It was a way to try and shut down what the unions were negotiating for, like better hours and pay. [Dalton] Trumbo and his friends joined the Communists mostly for these reasons.

John Wayne was never shy about that fervor, but because he was never overly zealous about his politics, and of course his status as a movie, he was embraced by both the right and the left.

I don't stay in the genre because I just like all stories that have a smart hook in them and I can find a comic way through if it's a comedy or a suspenseful way through it if it's a drama.

I was always interested in the larger picture, I was pre-law in college, and had a degree in economics. I was very interested in the big question 'how then shall we live?,' how do we organize as a civilization when we are so different, and often don't get along, yet we know at some point we have to unite for the common good? I actually really care about those issues, and I'm driven to understand how it works.

From our perspective now, there is a not a huge understanding about the totalitarian Communism that Soviet Russia practiced during the 1950s - it was an atrocious system.

Once you're a public figure, there's a certain amount of privacy you do give up.

When Ben Carson said that he would remove all federal funding for universities that had 'extreme political bias.' Who would decide what political bias was, and what is 'extreme'? That kind of policing of ideas has a striking resemblance to the black list, and that's what happened during that era.