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.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson ] technique in negotiation would be that he'd lean into you and take away your personal space, it didn't matter your party affiliation when he was trying to convince you of something.

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.

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.

This is a movie version of the play [All the Way]and when Bryan [Cranston] was on stage the bigness of the man was played to the back of the house. When we turned the cameras on that, it changed a bit with close-ups, but we got just as much power in that beautiful intimacy.

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.

But I couldn't cut that whole septic tank scene out because the audience liked it so much. So I sort of fell right back into getting a cheap laugh, but I still loved it.