Trumbo: A Psychoanalytically Sophisticated Hero

Dalton Trumbo is the subject of a new film about an old issue – the blacklisting of Hollywood scriptwriters in the 1950s - and, because it is a Hollywood film, it has the expected happy(ish) ending.  I am not alone in having taken Hollywood to task for failing to trust their audience to embrace the messiness of being human by, among other things, imposing happy endings on their movies (see a whole raft of examples under the link here.).  This messy movie is driven by the need for a happy ending – something that ironically it achieves while staying at least somewhat true to human vagary if not, apparently, to all of the biographical facts. 

In the film, Trumbo is accused, early on, of being a writer who writes happy endings.  But he doesn’t do this, we are told, cynically, as many writers do, but because he believes in them.  Across the course of the film, we see him working to achieve a happy ending in real life as much as in his films, and this becomes his tragic flaw.  As the stars (both those in the sky, but also John Wayne and his pals) align against Trumbo, he doubles down, doing what he does best, writing.  As this becomes more and more difficult, the strain becomes evident not just on him and his fellow writers, but on his family.

The resolution of this film – the final scene – is a worthy destination.  It is a speech that Trumbo gives on the occasion of being recognized for the accomplishments of his career.  It is a speech that is given at a moment of triumph – a moment that he has pointed himself towards with unswerving discipline – and one in which he is able to recognize the costs that have been part of that.  His foes are there as well as his allies, and he is able to speak to them truthfully and plainly.  This kind of resolution – this kind of happy ending, one that is, at best, bitter sweet, is one that feels genuine and authentic, because it is complex and recognizes the mess of life. 

Near the beginning of the film, Trumbo, the highest paid writer in Hollywood, is accused, rightly, of being a member of the communist party at the very beginning of the red scare in the late 40s and early 50s.  We meet him as he is living the high life, connecting with friends and picnicking with them and his family on the ranch that his earnings have bought near Hollywood.  He has a happy family – a beautiful wife who juggles (and will juggle metaphorically later on) and three children – Girl, boy, girl.  When the House Un-American Activities Commission comes calling on ten writers, including Trumbo, he convinces them that the best defense is to not answer the questions that are posed.  After all, none of them have committed a crime.  They will be found in contempt, and the Supreme Court will be happy to hear the appeal of any negative outcome as there are five liberal and four conservative justices sitting on the bench.  Well, as luck would have it, one of the liberal judges dies before the appeal makes its way up, so Trumbo, and his fellow writers, must do time in a Federal prison for contempt.

This period film feels in many moments as if it were written, acted and filmed during the time about which it is being written.  The prison scenes, for instance, are heavy – almost leaden.  They might have been filmed in the 50s, when the acting was more ponderous.  And there is a romanticism that is typical of the era – Trumbo’s letters home to his wife are sweet to the point of being saccharine, but they are none the less deeply affecting – his vision of who his family is and who he is in relation to them is consistent with the idyllic ranch picnic and we almost believe that there will be a happily ever after when he gets out of the prison hell where he is looked down on by murderers as a traitor.

Of course, the ring of hell of freedom without work is worse than prison – and then, in order to get work, Trumbo teams up with the King Brothers, B team movie producers – bullies who pay little, produce bad films, but won’t be cowed by the Hollywood powers – and creates so much work that he creates a third ring of hell for himself and for his family that is destructive to them – and to his fellow writers whom he recruits to write the mindless scripts needed to churn out low budget films that make lots of money – for the producers.

This part of the film becomes somewhat cartoonish.  The conflict between Trumbo and his eldest daughter, Nicola, is told in brief, intense scenes that aren’t elaborated.  Similarly, Trumbo’s use of Benzedrine and Alcohol to keep his mind awake and quiet with too much work and too little time is referenced without the effects being adequately explored.  That said, we know the effect of drugs and alcohol.  We also know the effects of a father who privileges work over family – I, at least, have lived that from both ends – and the poignancy of a daughter who idealizes and would emulate her father – in fact does so in her own activism around the civil rights movement in the early sixties – but who feels shut out by him and furious with him for that – this is something that we can imagine.  As this builds to a crescendo, and her mother steps in to advocate on behalf of the family – as it looks like we are headed over a cliff and she will give him the boot as she did her first husband - Trumbo has an unexpected (and off screen) change of heart and reconnects with his family.  A quick and easy happy rapprochement leads to winning an Oscar without credit – which the family celebrates with him, and then getting credit for Spartacus and the screen play for Leon Uris’ book Exodus – and the blacklist is broken.

So, it is not the resolution that is interesting here – but the dissolution.  Trumbo is an odd communist.  He argues with the powers that be in Hollywood, and in front of the newsreels, that the carpenters ought to get their share of the monies that are streaming into Hollywood.  Everyone ought to be in on this huge gravy train that threatens to drown the city in wealth.  He is not, however, a “pure” communist, like some of his fellow writers, who see themselves as being on an equal plane with all others - Trumbo knows his value – he knows his worth – and he expects to be recognized for it.  His motivation is not that all should share, despite his simplistic explanation of communism to his daughter, but that those, like himself, who can profit from their gifts and hard work should not be piggy – they shouldn’t take it all for themselves, but leave room for all to profit.  But don’t get in the way of my getting what is mine – I will fight for that.

The Older of the King Brothers, Frank, the B-movie producer that Trumbo delivers his and other’s scripts to during the blacklist period, is played by John Goodman, and he epitomizes the unabashedly selfish approach to film making when he brandishes a baseball bat at the heat from Hollywood who would scare him away from using a blacklisted writer when he notes that, because of the writers, money and pussy, which are the two things he wants most in life, are falling off the trees, and if anyone wants to get between him and that, he better be prepared to defend his life.  This kind of modern writing and acting feels almost anachronistic in the film – but very refreshing.  More importantly, I think it underscores that Trumbo and his motivation – mirrored by the Kings – could not be more Capitalistic – with a dash of socialist social concern.

At least in Trumbo’s case, not only was the accusation of colluding with the Soviets wide of the mark, it was ludicrous.  Trumbo lives out a capitalist/Horatio Alger dream of scratching back from being down on his luck by working hard and charging what the market will bear until the value of his work is recognized.  The emotional cost of doing this is the almost hidden message of the film – in case you are looking for a latent communist theme on the part of the writer – capitalism saps the soul of those caught in its clutches. 

Karl Marx predicted, in the Communist Manifesto, a transformation of human nature.  This transformation was from an essentially selfish position to one that considered the good of the whole first.  This transformation, he predicted, would occur first in the highly industrialized countries – in England and the United States.  Instead, as a political movement, the Soviet bloc, China, Cuba and other, what we would call emerging or agrarian economies became “communist”, though each was or devolved into some sort of dictatorship with the redistribution of wealth occurring at the whim of the political elites.

The cold war was fought against dictators – and though some in Hollywood and elsewhere were likely spies or interested in the USSR becoming the dominant power, the characters in this film are depicted as being much more interested in a personal and societal transformation – one that would – as Marx thought – perhaps best be supported by a transition from a stable, highly industrialized and therefore wealthy democrat state – and the tragedy is that their hero was anything but a communist.  Concerned about his fellow writers’ well-being, Trumbo figured out how to help them survive economically – to work as a collective, using his kids as all but slave labor – to make a system of supplying the industry with the scripts they needed work.  As he said at one point, the blacklist and the black market were both alive and well. 

When the blacklist was alive, it was partly because of fear of the misuse of the powers of the state – the United States became the kind of dictatorship that we were theoretically fighting against – depriving our citizens of their civil rights without even passing laws to do that.  In that kind of environment, Trumbo – the real one - described what happened in the 1970 speech dramatized in the film as follows:  “There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides; and almost every individual involved, no matter where he stood, combined some or all of these antithetical qualities in his own person, in his own acts.”  This is the speech that speaks to the messiness of being human – we betray our friends and help our enemies – we don’t know – politically, but also psychologically, what the proper or best course of action might be.  We confuse each other, and ourselves, especially when we are in situations with high pressure levels.

It is a happy ending because Trumbo has succeeded.  His family, battered and bruised, is there.  Edmund G. Murrow, who ratted him out to the House Un-American Activities Committee to save his own hide, is there.  The other writers, the ones who survived, are there.  And they are, none of them, unlike in a Hollywood musical, free of guilt.  They are all battered and bruised - and wealthy.  And he is able to speak the truth of that - to acknowledge the breadth of their experience - of each other and of themselves - to serve as a truth speaker - to have, as it were, the last word.  That things are not as simple as we would have them be - or as simple as we try to make them in movies.

These kinds of situations occur not just when there is a red scare, but when we are scared of anything – of an education bubble bursting and resources becoming scarce – the insurance industry limiting benefits for those who need long term treatment - the electronic age turning us away from each other and ourselves – becoming caught up in acrimonious divorce or custody situations where access to loved ones becomes limited – this film is not just about the first amendment or the imposition of corrupt governmental powers – it is about how we respond to the times that try our souls.  And this is not pretty, but it is very human.  And that means that it is a hard thing to portray on the screen.  There are problems with this film.  The characters should have been played by character actors, the scenes are uneven, the pace is bad, it tries too hard to get at too much and thus makes some of the important moments cartoonish, but it is good to see what can be accomplished with a manual typewriter, a red pen, and scotch tape.  The expression of important if not complete aspects of the human experience can be accomplished. 

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