The familiar "Silence is golden" adage applies to moviegoers, not moviemakers — a fact that was seemingly lost on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigating communism in the "golden" age of Hollywood. But that didn't stop Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Roman Holiday, Spartacus) and humanist Dalton Trumbo from speaking out, even if it meant blacklisting.

"One of the things I love about Trumbo is that in this era, when it was dangerous to speak out, he was not shy about speaking and writing about injustices," director Jay Roach told SF Weekly in a recent interview. It's this word warrior side of Trumbo that the Austin Powers trilogy, Meet the Parents, and Meet the Fockers director said he wanted to capture in his new biopic Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Argo). Roach also spoke about the challenges of mixing art and politics — then and now — and answers the question, "What would you have done?" 

What makes the Dalton Trumbo story relevant today?

Totalitarian communism was a major threat in Trumbo's time, and people used the fear of it to launch all sorts of attacks on anyone who wasn't seen as American enough. Today it's a pretty good analogy to the way terrorism is used to shame people into conforming into a kind of patriotism that politicians feel you should be demonstrating, and it also contributes to people being manipulated into slowly letting their civil rights erode: the right to privacy and the right to free speech. It's also about people who thought their Americanism was the only way to be — that dissent is inappropriate and that unpopular ideas should be shunned. That seems to be happening now all the time, so free speech always seems to be in jeopardy. So I think a movie about freedom of speech is unfortunately about a lot of eras, but in particular right this minute I hear voices now clamoring to tamp down some ideas that might be 'dangerous.'

Yet somehow celebrities today seem to be talking politics more than ever.

Nowadays, I think you're right — it has become more common to speak out because for the longest time people have squelched themselves or filtered themselves because Hollywood hasn't really been open to it.  Hollywood is a pretty homogenous town. I do think those moments where there's a backlash still scare people from speaking out. 

Now with social media, you have this whole other pressure on anything you say because you could be recorded and then have to hear yourself say it over and over again on YouTube. So now I actually really admire people, who given all that surveillance and scrutiny we're always under, are willing to step out and say something about politics, because everything is political in one way or another, and how life is going to proceed is up to us. I don't subscribe to the idea that actors should stick to acting and singers to singing and stay out of politics because it seems like anyone who wants to talk and has a microphone should. If it's really important and needs to be said, I like it when people shake it up a little bit. 

Since you're mostly associated with comedy, was directing Trumbo a risk?

I don't think so. I've heard some people thought the movie would be more serious and thought that maybe because a guy who sometimes does comedy was directing it that there's a little bit of levity in it. But for me, as with any story, it was what were these guys like and what was their tone and how did they deal with each other? Though they were intensely serious and passionate and driven, they were also smart-asses and would bust each other perpetually. They turned Trumbo's own funeral into a roast. I don't think any of us try to get through really hard times without trying to find some irony or look for something absurd and think it's human to share an understanding of the absurdities — and that can be very darkly funny. So I'm glad I had the training doing comedy, so I could make sure I deliver the comedy in a moment where it might be beneficial in such a heavy film. But it's never anything but authentic.

How closely did you work with screenwriter John McNamara on the screenplay?

I worked for about two years with John after I was handed it before we were able to shoot, and I was really active in giving him tons of notes and also filtering other people's notes. The actors also had ideas, and I encouraged them to get to know the daughters, Niki and Mitzi Trumbo, as part of our research. We got to know them really well, and they gave us tremendous insight. I asked John to fold that back into the screenplay, and the screenplay evolved quite a bit with all the different bits of input and feedback from various collaborators.

To John's credit, he is the screenwriter writing a movie about a screenwriter, and although there were a lot of ideas thrown at him, they were always filtered through his vision and put down on paper through his keyboard, because it didn't make sense to do it any other way. Because it was a movie about screenwriting, I wanted to get in the head of a screenwriter and I trusted John's own personal experience trying to confront the blank page every day to show the pressure on a screenwriter. Particularly, in this case, not only was Trumbo writing his own, but he was also rewriting everyone else's scripts under terrible pressure. It was a ridiculous amount of work he took on. All said, I think John did a great job, and I hope he gets noticed for it. 

Was there anything in particular that Trumbo's daughters insisted make it into the film?
 
It's true that when Kirk Douglas put Trumbo's name on Spartacus, it was a major moment, and he risked everything. But it was also Otto Preminger who had come out before and did that. Ultimately, they wanted to make sure that although sometimes there's this sense that one moment in history broke the Hollywood blacklist, that we didn't forget that the real superpower who broke the blacklist was the power of their father's writing and the other writers he worked with. So much great work was being done by them during the blacklist, and all the families were conspiring in this conspiracy of secret writers. That's what ultimately embarrassed the studio. It wasn't working. They were only succeeding in making lives difficult and the poor writers were getting paid nothing in comparison with what the studios were earning from their work. 

After all the research you conducted, how would you characterize Trumbo's political beliefs?

He spoke out on union issues. He had been a baker so was always aligned with union rights. He was a very intense anti-fascist and even formed anti-fascist leagues.  His friends who had similar positions started joining the [communist] party at the time, which was a very different party, and he joined while we were allied with the communist countries.  

His storytelling was very strongly humanistic and that sometimes got confused with political. But he was a humanist who always wanted people to treat others the way they want to be treated. I was drawn to the man who was so devoted in all his writing, even his screenplays, to making the case for all humanity. It sounds so big and pretentious, but he didn't care if it was cool or not cool. He just felt that he had to speak out. But it's hard to argue that Roman Holiday was against our national interests. So that that guy got shut down was a tragedy for us, because for 13 years he could have been writing big studio movies, but instead had to just eek by. 

Did you ever ask yourself what you would have done if you were called before the HUAC?

We thought about it a lot and even thought about that being a tagline of the movie: 'What would you have done?' Particularly with the writers it was easy to say, 'I would not have named names. I would have figured out a way to write anyway.' Many of them did, but many of them didn't, though.  But you think of the actors who had to face the situation of, 'You are now over if you don't name names; you're over unless you cooperate with us a little bit; at least corroborate evidence on a few people.' He told himself that would be OK after four times. I identified with him, and I wanted to tell myself I would do the Trumbo-esque thing and be a badass and just say, 'Forget you; this is unconstitutional; I'm not doing it.' But you just think, 'Then I have to go to my family and say, 'I can't take care of you anymore,' and then I'm going to have to get a new job and maybe I can't get a new job. So it's not that automatic, but I'd like to think I'd go the full Trumbo.