Go Into The Story Interview: Liz Hannah

Entire series with screenwriter of ‘The Post’.

Sometimes the story behind the story is as compelling as the story itself and that’s the case with Liz Hannah, writer of the 2015 Black List script The Post which went on to be directed by Steven Spielberg, and star Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:

Part 1: “I was always a really big reader and I was a really big film watcher. Both of my parents, particularly my mom, is a huge film buff. We would just watch everything without, really, any specific genre or direction. We were constantly consuming. I think my love of storytelling came from them.”

Part 2: “Steven [Spielberg] came on and then brought Tom [Hanks] and Meryl [Streep] very soon after, and then we were in production less than three months later.”

Part 3: “I wasn’t the most popular kid in high school. I was always reading. I wasn’t unpopular, but I was just always trying to figure out how to fit in, as I think all of us are. I just naturally have always gravitated towards them. I think, also, being a woman, you also naturally gravitate toward the underdog.”

Part 4: “You have to be very conscious of ‘Is it better if people are quiet here or not? Am I just trying to have people speak?’ I tend to think that sometimes the best dialogue is silence and so it is definitely a challenge to do that or to keep that in your mind.”

Part 5: “The whole process of before I sit down to write interior or whatever, exterior or whatever, has to be ‘Whose POV am I telling? What perspective is each scene?’”

Part 6: “Read every script you can bad, good. Read Paddy Chayefsky’s collected works. That’s probably the best place to start, and then read everything else from there.”

Liz is repped by UTA and Echo Lake Entertainment.

Twitter: @itslizhannah.