When Dalton Trumbo and his friends joined the Communist Party it was 1943, and Russia was our ally in World War II. This was connected to a very popular movement of artists and intellectuals at that time towards anti fascism, and an alliance with the union movement.

[Dalton] Trumbo himself was a terrible Communist.

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.

I wish I was sort of someone like Woody Allen who can stage everything in one long master shot, no coverage; just, you know, that's it.

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.

There's people who actually have a whole science devoted to what makes a sticky meme and that idea of that question of why some ideas about how civilizations work catch on and others don't.

My favorite laser disk ever was the laser disk for The Graduate, which had a commentary track that wasn't even the filmmakers, it was a professor, some film criticism guy who just happen to be this amazing commentator who went off into the whole theory of comedy.