WASHINGTON — “If you see one movie this weekend, see ‘Spotlight.’ If two, see ‘Spectre,’ ’cause you just have to probably. And if those are sold out, come and see ‘Trumbo’ because it’s a really cool film.”
Just like that, humble director Jay Roach delivers the self-deprecating humor that worked so well in “Austin Powers” and “Meet the Parents” and the social cognizance that defined “Game Change” and “Recount,” a blend that beautifully comes together this weekend in his new movie “Trumbo.”
Based on Bruce Cook’s book, the dramatic biopic — with interludes of biting humor — follows the true story of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), who is blacklisted as a suspected communist during the McCarthyist 1950s. The outcast writer is forced to pen Oscar-winning scripts like “Roman Holiday” (1953) and “The Brave One” (1956) under pseudonyms — or “fronts” — while serving jail time under subpoena by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Along the way, Trumbo strains his relationship with his wife (Diane Lane) and kids, finding scrap work rewriting B-movie scripts for schlock producer Frank King (John Goodman). It all builds up to his pair of epic 1960 screenplays for Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus” and Otto Preminger’s “Exodus,” which finally returned his name to the screen. Fittingly, the former was about a slave’s revolt against the Roman Empire, while the latter was about Israel’s struggle to become an independent state.
“Dalton was one of the most talented screenwriters of his day,” Roach tells WTOP. “Imagine what he could have written in those 13 years that he was forbidden from writing for studios. The only way he got to write … was he wrote in the black market. … He somehow survives the situation and copes with it by just writing, and he writes his way out of both literal jail and figurative movie jail to do this great work. I was like, that’s a story, an American underdog story. He takes on this giant, evil system and kind of wins, but kind of lost something really tragic, which is 13 years of the opportunity to write. Who knows what he would have written? Civilization lost out on our artists’ output.”
Roach’s path to directing was an unusual one that actually began in radio. He was initially on the pre-law track at Stanford University when he began working at the campus radio station.
“I started working at KZSU doing halftime shows, which evolved into public affairs … learning to edit reel-to-reel tape with razor blades and tape and telling a story by putting pieces together in different orders and that led to being interested in film. I got out of pre-law and applied to film school.”
So, after finishing his B.A. in economics from Stanford University in 1980, he went on to receive his M.F.A. in film from the University of Southern California in 1986. While at USC, he studied directing under Edward Dmytryk (“The Caine Mutiny”), the only non-writer blacklisted among the Hollywood Ten. Likewise, “Trumbo” screenwriter John McNamara studied under several former blacklisters.
“He had studied with some of the blacklisted screenwriters, and I had studied with a blacklisted director. There were only ten of them, and we each studied with members. … The sad thing about it was that (Dmytryk’s) story was a cautionary tale, which made it more compelling to me. He didn’t name names at first, but he came out of prison and named names in order to rehabilitate his career.”
This is the tough choice facing so many of the film’s characters, as Hollywood icons choose sides between those fearing the spread of Communism — hawkish moviestar John Wayne (David James Elliott), wholesome director Sam Wood (John Getz) and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) — and those who insist their progressive views should be protected free speech — actor/producer Kirk Douglas (Dean O’Gorman) and activist screenwriter Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.). Other stars like Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) are tragically caught in the middle.
“Despite Dalton Trumbo saying that there were no heroes and no villains, there were people who made choices that were a little more noble than other people. It’s on a continuum, it’s definitely not black and white. The far-extreme were people like Hedda, who believed that ‘once a commie, always a commie.’ She got Charlie Chaplin deported and said practically on her death bed, ‘Just don’t let Charlie Chaplin back.’ Then you had people all the way down to Trumbo’s situation who had a choice to take the risk to lose their careers … to stand up for a principle that you should be allowed to join any political organization, because the Constitution protects (it).”
In the Cold War aftermath of World War II — including Fidel Castro’s coup in Cuba, the Rosenbergs caught selling American secrets to the Soviets, and the budding wars in Korea and Vietnam on the horizon — America was deeply fearful of the “Red Menace,” some to the point of paranoia.
“There was no evidence whatsoever that these particular men … had anything to do with anything other than … fighting for unions, fighting against fascism and unified — probably naively — by joining the Communist Party,” Roach says. “Trumbo was constantly criticizing the Communist Party and was busy making a ton of money. So he was a hypocrite. He was a bad Communist if he was a Communist. That’s why we had Louis C.K. playing the far-left version to bust him for all of that.”
How does Roach delve into such deep political subject matter after a career of making us laugh?
“I did work for Roger Corman a little while after film school. I remember I was a cameraman and would shoot like a stripper’s pillow fight with feathers,” Roach says. “I didn’t intend to do comedy. … But when Mike Myers and I met, somehow I connected back to my older roots of Monty Python and Woody Allen, and he said,’ Oh, you should do this movie.’ I got on a treadmill, but a great, hilarious, fun treadmill, and I just kept doing those films.”
“Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” (1997) was Roach’s solo directorial debut, elevating the film beyond just a Bond spoof into the realm of pop-art. If you look closely, Austin’s swingin’ sixties photograph sessions recall those in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” (1966).
“I got the job … by saying I would love to encourage you guys to add some other elements into it: Richard Lester movies, Beatles movies, which Mike was onto too, but I brought in things like these Italian heist movies, or ‘The 10th Victim’ with Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroianni. They were films that had a funny, pop-art vibe to them, like Warhol turned into comedy almost.”
“I tried to convince them that style can be funny,” Roach says. “A lot of Hollywood movies at the time, particularly movies that were trying to make a skit into a larger thing, would just be brightly lit for a reason you couldn’t understand. So I thought, try to make it have a voice, a vision that extols the color of the joy of Austin Powers. His character expanded and manifested in color and dance and movement and big setpieces. I was really pitching for big old Busby Berkeley style, Buster Keaton level physical comedy, and Mike really loved that. I think that’s how we were able to distinguish it.”
Beyond the pop-art aspirations, “Austin Powers” is still laced with plenty of Bond references.
“Dr. Evil was almost pure Bond, mixed with Lorne Michaels,” jokes Roach, who had to direct each of Myers’ alter-egos differently. “When he was playing Dr. Evil, I’ve never seen anything like that level of channeling some other spirit. Mike Myers in real life is a little closer to Austin. As Dr. Evil, he became something else. … He became so lucid and fluent in a language that wasn’t really Mike. It was trippy to watch. We had many, many hours of just improvs that Dr. Evil would go off, talking about the crazy details of his life. … Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons, beaten in a burlap bag, all that stuff.”
Best among these: Dr. Evil’s father “making outrageous claims like he invented the question mark.”
“One time, when he was in the scene with Seth Green and they were shushing each other … He was doing that off camera. It wasn’t part of the script. … I said, this is too good and we went a half-day behind (schedule) because we have to turn around and shoot it now because it’s working so well. With Austin, we would focus and talk a little more. We had to work a little harder, if you will. With Dr. Evil, I just made sure the cameras had enough film. … That was really magical.”
This lesson of capturing spontaneous comic flourishes paid big dividends three years later in the smash hit “Meet the Parents” (2000), which spawned just as many sequels as “Austin Powers.”
Roach’s favorite scene is a no-brainer: the initial dinner scene with the future in-laws.
“When they’re sitting around talking about Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) having milked a cat. … Ben did the little miming of the cat nipple squeezing, and (Robert) DeNiro saying, ‘I have nipples, can you milk me?’ … It was a 30-minute setup leading up to the Champagne cork knocking that urn with the ashes. Thirty minutes! That whole first act is just to set up that one, giant explosion.”
“When you sit in an audience and hear them react to that, you can understand why comedians and directors get so addicted to the out-of-body thing that happens. I always like it when the audience is losing their minds enough that they’re just thrashing themselves and rocking in the chair. I got to see that once in ‘Borat,’ which I produced. During the naked fight, I saw people lose their minds.”
Ironically, Roach’s fellow “Meet the Parents” alum Tom McCarthy — who played the sarcastic brother-in-law Dr. Bob — just directed the journalism masterpiece “Spotlight,” which hits theaters the same day as “Trumbo” on Friday. Both movies will, of course, battle against the current box office champ “Spectre,” which pulls some of its Bond mythology from Roach’s Austin Powers’ spoof.
It seems there’s a bit of Roach’s “mojo” everywhere, to the point that he’s now competing against his filmmaking minions. But when it comes to the box office, the laid-back director realizes “it’s just a game, Focker.” So we repeat his humble plea for attention at the start of this interview:
“If you see one movie this weekend, see ‘Spotlight.’ If two, see ‘Spectre,’ ’cause you just have to probably. And if those are sold out, come and see ‘Trumbo,’ because it’s a really cool film.”
Listen to the full interview with director Jay Roach below.
