“The Novice Screenwriter Whose Spec Script Launched an Oscar Campaign”

The amazing story of Liz Hannah and her script “The Post”.

A Vulture feature on screenwriter Liz Hannah who is — as they say — living the dream. From spec script to sale to Black List to… well… read on.

Hannah, who’s 31, had written a screenplay on spec called The Post, about Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and executive editor Ben Bradlee and their 1971 decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, the leaked government documents about secret escalations during the Vietnam War. Hannah never expected the movie to get made. It was “a script about two people in their 50s in which no one kisses each other,” she says. She merely hoped it would entice an agent to sign her. She polished the screenplay in the fall of 2016 and crossed her fingers.

The first bit of good fortune came in the form of that phone call, from former Sony studio head Amy Pascal, telling Hannah that she wanted to produce The Post. “I was really wowed by it,” Pascal says. “She found a unique way of telling a story about America that was also a story about a person. I read it on a Friday afternoon and owned it by that night.” Even more unusual is the call Hannah received a few months later when Pascal told her Steven Spielberg was interested in directing — and that they were aiming to release the film this December, in time for awards consideration. “It’s the weirdest phone call you can receive. Steven … Spielberg?” Hannah says. Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks signed on to play Graham and Bradlee. In just over a year, her screenplay had gone from her hard drive to an Oscar hopeful.

While she awaits the movie’s release, which is scheduled for December 22, Hannah is back at her kitchen table working on another script and some TV projects. She’s also pursuing a secondary dream of directing. “I have decided I’m going to throw everything at the wall,” she says with a grin. “I did a lot of meetings after the script sold, and people would ask, ‘What is your dream project?’ I’d answer, ‘Oh, I just made it.’ ”

Dream project is right. And couldn’t happen to a better person. Not only a super talented writer, but also has her social consciousness in order. Witness the initiative she and Brian Duffield just started: Writers for Puerto Rico.

Why not give the rest of the Vulture article a read, then donate some money to a good cause to help out AMERICAN CITIZENS in Puerto Rico.