The DVD does make it a little easier for myself to trim things that are otherwise very difficult to let loose of - knowing that they'll make it on the DVD.

[Dalton] Trumbo wrote this incredible pamphlet, almost on the level of Tom Paine's 'Common Sense,' called 'The Time of the Toad.' It's an exquisitely written treatise regarding the black list era.

People are willing to throw our civilization under the bus to discredit the existing system, without any proposed solution to the problems that they're willing to pointing at.

[Lyndon Baines ] Johnson is a big and larger-than-life guy, we just tried to give him the dynamic range that he actually had.

To his credit John Wayne was open about it, he even portrayed a member of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in a film called 'Big Jim McClain.'

Hedda Hopper was a better direct opponent to [Dalton] Trumbo. We wanted to use Trumbo's battles to represent the larger battles, so the audience could understand the personal sacrifice he went through and the personal damage to his family. The choices were about who were the best representations of his antagonists, which is why we chose as we did.

John Wayne was just a very conservative guy, who had not served in World War II, and he was defensive about that - he almost overcompensated his anti-Communism because of that reason.