Bruce Cook

The Oscar-winning screenwriter who broke the Hollywood blacklist.Soon to be a major motion picture starring BRYAN CRANSTON (Breaking Bad), DIANE LANE (Under The Tuscan Sun), ELLE FANNING (Maleficent), JOHN GOODMAN (Argo), LOUIS C.K. (Louie) and Academy Award winner HELEN MIRREN.Dalton Trumbo was the central figure of the infamous ''Hollywood Ten,'' the screenwriters who, during the McCarthy era, were charged by the House Committee on Un-American Acitivities for their associations with the Communist Party. Due to their refusal to cooperate during the investigation, Trumbo and his fellow screenwriters were declared in contempt of Congress and were ultimately blacklisted from Hollywood and some were even jailed. Although Trumbo was one of several hundred writers, directors, producers, and actors who were deprived of the opportunity to work in the motion picture industry from 1947 to 1960, he won an Oscar under the pseudonym Robert Rich for The Brave One in 1956, and he was the first to see his name on the big screen again in 1960 with Exodus, one of the year''s biggest movies.All his life Trumbo was a radical of the homegrown, independent variety. From his early days in Colorado, where his grandfather was a county sheriff, to his time in Los Angeles, where he organized a bakery strike and was even a bootlegger, to his time as an author when he wrote the powerful pacifist novel Johnny Got His Gun, to his heyday as a top-paid (and frequently broke) Hollywood screenwriter-where his credits include Roman Holiday, Spartacus, Papillon, Lonely Are the Brave, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, The Brave One, and Kitty Foyle-his life rivaled anything he had created.Written with Dalton Trumbo''s full cooperation, at a moment when he himself did not know how much time he had left, Trumbo is a candid tale of a colorful figure who was at the epicenter of a tumultuous period in recent American history.

A finales de los años 40, en pleno auge de la Guerra Fría, la paranoia anti-comunista se extendió por Norteamérica, desatando una caza de brujas que afectó a todos los sectores de la sociedad pero especialmente a intelectuales y cineastas. El Comite de Actividades Antiamericanas del Congreso estaba decidido a exponer la infiltracion comunista en Hollywood y cito en audiencia publica a actores, directores y guionistas. Algunos denunciaron a sus compañeros de izquierdas; otros se negaron a declarar y fueron condenados por desacato a penas de prision; a la mayoria se les impidio volver a trabajar en la industria cinematografica. Habia nacido la lista negra. Dalton Trumbo fue uno de esos represaliados. Guionista de enorme prestigio y autor de una de la mas grandes novelas americanas del siglo XX, Johnny empuño su fusil, Trumbo sorteo la prohibicion escribiendo guiones bajo nombre falso y llego a ganar dos Oscars, que evidentemente no pudo recoger. Su empeño y su teson fueron decisivos para que en 1960 la infamante lista negra desapareciese, tras dejar un reguero de vidas destrozadas. Este libro, que acaba de ser llevado al cine (con Bryan Cranston en el papel de Trumbo), cuenta la historia de ese puñado de resistentes y del hombre que se atrevio a enfrentarse a un sistema injusto en nombre de la libertad de expres...

Los beats se lanzaron sin miedo ni prejuicios al lado más salvaje de la vida, bordeando o zambulléndose de lleno en la marginalidad: probaron todas las drogas, todos los sexos, se dejaron fascinar por Oriente, y su vida bohemia tuvo menos de pose que de arriesgada apuesta por un hedonismo ferozmente individualista y rebelde.Escrito cuando todavia se oian los ecos de los latidos de los hermosos cadaveres dejados por algunos de los miembros de la generacion beat Kerouac, Cassady, este libro, la primera cronica de largo aliento publicada sobre ella, recoge de primera mano la historia de aquel grupo de jovenes que en los años cincuenta se resistieron a los cantos de sirena de una sociedad norteamericana sumida en la complacencia y el conformismo.