This was the week that a lot of things happened: We had Veteran’s Day here in the US, the 20^th Anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall, and the 40^th Anniversary of Sesame Street. And while I would love to make my pick of the week something like Saving Private Ryan, The Lives of Others, or Follow That Bird, these are so blatantly obvious that I would have to hang my head in shame. Yet if you have not seen any of these three, I would strongly recommend you do.

Instead, I picked a rather unique and fascinating documentary called Trumbo about the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. When Trumbo came to Hollywood, he was the golden boy of the written word and was highly celebrated for his works like A Guy Named Joe. But then came the McCarthy Hearings.

The documentary is a mix between interviews from the people in Trumbo’s life as well as the man himself, and his written letters read by actors such as Donald Sutherland, Michael Douglas, Lian Neeson and others. These letters are probably the most amazing parts of this film, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

The film takes us into the mindset of those affected by McCarthyism, and we see through their eyes the mob-like frenzy in which these hearings stirred up at the onset of The Cold War, which really became a war of ideals. And someone like Trumbo, who was a soft-spoken liberal whom didn’t really overtly express his political ideals outside of friends, made a great target for someone like McCarthy because he was apart of highly public industry. But Trumbo, like the others in the Hollywood Ten, wouldn’t play ball and believed rightfully that the hearing was a crux.

But let’s get back to these letters that Trumbo wrote before being sent to jail for Contempt of Congress, during his stay, and afterwards. These letters are some of the most passionate pieces of writing I have ever had the honor of hearing. They didn’t just need to be read, they needed to be acted out, spoken with authority by actors who could make these words come to life. They are not political letters, but the streaming conscience of a man felt betrayed by his country’s government. As the story progresses, we see just how resourceful Trumbo is and just how important friendship was this family’s survival.

While this subject might seem dated, in a way, it’s more than relevant now with the war of ideas now being played across cable news shows and talk radio, where the jury of public opinion is easily swayed by a smart-talking personality of the likes of Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Obberman, or the hundreds of thousands of wannabes out there. Actually, there was another event that happened this week that I thought was pretty important; CNN’s Lou Dobbs resigned, most likely because of his highly critical opinions about illegal immigration and the threats made to him over his opinions. Let it be known that I do not agree with Mr. Dobbs and that I will not mourn over his leaving, but like in Trumbo, no one should be terrorized for their convictions.