From the liner notes

Trumbo is a unique film about screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and his heroic journey from Hollywood royalty to blacklisted writer to Academy Award winner. Based on a play by his son Christopher, Trumbo documents the rise of Dalton's career in Hollywood and his subsequent public humiliation from being among the "Hollywood Ten" blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1940s for communist associations. Exiled and penniless, Dalton wrote under various pseudonyms, even winning two Academy Awards. Viewed by many as a moral and just man, Dalton Trumbo stood for the American value and right of free expression.