''Trumbo'' is a 2007 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed by

Peter Askin Peter Askin (born 1940) is an actor, director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing the 2007 film '' Trumbo'', a documentary about the Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who was blacklisted for being a member of the Ho ...

, produced by Will Battersby,

Tory Tunnell Tory Tunnell is an American producer who runs Safehouse Pictures with her producing partner, Joby Harold. The company was co-founded in 2005. The duo currently have an overhead tv deal with Legendary TV and Amazon Prime for features. Career T ...

Alan Klingenstein Alan Klingenstein (born 1954) is a corporate and securities attorney, investment banker, film distributor, and award-winning film producer. His feature film '' Two Family House'' won the Audience Award at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. Anothe ...

, and David Viola, executive produced by Jim Kohlberg, and written by Christopher Trumbo. It is based on the letters of Trumbo's father,

Dalton Trumbo James Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 – September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including ''Roman Holiday'' (1953), ''Exodus'', ''Spartacus'' (both 1960), and ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944) ...

, an Oscar-winning screenwriter who was imprisoned and blacklisted as a member of the

Hollywood Ten The Hollywood blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist, broader than just Hollywood, put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War. The blacklist involved the practice of denying empl ...

, ten screenwriters, directors and producers who refused to testify before the

House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...

(HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the Hollywood film industry. The film debuted at the

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permane ...

and includes film clips and interviews, readings from Trumbo's letters by performers such as

Michael Douglas Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AF ...

Joan Allen Joan Allen (born August 20, 1956) is an American actress. She began her career with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1977, won the 1984 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play for '' And a Nightingale Sang'', and won the 1988 Tony Aw ...

Donald Sutherland Donald McNichol Sutherland (born 17 July 1935) is a Canadian actor whose film career spans over six decades. He has been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning two for his performances in the television films ''Citizen X'' (1995) an ...

Liam Neeson William John Neeson (born 7 June 1952) is an actor from Northern Ireland. He has received several accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Tony Awards. In 2020, he was placed 7th on ''The I ...

, and

Paul Giamatti Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti (; born June 6, 1967) is an American actor and film producer. He first garnered attention for his breakout role in '' Private Parts'' as Kenny "Pig Vomit" Rushton, leading to supporting roles in ''Saving Private R ...

, and a reenactment by

David Strathairn David Russell Strathairn (; born January 26, 1949) is an American actor. Known for his leading roles on stage and screen, he has often portrayed historical figures such as Edward R. Murrow, J. Robert Oppenheimer, William H. Seward, and John Do ...

of a speech given by Dalton Trumbo in 1970. The readings include parts of what the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' calls "Dalton Trumbo's remarkably stage-ready personal letters" that cover the period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Interspersed with these are archival clips from the HUAC hearings, footage from home movies, and "exceptionally well-selected interview clips with Trumbo".

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, a

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

, reports that 82% of 55 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 6.8/10. The site's consensus reads: "''Trumbo'' celebrates the life and work of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo with measures of humor and sadness."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

rated the film 71/100 based on 18 reviews.

References

External links

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Dalton Trumbo - Interview with Director Peter Askin
2007 films 2007 documentary films American documentary films Documentary films about Hollywood, Los Angeles Documentary films about writers Films about the Hollywood blacklist Films directed by Peter Askin 2000s English-language films 2000s American films {{hist-documentary-film-stub