Thread: "Trumbo" Black List film to star Bryan Cranston

Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo had it all — wealth, fame, Oscars. But he refused to name names for the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Cold War, and was branded a national threat. Now, with Jay Roach directing, the man whose name was banned on a big screen for years has his own movie.
Christopher Patey

Bryan Cranston Goes From Drug Lord to Communist in Blacklist Saga 'Trumbo': "A Socialist, But He Loved Being Rich"
By Gary Baum

Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo had it all — wealth, fame, Oscars. But he refused to name names for the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Cold War, and was branded a national threat. Now, with Jay Roach directing, the man whose name was banned on a big screen for years has his own movie.

This story first appeared in the Sept. 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

...The scene being shot on this balmy October afternoon is of a Beverly Hills cocktail party in 1947.

A huge swimming pool, lit by a hundred floating tea light candles, glows in the early evening. A band plays jazz under a striped cabana while men in black tie mingle with women in silvery gowns. And at the center of it all is a debonair figure in a white dinner jacket, smoking a cigarette through an ivory holder, arguing with guests about the decadent and corrupt capitalist system.

"Dalton Trumbo was a socialist, but he loved being rich," says Bryan Cranston, the 59-year-old Breaking Bad star who grew a topiary-like mustache to play the wealthiest communist in Hollywood, the original limousine liberal, in Trumbo, premiering Sept. 12 at the Toronto Film Festival.

Bryan Cranston Plays Communist in 'Trumbo': "A Socialist, But He Loved Being Rich" - Hollywood Reporter