Trumbo Monologues

In 1947, Dalton Trumbo was Hollywood's top screenwriter, until he and other artists were jailed and blacklisted for their political beliefs.

Friends? What friends? Who the hell has the luxury of friends? I've got allies and enemies. There's no room for anything else.

What the imagination can't conjure, reality delivers with a shrug.

If you're gonna talk about World War II as if you personally won it, let's be clear where you were stationed - on a film set, shooting blanks, wearing makeup, and if you're going to hit me, I'd like to take off my glasses.

I work in a bathtub, surrounded by water. So I'm fairly certain that even if the whole goddamn country was on fire, that I can still function as this family's personal slave. And all I ask is not to be interrupted for every little slice of fucking birthday cake. What? It's ridiculous!

... and reality has delivered, in all its beautific wonder, to the Federal penal system, J. Parnell Thomas - convicted of tax evasion.

Well, I despise martyrdom and I won't fight for a lost cause. So you're right. I'm not willing to lose it all. Certainly not them. But I am willing to risk it all. That's where the radical and the rich guy make a perfect combination. The radical may fight with the purity of Jesus. But the rich guy wins with the cunning of Satan.

Oh, why is that? All it says is that Congress has no right to investigate how we vote or where we pray, what we think, say or how we make movies. Hello, I'm Dalton Trumbo.

Well, that's where we disagree and that's the point. We both have the right to be wrong.

The blacklist was a time of evil.

And no one who survived it came through untouched by evil.

Caught in a situation that had passed beyond the control of mere individuals.

Each person reacted as his nature, his needs, his convictions, and his particular circumstances compelled him to.

It was a time of fear.

And no one was exempt.

Scores of people lost their homes.

Their families disintegrated. They lost!

And in some…

Some even lost their lives.

But when you look back upon that dark time, as I think you should every now and then, it will do you no good to search for heroes or villains.

There weren't any.

There were only victims.

Victims, because each of us felt compelled to say or do things that we otherwise would not.

To deliver or receive wounds which we truly did not wish to exchange.

I look out to my family sitting there, and I realize what I've put them through. And it's unfair.