Go Into The Story Interview (Part 4): 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 4 of our six-part series, Liz delves into her approach to writing dialogue in a script which is dialogue-heavy, and answers the question: Did you ever put on your producer’s hat and think, ‘There’s no way anyone will make this movie.’

Scott: I’d like to zero in on the actual writing process, if I could.

Liz: Yeah.

Scott: The script features a lot of dialogue. It’s one scene after another where people are in rooms talking to each other. Yet the story is just compelling as hell in large part because of the characters themselves and their conversations. Not just the historical content, but the actual dialogue.

When you were writing these scenes, did you have any specific kind of mindset? Were you aware, like, “Yeah, I’ve got one dialogue driven scene after another?” Did you bring any special consciousness or awareness to that as a writer?

Liz: Yeah. I definitely think, when you’re dealing with a lot of dialogue which I tend to have a lot of dialogue in what I write you have to just make sure that you’re not making people say things just so that they’re talking.

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. I also think everything is about scene work.

If you’re dealing with something that has a lot of dialogue, then the dialogue is your scene work. You have to make sure that it’s going somewhere, and it’s climaxing at parts, and surprising you at other parts, and that there’s something happening to keep you in the scene because, if there’s nothing else for anyone to pay attention to except the dialogue, then it has to go somewhere.

I also think that the fundamental thing about dialogue is they have to sound different. If it’s just people talking on a page, then you’re not going to care. If it’s characters that you’re interested in who are talking, and they have different voices, and they’re saying different things, and they’re surprising you, then that’s, A, the challenge, and B, the interesting thing about watching it.

When Josh came on, the movie went from being a good script to read to a movie. There was a lot of breathing life into a lot of scenes and giving people breaths.

Scott: You just mentioned the word “silent”. Some of the most impactful moments in the script for example, that scene between Kay and Robert McNamara derived from what’s not said, what the characters are dancing around or avoiding saying. It’s that silent subtext. Is that something you were intentional about?

Liz: Very much so. The two writers that have influenced me the most are Aaron Sorkin and Nora Ephron, and I think they both have an incredible way with dialogue and an incredible way with silence, but the thing that’s the most fundamental about their writing are their characters and their character work.

That was where I was coming at it from and where we all were coming at it, from the film perspective of, this is about the characters. The story is, the plot is secondary to the characters’ journey and, if we can make people care about the characters, they’ll care about what’s going on in the movie.

Any scene work, any dialogue, any lack of dialogue was always and is always, for me, fundamentally based on “What’s this character doing, where are they going, and what’s the best way to tell how they’re getting there?”

Scott: One last thing about dialogue…your use of interruptions, characters talking over each other. It’s a different pace, not as frenetic, but it reminded me of another movie set in the world of journalism, His Girl Friday.

Liz: Yeah.

Scott: Which I think was the first movie in which the characters were directed to step on each other’s lines to reflect the real world of working in a newsroom. Did you use interruptions to reflect that or…

Liz: That’s sort of just how I talk.

Scott: You interrupt people. [laughter]

Liz: I interrupt people. I also think that’s naturally how conversations go. They ebb and flow and people speak over other people. Nobody ever speaks…Unless you’re doing an interview, nobody’s ever, “I’m going to say this,” and then you wait a beat and then somebody answers. It’s very much a conversation, a free flowing conversation.

That’s just something that I naturally, I think, feel. I have to read this a kajillion more times than anybody else and so it has to feel natural in a way. That’s the real thing about dialogue, because it is heightened to an extent because you are making a movie. You are having exposition in your dialogue. You are having all these things happen that don’t necessarily naturally happen in real life.

The goal is to have it be as natural as possible and you don’t realize, “Oh, I just learned that.” You know? [laughs]

Scott: I would think especially for a movie like this, which is grounded in history, that that was even doubly important.

Liz: Yes, very much so.

Scott: You were able to wear the producer’s hat in the past because you were working on that side of the table. I’d like for you, just for a moment, to put your producer’s hat on and consider some of the key narrative elements of your script of The Post. First off, it’s a period piece.

Next, it’s that midproduction budget, that whole thing that the major studios have just run away from for the last five, ten years. The target audience is adults, which strays away from Hollywood’s obsession with young people. The story’s very specific to the United States and so with 70 percent of the box office being international market, that would be a concern.

Instead of CGI and pyrotechnics, you just got a lot of characters who are great.

Liz: Right. [laughs]

Scott: You put your producer’s hat on there, one producer might say, “I don’t see what’s here.” Did you every think any of that stuff at all, or did you say, “No, screw it. I love this story and I’m just going to write it.”

Liz: Well, I constantly thought that, but I did also say, “Screw this. I’m going to write this story.” My goal with this script was to get an agent. It wasn’t necessarily for it to get made because I was thinking, “Who’s going to see this movie?”

I love it. I love the idea of it. I love the concept of it and I love the finished film, but I was very much like [laughs], ‘There are no sex scenes in this film’. The reaction that the script had… One reaction that the script had was stunning, and I think part of it was because this is not a movie that gets made that much anymore.

I think people are thirsting for that. I think the industry was thirsting for it, in a way, and I hope audiences are thirsting for it in a way: smart stories about things maybe you didn’t know.

On the other hand, this is the brilliance of Amy Pascal, and what she saw in the film, and what she was able to bring to it to get it made, and the team that she was able to rally around it. It was, in putting your producer hat on with Amy, her seeing that this was a makeable movie and a relatable movie to audiences that wasn’t…

I’m not a 55-year-old woman in 1971 if that’s how people would want to go see a film, but I’m also not a superhero. I’m also not an alien. I think that there are many ways that people can relate to films. I think, as a writer, if you can find something you care about and a story you care about then, generally, other people care about it, too.

Check out Steven Spielberg talking about how reading the spec script by Liz Hannah caused him to immediately decide he needed to make this movie:

Tomorrow in Part 5, Liz provides insights into her own writing process.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Movie Website

Twitter: @itslizhannah, @ThePostMovie.

The movie opens in theaters across North America beginning January 12th.