A few random thoughts while watching ‘Trumbo’.
1. You should watch this.
2. Bryan Cranston remains an American treasure.
3. Can you believe people used to smoke in movie theaters?…
4. Without exception –and excluding those who have served in the military– the people who historically have claimed to love America the most are, in no particular order, the most craven, opportunistic, ignorant and dangerous imbeciles of the generations they defile.
5. I’m still not certain if the cliché of film’s depicting writers writing while drinking bourbon and smoking and, especially, wearing ties, helps or hurts our cause. It’s probably a push, as a realistic depiction of authors scribbling in t-shirts and boxers or bathrobes would only serve to augment the confusion and disdain most serious writers inspire. (I get that the old school was different, but even trash collectors probably wore ties in the ’40s. And Tom Wolfe is possibly the only writer who has to write in a suit, and only then for the fruity affectation of it, and not for any aesthetic reasons.)
6. Poets, and novelists, really are and always have been, the unacknowledged legislators, as Shelley pointed out two centuries ago.
7. Speaking of Shelley, and Cranston, this, for all time:
