By James Mottram
“It’s not just about Hollywood,’” says Bryan Cranston at The London Film Festival just before the theatrical release of Trumbo, in which he plays the title role. “That just happens to be the backdrop. It’s about the threat of losing your civil liberties and putting up a good fight, and how that affects your friends and family. Their kids went to school and got bullied and were ostracised by these other kids, and called names. The ripple effect was disastrous.” Directed by Jay Roach (Meet The Parents, Austin Powers), and adapted from Bruce Cook’s book, Trumbo tells of prolific Hollywood screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, the most famous of the blacklisted film professionals known as The Hollywood 10. With America gripped by anti-communist fervour in the forties and fifties, the movie industry was seen as a hotbed of leftist dissent, and many found themselves on unofficial blacklists as a result of their ideologies. A longtime leftist, Trumbo was out in the cold, but continued to work under various pseudonyms, before movie star and producer, Kirk Douglas, publicly broke the blacklist by asking Trumbo to write the screenplay for his 1960 historical epic, Spartacus.
Despite its grand subject matter and strong political message, Trumbo remains wryly amusing, with Jay Roach exhibiting his characteristic light touch in the director’s chair, and the actors (Cranston is supported by Diane Lane, John Goodman, Helen Mirren, and Elle Fanning) finding the humour amongst the heartbreak. The film remains, however, an essay on one of the darkest periods in Hollywood history, when people were railroaded simply for their beliefs. When asked how he would have responded in Dalton Trumbo’s positon, Cranston is understandably reticent. “One question is, would you go before the committee and capitulate? Would you say, under the threat of imprisonment, ‘Yes, I was a member of The Communist Party. I was young, I was stupid, and I renounce that.’ And if they said, ‘Okay then, you can go home’, I would probably do that. But there’s a second part of that. They don’t let you just get away with that one question. The second part of that is, ‘Okay, you’re forgiven. Who else, though? Name the names of who else was at these meetings.’ And that’s where the line is drawn. You’re no longer just protecting your own civil liberties, you are then condemning others, and that’s…. well, the Nazis did that.”
As with the portrayal of all real life figures, playing the late Dalton Trumbo brought with it a certain amount of responsibility. “I like that, I do,” Cranston says. “But it always comes down to the story. If this was a great character but the story wasn’t good or the script didn’t support it, I wouldn’t do it.” Did he meet anyone who had been affected by the black list? “Yes and no,” the actor replies. “I met people who were on the black list, but they were old at the time. I never really engaged to the point of whether or not they were interested in talking about the extent to which they had suffered. But now, after doing the research, we know that there were homes lost, families split, suicides, and ill-health caused by the stress. It’s immeasurable to see what the extent of the damage was.”
As well as its cultural importance, Trumbo is a big role for Bryan Cranston at a vital time in his career. Though he won a Tony Award for his work on Broadway in All The Way, Trumbo is essentially Cranston’s first major role since the curtain was drawn on Breaking Bad, the groundbreaking TV series that made him famous as high school teacher turned meth master, Walter White. “I knew that the show was coming to a close, and I wanted to find something that was not on television, but something meaningful to me, so that I could continue to do what I love to do, but in a different environment,” says Cranston, who ended up scoring his first Oscar nomination for Trumbo. “Breaking Bad completely changed my life. That show was so rare; it became this iconic thing. It gave me tremendous opportunity, and I am eternally grateful. It’s not something that you can plan, and it wasn’t something that I was even hoping for. You just try to make a good show, and to tell a good story. You’re always dubious when you hear, ‘We’re gonna make a classic movie.’ Just make the best movie that you can, and ten years from now, the people will tell you whether or not it’s a classic. Not you. We don’t control that. It’s totally out of our hands.”
What would it take to get Cranston to do a cameo on Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off series which is currently heading toward its second series? “A call,” he replies simply. “I know that [series co-creator] Vince Gilligan wouldn’t do anything like stunt casting, or anything gratuitous. It would be something interesting and twisty because he respects the character and the integrity of the character even now that it’s gone. Vince knows that I would do anything for him. I would like to direct one, just to support the show.” When told that he’s at the apex of his career right now, Bryan Cranston responds with characteristically dry self-deprecation. “It’ll end,” he laughs.
Trumbo is available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital from June 16.
