Go Into The Story Interview (Part 2): Liz Hannah
My hour-long conversation with ‘The Post’ screenwriter Liz Hannah.
My hour-long conversation with ‘The Post’ screenwriter Liz Hannah.
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.
The Post goes into wide release this week, expanding into theaters across North America on January 12th. After reading this week-long interview series, I am sure you will want to see the movie. The story is both compelling in its historical context and relevant to the world we find ourselves in today. Plus, in our conversation, Liz provides deep insights into the inner workings of the script’s conception and creation.
In Part 2 of our six-part series, Liz reveals what inspired her to write The Post and what her experience was like working with the Big Three: Spielberg, Streep, and Hanks.
Scott: Let’s jump into talking about the movie The Post which is based on a spec script you wrote. It opens in limited release on December 22nd, I believe.
Liz: Yup, December 22nd New York and LA, and then we go wide January 12th.
Scott: The movie stars these relative unknowns, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks…
[laughter]
Liz: I think they’ve made two or three movies together between them.
Scott: …And this novice director, Steven Spielberg. When you hear someone mention those names involved in your movie, I imagine it still must feel surreal for you.
Liz: Yeah. It’s funny. It’s strange not just from the, as I’ve been referring to them as the Big Three, that them coming on board was, and still is, surreal. Steven came on and then brought Tom and Meryl very soon after, and then we were in production less than three months later.
As much as there was this very surreal aspect to it, it was also, “We have to go make this movie now. We got to go to work.” There’s constantly been that. I will say that, actually, I don’t know that it’s fully completely hit me until I saw the movie for the first time and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, this happened. It’s real. It’s not as if I just blacked out for the last six months.
“They really did it.” Aside from the big three, the other people involved in this movie are also legends. Ann Roth is our costume designer who I want to be one day. She’s amazing. Amy Pascal who bought the script from me initially is an icon and somebody that I’ve been very fortunate to learn from this year.
Kristie Macosko Krieger, our other producer, who is Steven’s producer. There was an amazing array of women on this film that got it going and got it to where we want it to be. Not to mention that I was paired with Josh Singer a few weeks, I think, after Steven came on.
Again, as a learning experience, as an amazing way to work on my first film in production, being able to have Josh there, it was an extremely collaborative experience. But also I didn’t have to feel embarrassed, or insecure, or whatever if I didn’t have an answer on set because Josh and I could figure it out together.
Scott: It’s mind-boggling, really, that the movie came together so quickly considering all the talent you’re talking about and their schedules. It typically will take anywhere from three to five years or more to get something going. This has turned around in basically 14 months…
Liz: Between sale to release it’ll be about 14 months, yeah. 13 months, actually, I think, which is even crazier.
Scott: I’m reminded of the story of this kid who went to a Carrie Underwood concert. He had a sign that said, “Carrie, be my first kiss”. And she brought him up on stage — he’s like 12 years old — and she did it, she gave him his first kiss. And I’m thinking, “That’s great, but where does this guy go from here?”
Liz: Right. [laughs]
Scott: And her you are, Liz, your first movie with the Big Three as you refer to them. I mean, it can’t possibly be like this for you with every project in your career, right?
Liz: I would imagine not. I would hope so. I think the thing is…Look, the confluence of events and circumstances that put every single person on this movie into it, and we haven’t even mentioned the insane ensemble cast, because we somehow got to shoot this movie when everybody was on hiatus in TV, the TV all-stars are in this film.
Scott: Like Carrie Coon.
Liz: Yeah, we have Carrie Coon. We have Sarah Paulson. We have Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Bradley Whitford, Tracy Letts. We have all of these amazing people who are typically completely consumed by their actual jobs for 11 months out of the year and we somehow got them in this one little time where they’re…
Although, Sarah was actually flying back and forth from LA to New York to shoot “Horror Story” while she was doing it, so we were very lucky to have her as much as we could. To say that I’ve peaked possibly too soon is probably the understatement of the world.
What I will say that I think is something that I want to take and recreate in my career, that I do think is possible, and it’s something I learned from Steven and Tom and Meryl very specifically is the caliber of material that you’re willing to work for and work on and the level of the players that you want to work with.
I may never be as fortunate to work with Steven, and Tom, and Meryl, and Amy, and all of them again. I hope I am, but if not, it’s still the level of the type of story you’re telling, the type of people you choose to work with. That was really outside of the starstruckness. These are all extremely lovely people who really love their jobs and have fun every day doing their jobs.
That is something I think I want to try and recreate again. It is a little bit of a “Life is too short to be miserable.” Why would you make a movie if you weren’t having fun? That’s something that I think is really hard to replicate, but is something I would like to try and do again.
Scott: Of course, the project began with your spec script. Here’s how the story’s described in the official 20thCentury Fox movie website.
“A thrilling drama about the unlikely partnership between ‘The Washington Post’s’ Katharine Graham, played by Meryl Streep, the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, and editor Ben Bradlee Tom Hanks as they race to catch up with ‘The New York Times’ to expose a massive coverup of government secrets that span three decades and four US presidents. The two must overcome their differences as they risk their careers and their very freedom to help bring longburied truths to light.”
Let’s start with the inspiration for you writing the script. You had read the Katharine Graham memoir….
Liz: Yes, yeah. Her memoir called “Personal History,” yes.
Scott: I read somewhere that at some point your boyfriend I think, he’s now your husband said, “You should write that.”
Liz: Yeah. I read her memoir a few years ago and I was just completely consumed by it. It’s, I don’t know, a 700, 800 page book that I read in like a week. As somebody who had worked in development, I was like, “How is this not a movie? How is her story not what we’re doing? In this world of biopics, how has she not had one?”
Then I realized it’s because it’s really hard to write something about her, because she led 10 different lives and had 10 different movies that could have been made about her. It took me a long time to figure out what the window into her life was. I think unless you’re Forrest Gump or Benjamin Button, the cradle-to-grave biopic is really tricky to pull off.
I wasn’t interested in telling that story, because I didn’t think that was necessarily the thing that would resonate with people. I think, when you’re telling a true story, you have to look through the window and say, “OK, what am I showing people and why is it important? Why is this the most fundamental…the turning point in her life? A coming-of-age story, if you will?”
That, to me, was this moment with the publishing of the “Pentagon Papers.” I didn’t really find that moment until…at this point I think it was like two years ago when I was reading Ben’s memoir, and his conversations about Kay and their relationship.
I realized, “OK, this is…I think it’s a two-hander between them, and it takes place during this time, and it’s really about her finding her voice and standing on her own two feet,” but yeah. I had been talking about it, and I had all this research, and I’d read all these books because it was something I was really passionate about.
I just couldn’t figure out…and I didn’t want to write the bad version of it. I, at this point, had so much respect for Kay that I didn’t want to do poorly by her. Then, this last spring, I had been working on a web series and it was really tough. I was trying to figure out…I’d applied to be in the WB program and I didn’t get in.
I was feeling, I think, a more consistent feeling for writers is, “Should I really keep doing this? Is this going to work?” It was my boyfriend at the time and my now husband said, he was like, “Just write the Katharine Graham story. You’ve been talking about it for so long. You’ve sort of been avoiding it. Why don’t you write it?” and so I did.
Last June 2016, end of May 2016, I finally sat down and wrote it. Now, here we are.
Here is Liz at a December 2017 event along with Spielberg, producer Amy Pascal, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, production designer Rick Carter, and actor Tom Hanks.
Notice how the entire conversation starts with Liz. Why? Because she’s the writer, the person who sat down and created something: The Story. Everything else flowed from that.
Tomorrow in Part 3, Liz and I dig into the story’s two central characters: Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) and Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), and the historical significance of the Pentagon Papers as well as their narrative importance in The Post.
For Part 1, go here.
Twitter: @itslizhannah, @ThePostMovie.
The movie opens in theaters across North America beginning January 12th.