
“What would you do if they subpoenaed you and said, ‘We want to know who else likes baseball? Who is it?’ Would you point the finger at other people who found enjoyment out of playing baseball?
“Of course I would love to think I would be honourable and not do it, but I have to be honest and say, that’s a hypothetical. I think I would be resistant to that pressure and perhaps even pay the price, but do I know for sure? No.
“I don’t know for a certainty because I’m not faced with it.”
After wrapping his five-season career-making run as Breaking Bad’s Walter White, Cranston has kept busy, winning a Tony Award for playing Lyndon B. Johnson on Broadway in All the Way and has eight films in various stages of completion. He made time for Trumbo because “the story itself is brilliant and that is the first thing I look for,” but admits he’s gotten picky about the parts he plays.
“I don’t want to now take a job for money. I take jobs because I’m attracted to them by the creative element or because it challenges me in some way and my agents are incentivized to work out the best deal they can.
“I don’t want to portray this idea that I’m just about the art. I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich and rich is better.”
Dalton Trumbo was an Academy Award nominated screenwriter when his political beliefs saw him drummed out of Hollywood’s inner circles, reducing him to penning scripts for b-movies like “The Alien and the Farm Girl.”
For a brief time he was the highest paid writer in Hollywood, which also meant he was the highest paid writer in the world. He was a family man, a wealthy man and a proud American communist whose career was sidelined by Hollywood conservatives like Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren), John Wayne (David James Elliott) and The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. “I love our country,” he says, “and our government is good but couldn’t anything good to be better?”
The film “Trumbo,” starring Bryan Cranston begins as the writer is enjoying the success of his scripts for “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” “Our Vines Have Tender Grapes” and “Kitty Foyle.” He’s a committed communist, who, along with a group of Tinsel Town activists like Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) and Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.) work tirelessly to create unions within the studio system to ensure that everyone, from the grips to the set decorators on up, earn a living wage.
Their socialist leanings didn’t go unnoticed by Congress and by a cadre of concerned actors who think the group’s socialist ways are un-American. When Hopper, using extortion and bigotry, coerces studio head Louis B. Mayer (Richard Portnow) to fire Trumbo, an industry wide blacklist bans the writer and nine others from working in Hollywood.
With all legal avenues exhausted Trumbo sees his professional and personal worlds crumble as former friends like Robinson stand before Congress and call him “a sinister force.” Punished for his political beliefs, Trumbo makes ends meets by writing screenplays under aliases and creating a script factory staffed by blacklisted writers. After a decade of working in the shadows and winning two Oscars under fake names, he finds two powerful people willing to break the blacklist and put his name where it belongs, on screen.
“Trumbo” is not the story of Senator Joe McCarthy communist witch hunt or a rehash of the Congressional hearings. Instead it is the tale of the times and the personal story of one man who would not allow his civil liberties to be stripped away.
Perhaps its appropriate that a film about the Golden Age of Hollywood—even one that tarnishes the glamour of the period—should feel a little old fashioned. It’s a redemption story, simply told and populated by archetypal characters—Elliott’s John Wayne isn’t a person, for instance, he’s a blustery caricature of The Duke taken directly from the actor’s movie roles—who revolve around Cranston’s flamboyant performance.
The “Breaking Bad” star plays Trumbo as a raging ball of ideology, quick with a quip—in a showdown with John Wayne Trumbo sneers the patriotic actor spent World War II “on a film set shooting blanks and wearing make up.”—and willing to pay the price for his actions. It’s a large cigarette chomping performance of a larger-than-life person.
It takes some time before the rest of the movie catches up with Cranston’s theatrics, but by the time John Goodman, in a hilarious portrayal of a b-movie producer, says, “We bought a gorilla suit and we gotta use it,” the film finds its level.
“Trumbo” is a film with a social conscience with important messages about civil liberties and the importance of freedom of belief, wrapped up in an old-fashioned biopic.
Richard’s “Canada AM” look at the early holiday movie “Love the Coopers” featuring more stars than on the top of the tree, “By the Sea” from Brangelina and the Oscar bait of “Spotlight.”
The Christmas season doesn’t start when The Bay puts up wreaths and ornaments for sale in mid-October or when Starbucks introduces the red cup. Nope. Paradoxically, on the big screen, Christmas begins in November with American Thanksgiving. This year along with the turkey and the yam-topped sweet potatoes comes sage Christmas advice from Grandpa Bucky (Alan Arkin): “Everyone thinks you can schedule happiness, but you can’t.” Listen and learn. It’s Christmastime at the movies so cue the yuletide family dysfunction.
Four generations of Coopers are headed to Mon (Diane Keaton) and Dad’s (John Goodman) place for Christmas dinner. What the kids and grandchildren and assorted others don’t know is that the rents are splitting after 40 years of marriage but want to give the kids “one last perfect Christmas” before announcing the divorce.
Among the guests descending for holiday vittles are an unemployed sad sack son (Ed Helms) and his children. Olivia Wilde as Eleanor, the philosophically inclined but reckless daughter accompanied by Bailey (Jake Lacy), an Iraq-bound soldier she meets at the airport and convinces to be her dinner date and a kleptomaniac sister (Marisa Tomei) who apparently can look to people souls. There’s more, like the excellently named Aunt Fishy (June Squibb) and Ruby (Amanda Seyfried), an angelic waitress at Bucky’s favourite diner, but there’s so many characters the movie starts to lose track of them and so does the audience. “Love the Coopers” is so jam pacekd with people it takes 20 minutes of narration to introduce them all. Imagine a Christmas tale written by Leo Tolstoy, with a dozen or more characters weaving in and out of the narrative—plus a dog flatulence joke!—and you get the idea.
Sting songs decorate the soundtrack as life times of regret and resentment boil over. Before you can say, “Pass the stuffing,” a litany of hardships—unemployment, divorce, empty nest syndrome, longing and underwear soiling to name a few—have been touched on and while there are moments of actual raw emotion they’re buttressed by enough schmaltz to fill eight CDs worth of Celine Dion Christmas ballads. For instance Eleanor’s meet cute with Bailey is the stuff of a solid rom com. Her out-of-control run through a hospital—knocking over patients and grieving visitors—is not.
There are too many stories happening at once—but don’t worry there’s “helpful” narration to explain the details—for you to become invested in the characters. Characters come and go and by the time they’re all in the same place story threads are left hanging like twisted tinsel on a wilted Christmas tree. Director Jessie “I Am Sam” Nelson tidies everything up in the final moments, putting a pretty bow on the package, while throwing story credibility out the window.
Much of “Love the Coopers” is as appealing as last year’s fruitcake, but in the odd moment where it leaves the emotional manipulation in the background and focuses on the story’s sense of melancholy and messages about the power of family, it casts a warm glow.
In Mark Wahlberg’s updated version of “The Gambler,” the unrelenting grimness of the 1974 original has been replaced with unrelenting grimness brush with a dab of Hollywood hopefulness.
University English professor Jim Bennett (Wahlberg) is an all or nothing guy. He gave up writing after his critically acclaimed novel failed to light the literary world on fire. “Unless you’re a genius,” he says, “don’t bother.” If you can’t be the best, don’t bother. Why bet some of your money when you can bet it all. That attitude is exactly what gets I him into trouble, setting him on an journey that will cross paths with vicious loan sharks, gambling barons and two students who may or may not be able to help him as he scrambles to pay off a $240,000 debt to some very bad people in just seven days.
“The Gambler” plays like a throwback to the golden age of gritty American drama but blunts the seedy 1970s feel with an ending that pushes past the point of existential dread (VERY MILD SPOILER ALERT) and betrays the movie’s central theme—the dark examination of the life of a man with nothing to live for.
(CAREFUL!ANOTHERVERY MILD SPOILER ALERT!) I won’t say anymore about the film’s final reel, other than to note that if it ended five minutes before it does, with a spinning roulette wheel, the movie would be something you’d be arguing about over a drink in a seedy bar afterwards. As it is, it’s more of a Starbucks frappuccino flick.
Up until that point though, it’s a pretty good study of a man out of control. Unable to curb his appetite for gambling Bennett brings his motto of, “Total victory or death,” into the real world when he has a spectacularly bad night at an illegal gambling club, loses a fortune and puts himself in hock. With no regard for his safety or future he plunges deeper and deeper into the dark side. When the movie sticks to he soft underbelly of the story, it is effective.
The gambling and the money search scenes work, unfortunately the existential English professor routine, which eats up a good chunk of the film’s middle section, doesn’t. Bennett schools his students on the vagaries of life, literature and love but it sounds like barroom bravado sifted through an eloquent filter. The while the words spill out of Wahlberg’s mouth easily, but they sound hollow.
Some of Bennett’s situational angst is airy—his dialogue, while overblown, is often poetic—but much of it is too on the nose—a choir sings Radiohead’s “Creep” during an unpleasant confrontation with his star pupil and sorta-kinda love interest Amy (Brie Larson)—as if director Rupert Wyatt doesn’t trust the audience to understand what’s going on in the scene.
On the seedy side of things, John Goodman as a loan shark who asks Bennett if having all the advantages life could offer up—birth, good looks, moneyed family, education etc—has been such a burden to him, knocks it out of the park. He’s almost like a Shakespearean tough guy in his tone and demeanor and the rich dialogue sounds natural tumbling from his lips. Ditto Michael K. Williams as a violent money lender named Neville, who would like nothing more than to rid himself of “low company.”
“The Gambler” wants to be a philosophical look at life’s big issues, using Bennett’s fall from grace as a backdrop, but in the end delivers Hollywood cynicism.
Jay Ward may not a household name, but many of the characters he created are.
As the Grand Poobah at Jay Ward Productions he produced the animated television shows that gave us Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Peabody and Sherman and George of the Jungle among others.
His cartoons weren’t just for kids. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “The good ones, which Ward was a master at creating, worked at two levels: one direct and another wonderfully satiric.”
This weekend his characters take over the big screen in Mr. Peabody & Sherman, an animated film starring the voices of Modern Family’s Ty Burrell, Stephen Colbert and Leslie Mann.
Based on Peabody’s Improbable History segment from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, the movie sees the duo use the WABAC machine to ping pong through time, interacting with everyone from Marie Antoinette to King Tut to Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein.
Mr. Peabody & Sherman isn’t the first film based on Ward’s characters.
In a 199 television movie (originally shot in 1988 for theatrical release) SCTV alum Dave Thomas played Boris Badenov, “world’s greatest no-goodnik.” With his partner-in-crime Natasha Fatale (Sally Kellerman) he leaves Pottsylvania for the United States to retrieve a micro-chip. TV Guide said, “as a 90-minute feature film, it’s at least 80 minutes too long,” but it’s worth a gander to see one of the rare live action performances of June Foray, the original voice of Rocky.
Brendan Fraser brought two of Ward’s characters to life, George of the Jungle and Dudley Do-Right.
George of the Jungle is a riff on Tarzan. He’s boy raised in the jungle by an ape (John Cleese) but who never mastered the art of swinging from tree to tree. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 56% Fresh Rating, but the film remains most memorable for the catchy “George, George / George of the Jungle / Strong as he can be / Watch out for that tree,” theme song by the Presidents of the United States of America.
Two years later Fraser was back in another Ward inspired movie about a bumbling Canadian Mountie called Dudley Do-Right who “always gets his man.”
Co-starring with Sarah Jessica Parker and Alfred Molina, the story saw Dudley track his nemesis, the depraved Snidely Whiplash. Bad reviews—USA Today’s called it a “Dead-carcass spinoff of Jay Ward’s animated TV favorite.”—doomed the movie, but the character lives on as part of an amusement park ride called Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls at the Islands of Adventure theme park.
Finally, despite an big name cast—Jason Alexander, Rene Russo and John Goodman—The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle bombed at the box office despite Robert De Niro doing a take on his famous “You talkin’ to me?” speech from Taxi Driver.
