I’m pretty opinionated sometimes although my political views change all the time, too. So I’m not very zealous.
JAY ROACHFrom 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.
More Jay Roach Quotes
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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.
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Dalton Trumbo was constantly criticizing the membership [in the Communist Party], and was opposite to being a loyalist.
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Sometimes perfecting the one thing can be the enemy of getting any traction on anything else.
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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.
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Once you’re a public figure, there’s a certain amount of privacy you do give up.
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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.
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[Dalton] Trumbo himself was a terrible Communist.
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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.’
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When I’m shooting, really the audience I’m thinking the hardest about is that first test screening audience who I want to like the film and that first opening weekend audience.
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I always had a respect and an admiration for people who got into politics. I certainly have always been interested in law and political science.
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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.
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For Bryan [Cranston ] to go back in time and become this larger-than-life and somewhat theatrical guy, who performed his ideas and rhetoric in public in a melodic and flashy way, was a bit of a risk.
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Mini-Me was the pint sized clone that was the perpetuation of Dr. Evil’s own legacy [in Austin Powers]. That concept earned the sequel.
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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.
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When something so unjust as the black list happened, [Dalton Trumbo] would come to life in a certain way.
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I love Dr. Evil [from Austin Powers] as a walking, talking, narcissistic manifestation of everything screwed up about human existence – his desire to take over the world, and have the world reflect his own power lust.
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In his life, [Dalton] Trumbo uses wit and comedy to fight these very high-stakes battles.
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It was an interesting process trying to get Bob to talk about the film because he’s such a shy person. He generally likes to talk when he really knows he has something to say.
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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.
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I like to shoot a lot of choices. I like a lot of stuff – and so I push to go faster, to shrink the time between the takes so that the takes are what you’re spending all your time on.
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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.
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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.
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But I always reassure them that as far as my contractual rights can go, I will protect them and make sure that they have approval over every bit of it so that they know I won’t show something that’s embarrassing.
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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.
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People have an actual bias against there being some kind of popularity for political films, and when they get acknowledged, it helps keep the conversation going.
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[Lyndon Baines ] Johnson is a big and larger-than-life guy, we just tried to give him the dynamic range that he actually had.
JAY ROACH