Elegies against the blacklist

'Trumbo' shares moving letters of iconic screenwriter

(Samuel Goldwyn Films) Oscar winner Dalton Trumbo.

NEW YORK — It's been nearly 60 years since the Hollywood blacklist destroyed the livelihoods and reputations of the writers, directors, and producers who refused to name names or engage in the McCarthy-era witch hunts. But the words of famed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted by the studios after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, still resonate in a post-9/11 world.

Defiant and resilient, Trumbo's words form the backbone of Peter Askin's new documentary, "Trumbo," which opens Friday at Kendall Square Cinema. While Trumbo is best known for penning the screenplays to classic films like "Spartacus" and "Roman Holiday," he was also something of an epistolary savant. Stifled by the studios during the blacklist era (although he wrote many films under assumed names while in exile), Trumbo turned to letter-writing as an outlet.

The scores of impassioned missives he penned over the years, to family and friends, enemies and bill-collectors alike, form the spine of the film. The letters, published in 1970 under the title "Additional Dialogue," include almost-Shakespearean elegies against the injustices of the blacklist, the complicity of the studios, and the danger of eroding individual liberty.

Adapted from the 2003 off-Broadway play written by Trumbo's son, Christopher, which played Boston in 2005, the film features a clutch of celebrated actors — Michael Douglas, Liam Neeson, Joan Allen, Paul Giamatti, Nathan Lane, and Donald Sutherland, among others — performing soliloquies of Trumbo's letters.

Woven together with those performances are clips from some of the writer's best-known films, photographs of Trumbo and his family, and interviews with the writer and those who knew him well.

During a recent interview, Askin says the documentary wouldn't have existed without the letters. "Nathan Lane said to me, 'A lot of material reads funny but doesn't sound funny.' However, Trumbo's material also sounds funny," Askin says. "I believe history is best taught through laughter. ... Of course, there is a range of emotions in his letters, with some wonderfully poignant and angry moments as well."

"The Bourne Ultimatum" baddie David Strathairn, another of the performers in "Trumbo, knows a thing or two about playing outspoken, heroic figures who fight against government intrusion on civil liberties and the corruption of American ideals. The actor was nominated for an Oscar for playing Edward R. Murrow in the 2005 film "Good Night, and Good Luck," which depicts how the legendary TV newsman risked a great deal in order to stand up against the increasingly aggressive demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

"Both [Trumbo and Murrow] were talking about the same things — constitutional issues and the First Amendment and equal protection under the law and due process and all of that," Strathairn says. "They had different styles, but they were both artisans in their own fashion in speaking out against the fear tactics used by those in power." There's also connective tissue between "Trumbo" and the play in which Strathairn performed over the winter at the Public Theatre in New York, Richard Nelson's "Conversations in Tusculum."

In the drama, the Roman noblemen Cassius, Cicero, and Brutus lament the erosion of personal freedoms in the republic under an increasingly tyrannical Caesar.

Still, the characters in the play are paralyzed by inaction, whereas Trumbo protested authoritarianism and injustice.

"It's important that we remind ourselves that there are people like Trumbo who stood up and sacrificed and suffered the slings and arrows of it," Strathairn says.

"Especially for those of us who think, 'Should I really stick my neck out?' Well, there are people before you who have been honored for that and thanked for that."

Today, Trumbo is largely lionized for his refusal to testify about his connections with the American Communist Party. He ended up serving 11 months in jail in 1950 for contempt of Congress and was dubbed one of the Hollywood Ten, the first group of writers, producers, and directors who were effectively banned from working in the studio system.

Still, at the height of the blacklist, he wrote the Oscar-winning screenplays for "Roman Holiday" and "The Brave One" under assumed names. It wasn't until decades later that he received credit — and the awards — for those films. And in 1960, he became one of the first of the Hollywood Ten to break the blacklist, when Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger announced that he would receive screenwriting credit for the films "Spartacus" and "Exodus," respectively.

At a speech Trumbo gave in 1971 while accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild, he seemed to have made peace with the frustrations and anger of his past, saying that the blacklist produced "only victims ... not villains or heroes, saints or devils."

Indeed, the film serves as a reminder that the injustices and obstacles that Trumbo battled are never permanently conquered. Rather, they must be re-fought by each successive generation, by men and women as fearless and persuasive as Trumbo at the front lines.

"We happen to be in a peculiar time where the assertions of government for control of your life have become a bit outrageous," says Trumbo's son, Christopher. "But the recent rulings by the Supreme Court have made it impossible for them to just pick up anybody and throw them into jail. So there needs to be resistance to these sort of things. And there will be. And there is. But it's always a struggle — and it will always be a struggle."