Myth and piety are the film’s guiding principles—documenting truth isn’t. Joining the pity party are a roster of actors who read from Trumbo’s self-aggrandizing letters the way actors used to recite poetry—Joan Allen, Michael Douglas, Brian Dennehy, Paul Giamatti, Nathan Lane, Josh Lucas, Liam Neeson, Donald Sutherland and Good Night, And Good Luck’s Edward R. Murrow puppet, David Strathairn. None of them actually knew or worked with Trumbo, but the gang’s all here to stand up for the rights of famous Hollywood professionals.
Dustin Hoffman appears in an interview saying, “He would be one of our heroes because he was an iconoclast” and Donald Sutherland praises Trumbo as “a contrarian.” Fact is, those qualities are scorned in the reality of contemporary film culture. Everyday and historical truth sinks into the piety of these actors’ teary faces and solemn voices. Scholar Peter Hanson gets so carried away with Blacklist blame that he says, “It’s a fallacy to think [screenwriters] got leftist ideas into those films.” He obviously never saw the infamous Stalin-praising Mission to Moscow or the fascinatingly doctrinaire Tender Comrades, both from Trumbo scripts.