Top 83 Quotes & Sayings by Jay Roach - Page 2

[Dalton] Trumbo himself was a terrible Communist.

Hedda Hopper was a better direct opponent to [Dalton] Trumbo. We wanted to use Trumbo's battles to represent the larger battles, so the audience could understand the personal sacrifice he went through and the personal damage to his family. The choices were about who were the best representations of his antagonists, which is why we chose as we did.

Hedda's Hopper attitude was 'once a Commie, always a Commie.'

People are willing to throw our civilization under the bus to discredit the existing system, without any proposed solution to the problems that they're willing to pointing at.

Sometimes you fall in love with some things and then you fall out of love with it.

The first thing we noticed was how flamboyant [Dalton] Trumbo was in real life.

Dalton Trumbo was constantly criticizing the membership [in the Communist Party], and was opposite to being a loyalist.

When Dalton Trumbo and his friends joined the Communist Party it was 1943, and Russia was our ally in World War II. This was connected to a very popular movement of artists and intellectuals at that time towards anti fascism, and an alliance with the union movement.

Dalton Trumbo actually was [ a hypocrite], because he liked his wealth, which was against the grain of being a Communist. I put title cards at the head of the film that explains the context.

Once you're a public figure, there's a certain amount of privacy you do give up.

It's hard to imagine in this day and age the accent in Dalton Trumbo speaking voice, the Mid Atlantic mixture of an English and American dialect, so flowery and oratorical that it almost sounds theatrical. It would be uncool today, no one would ever speak that way.

To his credit John Wayne was open about it, he even portrayed a member of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in a film called 'Big Jim McClain.'

John Wayne was just a very conservative guy, who had not served in World War II, and he was defensive about that - he almost overcompensated his anti-Communism because of that reason.

For Bryan [Cranston ] to go back in time and become this larger-than-life and somewhat theatrical guy, who performed his ideas and rhetoric in public in a melodic and flashy way, was a bit of a risk.

That's why we had Louis C.K. portray the harder line Communist, to accuse [Dalton] Trumbo of being a hypocrite.

Bryan [Cranston] created something completely unique, that was earned by its authenticity. That's what gave us the license to push it a bit.

People have an actual bias against there being some kind of popularity for political films, and when they get acknowledged, it helps keep the conversation going.

It was a way to try and shut down what the unions were negotiating for, like better hours and pay. [Dalton] Trumbo and his friends joined the Communists mostly for these reasons.

John Wayne was never shy about that fervor, but because he was never overly zealous about his politics, and of course his status as a movie, he was embraced by both the right and the left.

One of the series of decisions that the great screenwriter John McNamara made was about who to depict. [Ronald] Reagan had a role in HUAC, he was a friendly witness, but never went over-the-top about it.

There is an energy in the USA that will have to be dealt with, will have to be acknowledged and coped with. There are people who feel that they've lost ground, lost access to government - people whose quality of life has been affected.

From our perspective now, there is a not a huge understanding about the totalitarian Communism that Soviet Russia practiced during the 1950s - it was an atrocious system.

There were two writer's unions in those days[ during World War II ] , the studio-friendly guild called the Screen Playwrights, and the more activist Writer's Guild. The studios were fairly upset that their group wasn't effective, and they sought to punish the other union by labeling them as Communists.