It's hard to imagine in this day and age the accent in Dalton Trumbo speaking voice, the Mid Atlantic mixture of an English and American dialect, so flowery and oratorical that it almost sounds theatrical. It would be uncool today, no one would ever speak that way.

One of the series of decisions that the great screenwriter John McNamara made was about who to depict. [Ronald] Reagan had a role in HUAC, he was a friendly witness, but never went over-the-top about it.

The commentary track became a lot like the movie and there are some funny, long, awkward pauses that you can tell we're just trying to find stuff to say. None of us had gotten to really talk about the movie until that moment and they were in New York and we were in L.A.

The first thing we noticed was how flamboyant [Dalton] Trumbo was in real life.

Dalton Trumbo actually was [ a hypocrite], because he liked his wealth, which was against the grain of being a Communist. I put title cards at the head of the film that explains the context.

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.

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.