‘The Post’ at Palm Springs Film Festival 2018: Conversation with Director, Stars, Writers & Producers
Palm Springs International Film Festival kicks off the New Year with the most astounding stellar attendees, making their public appearances before the Academy announces its Oscar nominees.
Opening Night film The Post included a conversation with Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, producers Amy Pascal and Kristie Macosko Krieger and screenwriters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer. It was a friendly, open and interesting discussion led by PSIFF Artistic Director Michael Lerman.
How fascinating to learn that this was Liz Hannah’s first screenplay and that even though she did not have an agent, one enterprising executive at Dreamworks/ Amblin put it on the desk of Amy Pascal who read it in a day and sealed a deal to produce it by that very night. Yes, it took Liz Hannah five years to finish the script which she returned to intermittedly between writer odd jobs she worked to pay her bills.
Liz Hannah: Reading Katherine Grahams candid memoirs helped me find the story and structure.
Amy Pascal: So many of us can relate to her. To be an outsider, a woman. I immediately gave the script to Steven who loved it.
And this was facilitated by yet another woman, Spielberg’s longtime assistant-turned-producer, Kristie Macosco Krieger who is the portal to Spielberg himself.
Steven Spielberg: I read the script and immediately saw two great stories. Katherine Graham in 1971 was in a world of men; even her own board woiuld not allow her to speak. And the issue of the B-team, underdog newspaper story where the newspeople become heroes and are the true patriots. I have been so frustrated today about that, I have been talking to the TV for the past 17 months. I have no Twitter or Facebook accounts; I make a movie to get the word out.
Meryl Streep:
This was the first female head of a Fortune 500 company. She was fully formed. When Nora Ephron told me it was the best autobiography ever written, read her story. Then the film came along. She was a pivotal figure in women’s history. She was there when it started to change. I also looked at her on YouTube. She was totally a mother and wife until her husband died and she took over The Post, which her father had started.
This was also my first time working with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. I never dreamed I would work with them.
Michael Lerner: Was there something you learned from that experience?
Meryl Streep: I learned to come prepared. There were no rehearsals, the first take was actually the making of the movie.
Spielberg: It was like in the newsroom itself, you act now. But I do often use the last take.
The first day of the shoot were Meryl and Tom’s first time together. Their connecting gave me material immediately. The personality of the movie kept changing every day. This was my fifth movie with Tom Hanks and every day Tom surprised me.
At this point in the conversation, Tom launched into a depiction of what it was like working with Spielberg which was a hilarious fantasy, a metaphor for what it was actually like that had Spielberg and the audience spellbound in surprise. If his monologue is on YouTube, it is worth finding.
As of this writing, this conversation is not posted anywhere, but it was one for the history books. To have all the principle players of this great movie present and talking with each other for the benefit of the audience brought the audience to its feet.
As for the movie itself, its brilliance made me want to see it again immediately in order to catch all the nuances of its fast paced story turns. It is a story for today and I am so grateful to have been able to see it in such superlative circumstances.
