Bryan Cranston: ​‘We have a warped sense of pol­i­tics in America’

Dal­ton Trum­bo was one of 10 men sent to prison by an over­reach­ing gov­ern­ment dur­ing the Com­mu­nist witch hunt that blight­ed Hol­ly­wood dur­ing the 1940 and ​’50s. Here Bryan Cranston, who plays the Roman Hol­i­day and Spar­ta­cus screen­writer in a new biopic, offers his take on that dark episode in his industry’s his­to­ry and explains why civ­il lib­er­ties are precious.

LWLies: Trum­bo is your first post-Break­ing Bad lead role. Does it feel like you’re enter­ing the next chap­ter of your career?

Cranston: I find it reduces anx­i­ety if you only focus on what you can con­trol. I try not to focus on the big­ger pic­ture too much.

Were you at all mind­ful of oth­er films about the Hol­ly­wood Black­list, for exam­ples Guilty by Sus­pi­cion and The Majestic?

Not real­ly, I cer­tain­ly wasn’t wary because of those films. I’m a firm believ­er that a film has a chance to suc­ceed only if that sto­ry is real­ly well done. Then we’ve got a chance. But it can still fail. Movies are like soufflé́s – you can have all the right ingre­di­ents but for some rea­son it turns out ter­ri­ble. It all comes down to the script, and I think we had a good one in this case.

What was the most illu­mi­nat­ing thing you dis­cov­ered about Dal­ton Trum­bo when research­ing for the role?

Just his nature. He was a con­trar­i­an who wrote let­ters con­stant­ly, to the school board to the pow­er com­pa­ny… He was that guy. That thorn in the side of the estab­lish­ment. And he was a leader, too, he helped to cre­ate unions and stood up for the lit­tle guy. The Amer­i­can Com­mu­nist Par­ty was an off­shoot of a polit­i­cal par­ty of the work­ing class, but he wasn’t a Com­mu­nist, he was a Social­ist. He loved being rich, but he had com­pas­sion for the work­ing class.

Is it eas­i­er to inhab­it a non-fic­tion­al char­ac­ter, espe­cial­ly one as flam­boy­ant as this?

Dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters present dif­fer­ent chal­lenges. The trick with non-fic­tion­al char­ac­ters is not to do an imper­son­ation. He loved to pon­tif­i­cate and ges­ture, so that gave me a lot to work with.

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He had some curi­ous work­ing habits as well, like work­ing on his type­writer from his bath­tub. Do you have any sim­i­lar­ly pecu­liar work­ing habits?

When I write or read I like to lis­ten to non-lyri­cal music, usu­al­ly clas­si­cal or jazz. But the type­writer thing was actu­al­ly quite prag­mat­ic because he had a bad back from con­stant­ly being hunched over at his type­writer, and his doc­tor told him he need­ed to soak his back. Hey presto, bath­tub desk.

Do you think there’s any dan­ger of some­thing like the Hol­ly­wood Ten being repeated?

Yes I think there is, which is why I think this film is a cau­tion­ary tale. For exam­ple, right now the NSA wants to be able to have carte blanche on wire tap­ping people’s phones and view­ing their emails. Since ⁹⁄₁₁ our world has changed and you have to accept that there is a dif­fer­ent threat. Con­ven­tion­al wars are no more. It’s drones and it’s cyber war­fare. The mes­sage of Trum­bo is that civ­il lib­er­ties must not be ignored. If they are thrown aside sud­den­ly you could find your­self in a sit­u­a­tion like Nazi Ger­many. Now, I’m not say­ing that what hap­pened to the Hol­ly­wood Ten is on a par with what hap­pened then, but there are com­par­isons to be made.

Trum­bo said that there were only vic­tims in this story.

Well the irony is that the pur­pose of the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee was to weed out Com­mu­nist insur­gency. They didn’t do that. The only thing they suc­ceed­ed in was destroy­ing lives.

We’re not sure how close­ly you fol­low UK politics…

Some­what. I like that Cor­byn guy.

…It feels like we’re becom­ing increas­ing­ly intol­er­ant of oth­er people’s polit­i­cal views.

That’s exact­ly what’s been hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca. It’s almost as if it’s a sport­ing match, like if the oppo­si­tion has a good idea and imple­ments that idea, that means we lost. It’s a warped sense of pol­i­tics. We can be on oppo­site sides of the polit­i­cal class and do things that ben­e­fit each side. We’ve lost sight of that, I think.