Go Into The Story Interview (Part 6): 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 this weekend. 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 6, Liz delves more deeply into her creative process and offers advice to aspiring screenwriters and filmmakers.

Scott: I’ve written some nonfiction-based stories as well and it strikes me that character development, it’s a different beast than if you’re generating characters from whole cloth because you’ve got a wealth of content. It’s like these are real people with full, complete lives. What to focus on, what things to omit. Is that a particular challenge for you when you’re dealing with nonfictional characters?

Liz: I think, if it is a challenge, then I shouldn’t be writing that script. For me, if it’s a challenge to find the perspective of the character, then that’s why it shouldn’t be a movie or it shouldn’t be whatever because, for me, the perspective of the character is the thing that I should be the most attracted to, because then that’s the reason I tell the story.

If you’re just telling…I think Sorkin said this actually. If you’re telling a story about a place, then that’s a TV show. If you’re telling a story about a character or a time, then maybe that’s a movie. If you’re telling a story about…

I told a story about, for instance, The Post. It is two people in 1971 that takes place over the course of about a week, that’s not a TV show. With Only Plane, it’s one day and it’s really three or four characters that you’re very, very much committed to and in their shoes.

I think, for me, if I have a problem getting into the character’s shoes, then I have made a very grave mistake of tackling that project. I actually think, with fictional characters, that is the problem for me because I do work in nonfiction so much.

I think it’s sometimes very nice to find people in history that you never knew about and find a shared experience that you’ve had. It is a way for an audience to be nonjudgmental about the character, because it’s a person who lived in history. They can take it as that.

Whereas, a fictional character, sometimes you know it was generated from somebody’s brain, and you know it wasn’t a real person. Sometimes you can poke holes in them that way. I sometimes find the generating from an original character standpoint much more challenging.

Scott: What about theme? How important is that to you in your writing to know it? Do you know it upfront? Do you learn it along the way? Are they multiple themes? How about your attitude and theory about that?

Liz: I think it’s multiple. For The Post, the theme was always, I think, very clear. One of the themes was very clear, which was about a woman finding her voice. That, for me, was always very clear.

Once Josh, and Steven, and Tom, and Meryl, and everybody joined on, the theme of the power of the Fourth Estate and the importance of the truth being exposed, that became very important and something that we focused a lot of time on.

With “Only Plane,” I knew going into it that I wanted to have a conversation about leadership and the role of leadership. That was something the article, I thought, did really well and was something I’m often interested in exploring, is our own expectations of leadership.

That theme was really clear for me from the beginning and something that I really very much focused on heavily while I was doing my draft. For other things, it’s sometimes a challenge because sometimes you fall in love with a character, but it’s like, “Well, where’s the movie? What is happening with that?”

Generally, for me, it has to come with something I’m interested in talking about, and that’s fairly consistent. I’m very interested in talking about the role of leadership. I’m very interested in talking about our national integrity. I’m very interested in talking about the role of women and the role of our expectations of women.

Those are things that I naturally gravitate to and they tend to pop up in things that I’m writing.

Scott: So, when you’re writing a scene, do you have some specific goals in mind?

Liz: When I’m doing the first draft, my specific goal is to get out of it as quickly as possible.

[laughter]

Liz: In the first draft, generally the scene is What are the two beats I have to hit in this scene to get out of it and get it on the page? My first drafts are usually pretty bad because there’s not a whole lot of scene work in them. It’s almost very procedural in terms of I need to hit A, B, and C, and get through there.

Then, when I do my rewrites…Which, again, are my personal rewrites. They’re not the studio rewrites. These are all the rewrites I do by myself before anybody ever gets to read a single page of it. Then it is very much about the scene work.

I think, every scene, you have to take from every single character and say, “What’s their goal?” and, “What are they doing?” Particularly, your main players in scene. Every scene should have a beginning, a middle, and an end and every scene should exist for a reason. If it doesn’t, if you’re bumping up against it being there, then it’s got to go.

If it’s taking me out of where I am, it’s got to go. I’m a big believer in messing with structure in terms of if I write a movie, and I look at it, and I’m like, “These three scenes need to be swapped,” I have no problem swapping them and figuring out a way to make that work with the story because, at the end of the day, it is also a movie and you want people to be entertained.

You want people to sit there for two hours and not regret it. If you are making people check their watch or check their email, then, obviously, you’ve made a misstep.

Scott: I’d like to get even more granular in terms of the craft. One thing I noticed in your scene description in The Post is you have these moments where you editorialize, commenting on the moment. Of course, there are these script literalists out there who call that “unfilmables” and you’re not supposed to do that. What’s your thinking on that?

Liz: I think it has to go back to character, and it has to go with dialogue and exposition. If I could write more on-the-nose dialogue better, then probably my scene descriptions would not be so editorialized.

I generally think, if I can write two lines in a scene description and then I don’t have to write seven lines of dialogue, I would much rather do that. If I can write in somebody giving someone a look, and that tells just as much as six lines of dialogue, then I have no problem writing the look in.

I think you have to be very judicious with it and not make it feel like you’re hammering somebody over the head or, also in the same time, not make them feel like they’re reading a book, because we are writing films, we are writing a visual medium, which I think, at the same time, is…I don’t necessarily agree with the unfilmables.

I think if you have the right director, you have the right cinematographer, you have the right cast, then I think everything is filmable. It’s just a matter of finding out who’s doing it and whose job it is. If it’s not filmable, then that’s a problem.

I learned a lot of this from Steven. We had a lot of stuff in the movie where we’re like, “Can we just do this with a look?” He was like, “Yeah, I think we can just do this with a look,” and so, instead of having a line of dialogue that felt like we’re really on the nose, obviously we had an amazing group of actors who can do that with a look, but we would rather do that, and visualizing things.

Steven is an extremely visual filmmaker, so there was a lot of visualizing moments, and scenes, and things like that that weren’t necessarily in the script that made the script a movie. That’s something that Josh and I both very much were working on is articulating it in that way.

Scott: You were on set for most of the shoot…

Liz: I think I was on set for six of the nine weeks.

Scott: That must have been quite an education.

Liz: It was amazing. It was a pretty insane experience to be standing a couple of feet behind Steven Spielberg while he’s making a movie, and to be able to ask him about making a movie and ask him why he’s doing things.

I think this thing that people don’t necessarily know about Steven or at least I didn’t know is that he is really a teacher. He’s very much an educator in a way that he’s had so much experience that he wants to share it. He is very open to sharing it.

For Josh and I, we were on either shoulder of his for the entirety of filming. For me, aside from a couple weeks. And we were really getting down to, as you said before, brass tacks and finding where the movie was. That was really amazing.

Scott: So you done the producer thing, then writer. Do you see ‘director’ in your future?

Liz: Hopefully, yeah. I definitely think that that’s something that I’m going to try to do, I hope I get the opportunity to do.

Scott: Final question. What advice would you offer aspiring screenwriters about learning the craft and breaking into Hollywood?

Liz: First, read everything you can. 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. Try and read bad scripts. Some of the best learning I’ve ever done is reading bad scripts. Try and sit there and analyze why it’s bad and why it doesn’t work.

It’s really easy to just say, “Oh, I don’t like this…” This was something that I’m really lucky to have learned in art school. When we were doing the critique in art school, you were never allowed to say like, “I don’t like it.” You have to say, “Why don’t you like it?”

When you’re reading things, contextualize why it’s not working for you, why you didn’t like it. It’s the same thing with going to see films. Try and articulate why it’s not for you, because that will help you find your voice. Then, once you figure out what you want to write, just keep writing. Constantly write.

Things will only get good once you’ve gone through the bad. Nothing just comes out perfect. You have to rewrite and rewrite and rethink often. The last thing is write about something you care about. Again, if you care, chances are somebody else does. I cared about Kay and I cared about her story, and I just wanted people to know it.

That was something that I think people related to. It doesn’t matter what genre. It doesn’t matter what character. Just write about what you care about and I think, generally, things turn out pretty well.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Movie Website

Twitter: @itslizhannah, @ThePostMovie.

The movie opens in theaters across North America this weekend. Go see it!