Untitled Budd Schulberg Project

A film that traces the many lives of Budd Schulberg who spent his life fighting for social justice and racial equality. The son of Hollywood pioneer B. P. Schulberg, Budd was a young Communist Party member when he was threatened with a Hollywood blacklist in the late 1930s - not for being a Communist but for writing his searing industry expose, What Makes Sammy Run? At the same time that the studios were blackballing him, he turned against the Party when it became clear that its writers, including Budd, would not be permitted artistic freedom either in the US or in the Soviet Union. These early decisions would brand Budd Schulberg as a Hollywood renegade, and force him to leave Los Angeles for two decades. He is known to millions as the screenwriter of On The Waterfront and as the Communist who turned against the party and "named names." To his son Benn, he was simply "Dad." Shortly before Budd's death in 2009, Benn plunged into a no-holds-barred exploration of his father's radical, exhilarating, and tumultuous life, including the harrowing decision he made to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Budd Schulberg is the most prolific writer ever to come from Hollywood and this film will take you on his extraordinary journey through a life of epic proportions that's inextricably tied to the history of the 20th century.