“I’m convinced that the only reason the Left and Liberal Democrats supported
World War II was because that doofus Hitler was stupid enough to attack
the Soviet Union, their favorite country.”
Here’s a profile on writer Dalton Trumbo.
As part of his Communist work during WWII...he’d “Name names” to
the FBI.
Of the people that asked for copies of his book “Johnny Got His Gun”.
Because Trumbo assumed that after Hitler finked on the non-aggresson
pact...any American pacifist must be a threat to continued aid to
the USSR by the USA.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1859
The Left in the USA turned on a dime when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.
You have to realize each and every human being has goodness and evil within them. Some people like Hitler, Stalin and Pot Pol had very little goodness and lots of evil in them.
Personally, I believe the Clintons and most Democrats are inching way too close to Adolf and Uncle Joe's side of the scale, but on Dalton Trumbo, I'd give him a pass.
Even being a failed screenwriter (i.e. unsold - My head is bloodied but unbowed in butting it against the high, strong Hollywood wall against Good Republican screenwriters) of the late 1960s through the late 1990s, I can still recognize good from bad.
A screenplay, to those not in the know, is like blueprints to a builder for a filmmaker. Granted a bad director or producer or both can take a good screenplay and make a horrible film out of it, but very, very rarely, can anyone take a bad screenplay and make a decent film out of it.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Spartacus, and Exodus are excellent screenplays that became excellent films. I can still watch them today and see how well they were put together. They have a beginning, a middle and an end with wonderful characters that the audience cares about.
The highest compliment I could give them is I wished I had written them!
Well, my version of Screen-writing 101 aside, I do not lose any sleep over Dalton Trumbo's past as a Communist screenwriter. He never cause anyone to die needlessly in Mogadishu, never had sex with a White House intern and lied about it to the nation and a grand jury, neither did Trumbo ever lie about the Rose Law Firm's billing records, the White House Travel Office firings nor Vince Foster death to name but just a few of many, many other sins.
In the context of Ken Burns TV Documentary "The War," Thumbo's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo will forever be one of the best films made during the Second World War. I have not seen Burns work, but I am taping it for a later viewing.
Perhaps I will have bone to pick then...
BTW At Dalton Trumbo's IMDb Page one can look at the many, many IMHO excellent films he wrote including A Guy Named Joe, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, Roman Holiday, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, Cowboy, Lonely Are the Brave and Hawaii.