Dear Johnny, Dalton's got your gun

Meh.  That's what I felt like while watching this documentary on contrarian/Oscar winner/genius/novelist/father/husband/Hollywood screenwriter/ and a member of Hollywood's origianal Blacklist.  I kinda cared and I kinda wanted it to end, soon.  This type of documentary isn't my style but Dalton Trumbo is.  (Anyone who can write a novel like "Johnny Got his Gun" is worthy of a billion documentaries.)

The movie is a bunch of mostly well known celebrities reading letters that Dalton Trumbo had written during his life.  The readings, in conjunction with interviews with Trumbo's friends, family, and Trumbo himself which he gave during his life (Trumbo died in 1976).  They chronicle his life from the start of the Red Scare that gripped the nation in the late 1940s and lasted throughout the 1950s when he finally got his first screen credit in ten years with "Spartacus."

The movie is compelling less for the way it was told and more so because of the man.  Trumbo comes across as witty, quick, and sharp.  His letters are full of razors and body blows if he's talking to an enemy and full of warm verbal frollicking if he was talking to a friend. Trumbo's talent lied in his ablity to verbalize complex situations without having to resort to vague metaphors or analogies, and his belief that remaining true to one's self was the ultimate aim and to betray the self was to commit psychic suicide.   

If you want to see a real patriot or a real man, here is your chance,and who knows, maybe the movie's format will yank your chain more than it did to me, but who really cares, it's a movie about Dalton Trumbo.

"The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people."  Dalton Trumbo