In honor of Sara’s natal day, we attempt to deconstruct her weird obsession with character actors as we enjoy this delightful film about the blacklist and one of its central heroes, Dalton Trumbo. Absent from the film are twin douchenozzles Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn, but present are douchenozzles like real-life blacklisting masturbator Louis CK and a bowdlerized version of nightmare gossip hack Louella Parsons (she was even worse IRL!). 

Do we wrongly credit Kirk Douglas for breaking the blacklist when it should be Frank and Hymie King (ne Kozinsky) of The King Brothers Productions? Is John Wayne the worst? Is there anything more appealing than seeing a functional addict and workaholic have his Christmas ruined by Otto Preminger? Have fun with this far-too-timely movie about moral relativism and choosing between ideals and functioning in society! Happy January 2025, everyone! 

Trumbo was directed by Jay Roach and written by John McNamara and Bruce Cook, and stars Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo, Diane Lane as Cleo Trumbo, Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper, Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G. Robinson, David James Elliott as John Wayne, Alan Tudyk as Ian McLellan Hunter, Roger Bart as Buddy Ross, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Virgil Brooks, Elle Fanning as Niki Trumbo, John Goodman as Frank King, and Stephen Root as Hymie King.  

Sources: 

Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism by Jennifer Frost

Trumbo by Bruce Cook

Blacklisted: Hollywood, the Cold War, and the First Amendment by Larry Dane Brimner

You Must Remember This podcast, season 6, episodes about the blacklist

Behind the Bastards, series on John Wayne 

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

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