History Film / Trumbo

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: The movie really glosses over the fact that Trumbo was a horrible person in real life. Not only was he a hypocrite who participated in the expulsion of a party member who advocated for free speech, when Trumbo himself claimed he was advocating for free speech, the movie also forgets that he was a isolationist who supported the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and called FDR's efforts to aid the British against Germany 'treason'.

* BerserkButton: Trumbo pushes John Wayne's by reminding him that, for all his macho rhetoric, he spent the entirety of World War II on a film set while others were on the front line. Truth in Television as his not serving due to studios refusing to let him out of their contracts was a major sore spot for Wayne and implied to be the reason for his extremely vocal activism after.

* LargeHam: Trumbo is fond of giving big speeches that, Allen Hird notes, sound as if each utterance ought to be chiseled into a rock.

** Creator/EdwardGRobinson gets this from Trumbo for "naming names" while Robinson turns it around and questions his poorly-thought-out defense that got him and his friends arrested, and hastened Allen Hird's death.

** The film correctly portrays Trumbo's job for King Bros. as a script fixer, but presents ''The Brave One'' as a wholly original script of his, inspired by a (offscreen) personal experience in Mexico. In reality, up to ''nine'' people claimed to have authored the first version of the script, and a woman named Carmen Duval successfully sued King Bros. for similarities with a script titled ''Corrida de Toros'' by her late husband, Juan Duval. The Nassour Brothers also sued for a script titled ''Emilio and Bull'' and settled out of court. Though Trumbo accepted the Oscar for ''The Brave One'' in 1975, he also said that Duval was right to sue.
** Related to the above, the film omits that Trumbo actually moved to Mexico City with fellow blacklistees Hugo Butler and Jean Rouverol, and was living there while working for King Bros. As a result, the cryptic reference to the Mexican bullring comes across as something that happened during an undescribed vacation, before the movie's events perhaps.

** The film correctly portrays Trumbo's job for King Bros. as a script fixer, but presents ''The Brave One'' as a wholly original script of his, inspired by a (offscreen) personal experience in Mexico. In reality, up to ''nine'' people claimed to have authored the first version of the script, and a woman named Carmen Duval successfully sued King Bros. for similarities with a script titled ''Corrida de Toros'' by her late husband, Juan Duval. The Nassour Brothers also sued for a script titled ''Emilio and Bull'' and settled out of court. While Trumbo accepted the Oscar for ''The Brave One'' in 1975, he also said that Duval was right to sue.

* ExecutiveMeddling: In-universe, Frank King vetoes political commentary in his movies and sometimes have bizarre requests of his own.

* ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: Being a communist is perfectly legal, but thanks to a great deal of paranoid raving from Hedda Hopper and the HUAC, it makes evocations of the First Amendment a fruitless gesture, and being a communist nearly as acceptable as being black. Hopper in particular has no authority or mandate whatsoever to chase out communists, but she has a 35-million audience whole estrangement would be damaging for any major motion picture studio (or politician).

** The film correctly portrays Trumbo's job for King Bros. as a script fixer, but presents ''The Brave One'' as a wholly original script of his, inspired by a (offscreen) personal experience in Mexico. In reality, up to ''nine'' people claimed to have authored the first version of the script, and a woman named Carmen Duval successfully sued King Bros. for similarities with a script called ''Corrida de Toros'' by her late husband, Juan Duval. The Nassour Brothers also sued for a script called ''Emilio and Bull'' and settled out of court. While Trumbo accepted the Oscar for ''The Brave One'' in 1975, he also said that Duval was right to sue.

* TemptingFate: Trumbo knows that if the "Hollywood Ten" do not cooperate with the HUAC hearings they will be charged with "Contempt of Congress" and sentenced to prison, but pushes them to do it anyway under the expectation that the liberal-majority Supreme Court will strike the convictions down for being a breach of Free Speech. Then two members of the SCOTUS die suddenly and are replaced by conseratives who uphold the verdict.

* {{Hypocrite}}: At one point, Trumbo gets fed up with John Wayne bringing up the fact that "we just fought a war" as a justification for his anti-communist beliefs, and points out to Wayne's face that while many of the people he's attacking and railing against were in the frontlines of that conflict, he was safely back in Hollywood filming propaganda movies.

* NeverLearnedToRead: [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] and [[DefiedTrope defied]] by Trumbo's fellow prisoner [[ScaryBlackMan Virgil Brooks]]. Brooks intimates this is the case after testing Trumbo's suitability for a desk job in prison by having him type out a document, and Trumbo starts to look at him with pity. Then he reads everything in the document perfectly and angrily berates Trumbo for his readiness to cast himself as the hero of a WhiteMansBurden narrative.

* ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: Being a communist is perfectly legal, technically, but thanks to a great deal of paranoid raving from Hedda Hopper and the HUAC, it makes evocations of the First Amendment a fruitless gesture, and being a communist nearly as acceptable as being black.

* StylisticSuck: From what we hear about Frank King's sci-fi movie about [[InterspeciesRomance a woman having sex with an alien]], it understandably sounds absolutely terrible. Even Frank admits it, and he could not possibly care less.
* TakeBackYourGift: After [[spoiler:Hird dies]], Trumbo takes the account of how much Edward G. Robinson paid for their defense fund and attempts to pay it back. When Robinson protests that it was a gift, Trumbo says "we want it off our books."
* TakeThat: Preminger wastes no time dismissing Leon Uris' novel as shit before asking Trumbo to adapt ''Exodus''.
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: The film makes it clear that the Golden Age of Hollywood often had people of different political stripes working together under contract for studios. The opening scene shows anti-communist Sam Wood seething in rage at communist Trumbo while directing liberal democrat Edgar G. Robinson. Louis B. Mayer cites this as an example of how the movie industry works to Hedda Hopper but to little avail.
* TheThemeParkVersion: The film is broadly accurate about Trumbo's personal situation and the circumstances that led to him being blacklisted and in the manner in which he and other writers worked under various front names and how the blacklist was broken. It is, however, considerably more broad in dealing with the actual communist movement and its controversies (which had nothing to do with Trumbo's blacklisting anyway).

* VillainousBSOD: Hedda Hopper loses her class and composure as Trumbo gains more support in Hollywood. She finally just stares at her TV as ''President Kennedy'' exits a showing of ''Spartacus'' and comments that it was a fine picture.

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: The movie really glosses over the fact that Trumbo was a horrible person in real life. Not only was he a hypocrite Who gladly participated in the expulsion of a party member who advocated for free speech, when Trumbo himself claimed he was advocating for free speech, the movie also forgets that he was a isolationist who supported the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and callwd FDR's efforts to aid the British against Germany 'treason'.

* LargeHam: Trumbo is fond of giving big speeches that, Allen Hird notes, sounds as if each utterance ought to be chiseled into a rock.
** Frank King is able to easily outclass Trumbo when it comes to hamminess. Them again, he's played by Creator/JohnGoodman so it's a given.

* MeanCharacterNiceActor:
** [[EstablishingCharacterMoment The very first scene]] has Edward G. Robinson in one of his threatening gangster roles, but then he flubs a scene and [[{{corpsing}} cracks up]] and is friendly and apologetic and we see that he's filming a movie. Unlike the characters that he plays, the real Robinson is erudite, soft-spoken and generous.
** There may be a bit of a CastingGag in the scene given that the actor who plays Robinson, Michael Stuhlbarg, is also [[Series/BoardwalkEmpire known for playing a threatening gangster]].
* MrFanservice: We get a brief but impressive moment of Kirk Douglas filming Spartacus and his glistening physique.

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: The movie really glosses over the fact that Trumbo was a horrible person in real life. Not only was he a hypocrite Who gladly participated in the expulsion of a party member who advocated for free speech, when Trumbo himself claimed he was advocating for free speech, The movie also tend to forget that Trumbo was a communist sympathizer, and supported both Nazi Germany and Soviet Union(he adored Stalin)during the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact and the subsequent invasion of Poland. As well as calling FDR's efforts to aid the British against Germany 'treason' due to his isolationist ideals.

* ItsAllAboutMe: Trumbo makes a lot of big speeches but it's clear that a good portion of his activism and grandstanding is about his pride as much as his beliefs. Notably, he gets annoyed when his kids aren't able to carry out tasks for him, either because of Their own lives or, in the case of Nikki, because of Their own social activism.
* ItWillNeverCatchOn: Trumbo writes a script titled ''The Princess and the Peasant''. Ian thinks that's a lame title and changes it to ''Film/RomanHoliday'', to which Trumbo reacts with doubt.

** Trumbo basing ''The Brave One'' on a personal experience in a Mexican bullring may have itself been based on a claim of doing so by Tom Terris, one of the other people who claimed to have written the original script (titled ''The Bravest of the Bulls'' in his case).

** Arlen Hird (played by Creator/LouisCK) is based on several blacklisted writers such as Alva Bessie (whom he physically resembles) and Samuel Ornitz (who had lung cancer).
** Creator/EdwardGRobinson is probably himself and Creator/EliaKazan. Kazan wasn't involved with Trumbo, but Robinson's speech justifying his naming as IDidWhatIHadToDo and that he only gave the HUAC names that would have been blacklisted anyway was Kazan's lifelong self-justification. Robinson, as ArtisticLicenseHistory reveals, never "named names" while Kazan most certainly did.
* ConflictingLoyalty: What the blacklist amounts to. Do the studios stay loyal to their contracted employees or to the government? Do you stay loyal to your friends and the party or the government? Risk your own career out of solidarity for your friends' largely hopeless and limited struggle at the expense of your own? Trumbo gives a speech to this effect at the end of the film (based on a very controversial speech he gave in real life), noting that while the blacklist was "evil", it was an era without heroes and villains, where people were forced into impossible and difficult situations with a great deal at stake.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Aside from all the RedScare paranoia, there's the treatment of [[EverybodySmokes smoking]]. Arlen Hird smokes heavily, but even after he survives one scare with long cancer, he doesn't kick the habit, thanks to a [[ScienceMarchesOn lack of public knowledge about the dangers of smoking.]][[invoked]]

* TheGhost: Creator/StanleyKubrick is discussed, and {{Film/Spartacus}} plays a huge role in the final act of the film, but he never appears on camera.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Dalton Trumbo, Frank King, Hedda Hopper[[note]]The real one made a cameo in ''Film/SunsetBoulevard''[[/note]], Creator/EdwardGRobinson, Creator/JohnWayne, Creator/KirkDouglas, Creator/OttoPreminger, and Louis B. Mayer are all real people.

** The film correctly portrays Trumbo's job for King Bros. as a script fixer, but presents ''The Brave One'' as a wholly original script of his, inspired by a (offscreen) personal experience in Mexico. In reality, up to ''nine'' people claimed to have authored the first version of the script, and a woman named Carmen Duval successfully sued King Bros. for similarities with a script called ''Corrida de Toros'' by her late husband, Juan Duval. The Nassour Brothers also sued for a script named ''Emilio and Bull'' and settled out of court. Trumbo accepted the Oscar for ''The Brave One'' in 1975, but also said that Duval was right to sue.

** The film correctly portrays Trumbo's job for King Bros. as a script fixer, but presents ''The Brave One'' as a wholly original script of his, inspired by a (offscreen) personal experience in Mexico. In reality, up to ''nine'' people claimed to have authored the first version of the script, and a woman named Carmen Duval successfully sued King Bros. for similarities with a script called ''Corrida de Toros'' by her late husband, Juan Duval. Though Trumbo accepted the Oscar for ''The Brave One'' in 1975, he also said that Duval was right to sue.

** The film correctly portrays Trumbo's job for King Bros. as a script fixer, but presents ''Film/TheBraveOne'' as a wholly original script of his, inspired by an (offscreen) personal experience in Mexico. In reality, up to ''nine'' people claimed to have authored the first version of the script, and a woman named Carmen Duval successfully sued King Bros. for similarities with a script called ''Corrida de Toros'' by her late husband, Juan Duval. Though Trumbo accepted the Oscar for ''The Brave One'' in 1975, he also said that Duval's cause was right.

* AuthorTract: In-Universe. Frank King calls out Arlen Hird for putting obvious reflections of his own political views into the script of a crappy sci-fi B-movie about a [[InterspeciesRomance bug-headed alien romancing a human woman]]

* BenevolentBoss: Creator/OttoPreminger acts like this for Trumbo, albeit a little more needling than usual. While this was definitely true of Preminger's relationship with Trumbo and other screenwriters, he was actually notorious in his day for being a very bullying PrimaDonnaDirector to actors.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Frank King. He doesn't care what someone's political leanings are; so long as they write something, he'll film it.

* NiceHat: Hedda Hopper wears a different, always showy hat for every scene.

''Trumbo'' is a 2015 biopic about Dalton Trumbo and his experience in UsefulNotes/TheHollywoodBlacklist.

** Trumbo also gets this from Nikola, who points out how Democrats are blocking integration of African-Americans in the South. Trumbo, who supports the Democratic party, states that those are [[NoTrueScotsman dixiecrats]] and changes the subject. (Eventually, the Dixiecrats did break from the party entirely.)

** When Creator/OttoPreminger introduces himself to Trumbo, the latter acts as if Preminger was an obscure film-maker. Preminger was in fact one of the biggest and most famous Hollywood directors of his day (only slightly less famous than Hitchcock), having made several controversial hits that challenged censorship. Trumbo definitely knew who he was when the latter approached him to write ''Film/{{Exodus}}''. The film does give itself a bit of an escape clause, in that it establishes Trumbo as being a bit sleep-deprived after working a lengthy day-nighter and never actually outright confirms that he doesn't recognise Preminger.