‘The Post’: Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks talk new movie - FULL PANEL

good afternoon I am Ann Hornaday chief film critic for the Washington Post and I'm delighted to be joined today by Bradley Whitford Bob Odenkirk Tom Hanks Mehra Meryl Streep and Steven Spielberg thank you all for being here and thank you all for being here I should say welcome back because you were here just it seems like just yesterday days ago two hundred days ago Oh tell us a little bit but who's counting tell us a little bit Steven about the timeline for this how it went down why it went down that way well I was minding my own business making a movie car ready player one coming out March 30th 2018 you know theater and Driver knew you and I I was I was absolutely you know just totally involved in that when I got a call from Stacy Snyder and Amy Pascal who suggested I read a script that Amy had had had found from a brand-new writer who would never sold anything before in her entire life Liz Hanna 31 years old she had written a story about Katharine Graham who's she she was has always been quite admiring of and I you know was reluctant to say I read the script but you know they kind of Stacy and Amy said but I think you'll change your mind once you get to page 30 and I did I started reading it and by page 30 I started saying okay Ben Bradlee will be Tom Hanks and and Katharine Graham will be Meryl Streep I've always wanted to work with my oldest it would be my fifth film with Tom but I've never worked with Meryl except she did 30 minutes with me playing the voice of the Blue Fairy on a ai' but we've never made a movie real movie together like this and and it all started to come together because it this could not have been a more relevant story for our time that really made me look back and say my god how history repeat itself and so literally I gave it at that point to Christy Mikasa who has been in my life for 20 years producing my films and and just exceptionally doing an exceptional job a co running my company and I gave it to her and she said to me look if you really want to make this and I think you should I think this is really something you should do you're gonna work harder than you have ever worked before because to get this film out this year which is what I wanted to do she said it's going to have to be put everything else aside and you have to just jump into this the part about that you were all geared up and knew another name yes built in Italy yeah had a crew in Italy Christie and Adam sundar I buried the lede true I had a whole crew in Italy Rick Carter who then slid over to do the post was doing another movie that I was very desperate to do I had not found the lead the lead was it was a problem casting the lead all the scenes involve this lead the lead was six years old and I spent a year looking for a six year old boy they carry an entire movie and so when I did decide this is what I need to do right now I took one week to look at 3,000 audition tapes I kid you not I didn't watch all three or four minutes of me to tape but I watched 3,000 tapes and about one about one week and then called Amy Pascal back and said I'm in so clearly you have this creative team that you've weren't you know part of the reason why you could put it together so quickly is that you do have this team of long-term collaborators but what element or elements had to be in place for you to be able to proceed on that accelerated schedule what the main element that had to be in place was the availability of Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks or otherwise I would not have made the film in 2017 and that was it so bring us let's talk to you what were you do you remember the day that the phone rang were you two involved in other endeavors at the time well Amy Pascal had passed me the script in advance of students I think he would do it you were being double-teamed I wasn't so we were all just well playing we add them with bated breath yeah yeah really hoping around it and it's it's really dude here it is Stephen Merrill dot dot yeah and so uh I read it very very quickly and I said okay that was it I was I just I got her I'm really sad you couldn't find that six-year-old the kids poor kid didn't get cast I was up for that the what it was about was just it was a riot of what's the word I'm looking for authenticity and it needed to be made and Stephen when I spoke to Stephen he said well here's what there's a couple of things we want to find out there what the Pentagon Papers in in Liz's script was kind of like a placeholder for something important and he wanted to know deeply what was in the Pentagon Papers were about as well as the nuts and bolts of all the legalese that went on that Liz that Liz had in it but then Josh singer came on and who wrote spotlight and together we got new pages every single day and in fact when we 200 days ago when we came here to talk to a lot of people have worked with Ben we got a nugget of a detail that ended up being in the movie tell me about that that's you you you caught a glance at my nose didn't you that was a special I had for you when you visited here what is there what is that detail well the one thing that's in the old post post building this was not this is the original post building not the not the all the president's matter all the president's post bill that we're pretending that didn't exist we went back and they said you know the presses were in the basement and when they when they ran you felt the entire building tremble and shake and been begged icky and is sitting at his typewriter and sure enough when the presses are rollin that rolls along that that's the type of immediacy along with all the stuff that we got from mr. daniel ellsberg right there was no Daniel Ellsberg in the original screenplay so he did an awful lot of searching and Josh and Liz did an awful lot of writing we had we had some degree of new pages more or less every single day right through shooting that right through shooting for shooting you know it was very important that I just wanted the audience to be clear on what the Pentagon Papers were all about so I thought why don't we when when Tom and I met with Daniel Ellsberg and we had also of course all seen the fog of war about Robert McNamara the film and we and we had been in Ken Burns as a friend of ours they'd given us a rough cut of his 10-hour PBS documentary on Vietnam so we had a lot of research just out of the gate but I think the main thing I was concerned about was everybody knows Watergate but nobody knows the Pentagon Papers and nobody knows the fact that the Pentagon Papers was the precedent that allow the Washington Post give them the courage in the victory of the publication of the Pentagon Papers to even pursue through Woodward and Bernstein the money trail leading up to Nixon's impeachment and resignation and so it was important for the audience understand the significance and everything that Ellsberg told us even he said to us he said you know whenever I went in to as an observer into a combat patrol I never had my own helmet I would always borrow a helmet from one of the guys returning from Patrol so we just worked that in he gave us all this nuance he told us I said to him what was the moment that you decided to take these papers you know you know you know flee with these papers and he said it was the moment when I was asked by Robert McNamara after I had been on a combat mission where blue eyes were lost I came back to this mission and McNamara asked me if the war was any better or worse than it was last year and I said I really think it's just about the same and McNamara flew out of his chair and tried yelling at this Nixon appointee and said you see we put a hundred thousand troops into the field and Ellsberg said it's no better to me that means it's worse and then he comes off the airplane goes up to the press corps at the at the foot of this airforce plane and when he's asked that question he says the war couldn't be going better we're making tremendous progress in the field and that's what snapped in Ellsberg I had to go in the movie to set it all up the decisive moment Bob tell us I one of the things I love about this film is the the the dude that it pays to bend that dick in oh yeah just a wonderful man a towering figure in our profession a real hero and and largely a number of journalists who said they were forced to read his book ah in college but it's a great one it's definitive but I read his autobiography which I think oh yeah more fun about than his media monopoly fascinating life fascinating life and a real true believer in journalism and it's fun to play somebody who's so sure of himself that is and getting and getting back to the elements that had to be in place this is really it's it's an interesting ensemble picture it's almost two ensembles that are running parallel to one another and you're part of the reporting team and the editing team what a great team it was what a lot of fun we had David Cross is in it too if anyone knew mr. Shepherd in it mr. chauffeur is did you do that on purpose Steven were you mr. show he doesn't know I don't know don't bother uncle snow stuff we did at college you tell him what had went on at the frat house but yeah but a great great group Carrie and Tracy Letts and so it's so many great people Pat Healy what can I say it was a great time and I had a great part of a really good man did you unfortunately he left us several years ago a year and a half ago it would have been nice to meet it it would have been you can see my youtube true did you talk to family members no but I watched his interview and and read his book this gets into something that I Tom you and I spoke about this when you did captain Phillips which is the added responsibility of playing people that are either still alive or do have family members who are quite concerned that their loved ones be fairly portrayed I mean tell me walk me through that do you have to kind of forget about that in order to do your job I would have loved to have met somebody from the family I maybe should have inquired about that but I feel like the way my part was written I could play him sure idli and with a clarity because he was he was he was the dogged reporter in this story and I loved putting that story on the screen and being a part of it journalism is so run down by everyone it seems in the last 10-15 years it's great to show a group of people who care about journalism and are working hard every day to do it right yeah and Bradley you're you're one of the few people maybe the only person in this movie who isn't based on an actual person but I did reach out to the family it's the difference between Bob and me when that extra mile yes-no amalgamation of legitimate business interests and a bunch I think unconscious I wouldn't call it misogyny but sexism yeah you know it's like it's it's very clear I think I have a very defensible position yes Arthur does which when K is facing this decision she's putting at risk the entire enterprise and she is giving me the message that she's not sure she's up to this I think it's a very interesting in terms of feminism this is this is not through a contemporary lens this is something that reminded me very much of my mother who was exact exactly her age who was fighting to find her her voice and had had been trapped in a culture that did not respect it but was also fighting herself and I think that's a very interesting part of part of the Ches struggle definitely I think it is it's also interesting you know given your your own political and activist bona fides that you are kind of the bad guy in two big movies this year that are dealing with very relevant timely topics yeah I got out a sin and morality plays I'm like racism sexism like infidelity breath my kids are is it kind of fun to kind of go against your own personal you know yes yeah it's really fun it's really fun and Merrill I miraculously this is your first movie with Steven Spielberg which I think came as a huge shock to so many of us like really what it what makes us feel Brooks said unlike any other set oh well I'm not gonna look at ya just it's uh what surprised me was how collaborative free opens the the process was so you know someone who comes with this amount of veneration and a huge line of masterpieces in our culture markers of decades of my life I felt like this would be a machine well-oiled exclusionary a boys club I didn't I thought that'll help you that'll help you that'll be good but I just wasn't prepared for the openness of this director his and everybody felt this everybody in the cast that this process was was like playing jazz you were playing a high level you you knew when your solo came in but you can drop back and you you you know that the whole thing is gonna be hot and happening right there I mean it was really cool I said to my husband I can't wait to go to work in the morning and he said you don't always say that that's fascinatin was was the time was the quickened pace of the actual production of fat a factor in that or is that just your that's kind of as I sort of how I make movies I mean you know I have to keep myself seeing the movie and if I take too long with a shot or it do too many takes in the shot I kind of lose track of the story I'm telling because I'm just OCD focusing in on one thing that I think I can get perfect by take 20 and I really find that with most actors you know if you have to go past five takes it's because it's only because you've gotten new ideas based on the first four takes and then you do another five tapes because it's a whole new idea you're embracing but for the most part I like shooting fast not just this film but this film had a whole set of imperatives and one of the imperatives was getting this thing out now what the conversation was still right oh go ahead III I just want to say I mean it was amazing to be in a movies with these three and I really do want to say this they they all in Stephen included they they it was very refreshing the fear with which they approach their work like they're really worried that they're not gonna get this right there was no sense of entitlement or mastery and I've worked with this guy three times and he never thinks he knows what he's doing but but it was striking to me was Stephen and I think Stephen is conscious of the value of really being in the moment in the shooting process not coming in with 30 storyboards but really being innocent to the moment which is what we're trying to be and if your director is trying to be that it's it's an it turbocharges it I want to get more into into Stephen your process but I can't let this come first time you're you're dealing with a character who's been obviously a played by Jason row but you know let's let's just say it there's a movie called all the President's Men that kind of hangs over is this you really go Friendly Ghost so to Robarts relatives as one does right but tell me about that product that what you need to do to banish that or to embrace it I was I was lucky in that I met both the guys I met Ben Bradlee through Nora Ephron and and Sally Quinn so I've had I I've had cocktails with him and spoke to him and his book is written in the same voice and every every interview he's ever did sounds exactly like the Ben Bradlee I met I also worked with Jason and I talked to I talk to him a little bit about that and they they melded at this point in the Poynter Institute interview that that Ben Brad when he was still Ben Bradlee he was still running running the post at the time I believe and he said well you know and then you know they asked about the celebrity and well you know it's it's inevitably sooner you meet somebody for the first time and you're trying to do your job and sooner or later they all say well you don't look anything like Jason Robards so the so he had it was completely unaffected by that and even though Jason I mean Jason is one of the great icon I mean Jason is Jason Robards is one of the reasons I'm an actor I used to listen to his his O'Neill monologues on the same CBS record at Chabot junior college when I was 19 years old if you went back and found that my name is on every entry from taking it out but there there is that is that is a very specific type of moment in in Ben's career and I was actually fueled by everything that I had read and seen about in my day say well that is a that's a wonderful interpretation of Ben Bradley but it's Jason Robards right at the it's the countenance that blends over so I actually felt as always lucky that there had been this established version of that because I do not have the same countenance as Jason I I was going to find some other way into the character that had nothing to do with with me doing an imitation of Jason or an invitation of Ben it was a matter of finding some other way to walk into a room barrel-chested filled with a Khan that I do not have there's a there's a wonderful moment where because to a person most journalists with all the president's men their very favorite moment is when bread Ben Bradlee comes out of his office and just wax that desk but the newspaper and you do there's a moment like that in this movie was that a little was that your mole that wasn't about Jason that's what I got from everybody else right yes there's an they had everybody had a Ben ISM you know badly ISM and they all croaked it at me even women Oh bid would come in and say my god that's fun yeah that's the way exactly that's the way he approached his job every I think that's one of the way he had so much confidence and owned a room when he walked into it cuz you just wanted to have as much fun as that guy was happening yes also remember that Ben Bradley was an incident World War two on on the on the USS Phillip right which was a fletcher-class destroyer and he saw a lot of action in the South Pacific and he had a lot of young men under him he himself only 22 years old he had a lot of a lot of young young you know swabbies serving under him and he had a lot of responsibilities and when and Ben was my neighbor Ben and Sally Quinn lived directly across the street from our house in the summers on Long Island and and so I I got to see I didn't spend a lot of time has been but I spent some good quality time with Ben and but then when Ben saw Saving Private Ryan he wanted to talk about what he did in World War two and that's when he opened up to me about the war and he talked me about his leadership skills were honed during the Pacific campaign and that's what carried him right over to Newsweek magazine and then right onto the floor of the Washington Post I don't think i'ma say the other thing that Merrill and I have talked a lot about was at that time Ben was not necessarily competing with the New York Times they were competing with the Washington star yes right no yeah which was number one he did not neither one of them wanted to run the second place paper in what was sort of then considered a second second-tier town like Washington DC was so with the Pentagon Papers came this was this fabulous deep throw out of a out of into legitimacy that they had yet to have Stevan over the years you and i have talked about you know you're you're doing these fascinating you know saving private ryan' was your world war ii forties movie and then i remember when we talked about Minority Report that was kind of your new ARP you know that was kind of a post-war noir movie and and this is a 70s movie again with all the president's men being kind of a benevolent spirit hanging over it but tell me about how you approached the visual language of a 70s movie without putting quotes around it well you know sometimes the best thing a director can do to be able to establish a visual language in telling the story outside of the cop side of my own history my own contemporary history but like we call a period piece yeah is to know who the best people are to give the film to look it's not just that I know where to put the camera to make look like a 70s movie it's that that through the through the wonderful taste and relationship of Meryl introducing Meena and Roth one of the greatest costume designers in history who was able to to create an entire color palette for the film and compel me to shoot wider when I saw what she had done with all the costumes it got my camera back not in but back to create group shots of all the the staff the editors on the floor when I had Rick Carter who so to a detail recreated the circa 1971 Washington Post the let's call it the old the old building right but put on every single desk even on the desk of extras who weren't gonna have any speaking lines the exact news of the day and the work of that day and if you just wanted to explore each desk it made me almost want to take a camera and just shoot all the desk which of course would have been a little bit off the off the subject or the movie but when you had that kind of verisimilitude when you had that kind of inspiration and Janusz Kaminski with this amazing way he just uses light to capture a period it's not just a director that captures the period it's who the director surrounds him or herself with that actually captures the period and my team did that and Bob and I were talking earlier in the greenroom about just what a fun movie this is I mean this is an enormous ly entertaining rousing great great example of moviemaking at its most sort of deeply entertaining and you have this talent for taking these gnarly process-oriented stories and imbuing them it's like I remember for Captain Phillips time you said there's interesting but then there's compelling you know how do you make an interesting story dramatically compelling and you said it was even infusing the set like it was just fun and dynamic I think you know and we've done a number of interviews for this film and there's a lot of talk about the relevance and the issues in in the film brings up or talks about and there first of all there is so many it's about so much I mean it's a it's about government and secrets and it's a history lesson and it's about journalism and seeing people do it and it's about a woman's personal interior journey to own her power and then this also societal status journey and and but really I was thrilled we all were every day at the waist even made it a fun story to hear and to imagine when I when I'd see him set up the shots you'd picture it and you just think oh man that's gonna be fun to watch and it puts dynamic and relief throws relief on two aspects of the story that make it just a rip-roaring tale and I thought I just want to make sure people know that it's just a really fun movie to watch and it's kind of a I want to say a classic kind of film and I only say that because we spend the we see a lot of you know cutting-edge films and we all talk about them and it seems to me that it's like one way to make our cutting-edge film is to just make a lot of mistakes and leave them in yeah it's so raw edges but this is just a really great storytelling and it's fun to be a part of it III think it's I mean I've said this to Steven like there was such tremendous virtue in stephen is an impatient german and i and i mean this in the best way sort of what I was saying before insecure like like like like I want I want the audience I don't want I don't want to serve the audience civic vegetables iiiiii I want to I want to take them I want to take them emotionally I want to give them characters I want them to give their there's a collision of showmanship with material that could otherwise be very preachy and dry yeah not Civic vegetables okay I think that would help us do you consider this to even a third of a trilogy after Lincoln and bridge of spies oh I don't know I don't think it's a trilogy it certainly falls into a genre you know of the political thriller yeah but I don't see it is at a trilogy that it probably this movie probably has more kinship to Lincoln mm-hmm very process it's about that you know it's about making you know the passing of the 13th amendment a very kind of a very important thing in terms of our history but it's a very dry sort of a thing but again given a ratchet up the tension right that and ratcheting up the tension of course to the most important decision okay Catherine most important to decisions Katharine Graham had to make at the beginning of the real Kath and Graham story took place over a week a week and what Liz Hannah wrote is this was the week Katharine Graham became Katharine grounds that alone is a fascinating fascinating story to watch add the rest of it and you hit the trifecta Vietnam thing and the First Amendment thing boom you got it in feminism that's the big three right Sanatana and this also continues a fascination you've long had and as you have to Tom with fact-based drama and I'm going to revisit you know being the the film critic at the Washington Post you have a special I have a new renewed appreciation for people most of my readers were either witness to the events of these movies they know someone who they are related to or know someone who was at you know or they have been studying them for their entire career so I am you know my readership is fact-checkers and they get really bugged when things don't comport with their idea of how things went down so could you walk us through the most fruitful way to watch fact-based dramas and historical dramas drunk takeout Chinese forget it was there that you should start you should start by letting the experience wash over you because if you if you are vetting the experience as you're having the experience you'll never have the experience right so yeah I think it first thing you have to be you have to sit in the seat be an audience and just let it let it happen and then you need to process it when it's over but I I made this film for audiences too I think so drama and it's a very important drama in the sense of I don't like using important because I've ever car stuff important but I'm saying it's it's important for an audience to understand that before they see the relevance or the or the ironies of history that they they sit down and understand that our intention was to do a character story about principally two people Katherine Graham and Ben Bradley and then all the other people that affect their lives and whose lives they affect and that's the first for me that's what my full focus was on Liz Hanna Josh singer we had a lot of help from the Washington Post we had Don Graham we had Lally Weymouth Graham we had the grandson will we had um we had we had tremendous cooperation from from Fred and everybody really wanted us to get it right so they gave us all the resources to get it right with and I think we took an advantage of those resources they'll always be things that aren't a hundred percent accurate I mean I mean Bradley Whitford isn't accurate at all you know he's he's he's authentic as a character but he is not he's an amalgamation of the resistance that Kay Graham had to face from the men the professional men in her life not just on her board but in her world the naysayers and those that look right through her because she was a woman to the man just on the other side of her and and and so he had the the I guess the graceful and yet daunting task of being a symbol for the resistance right in those days and not so much the Fortis also today well there's a there's a good example of where a nonfiction entertainment can go awry in our very movie that's what we call a lot of times we call these things too you know what a historical fiction okay yeah yeah non non fiction entertained writes what I go for the same thing there was a moment where Katherine Ben Bradlee and Fritz Beebe are waiting for a phone call from the Justice Department and we they get a phone call and it's from William Rehnquist mm-hmm now if William Rehnquist hadn't actually made that call and talked to us having William Rehnquist be on the phone would have been a cheap shot you know he's a guy he worked he could have made the phone call they didn't but let's put it in there because it'll be an interesting editorial sort of decision in order to make in order just to spend spend the the the message to the choir a certain way if he didn't make a phone call in our book you can't have him on the phone but he did make the phone call so therefore it's just that other level of authenticity that pays a certain kind of dividend for the audience for your for your vast readership of fact-checkers and cranky cranky people who well it must but I do I think I do like I said I also understand the disorientation that they must experience watching event that they're so familiar with and takes so dear to heart and then see them even slightly you know it's just it's a strange experience so I'm trying to sort of mediate you know be it be a helpful mediator in encouraging people to kind of like you said let it wash over you and have the emotional experience I mean I think primarily movies are an emotional experience above everything else and then if you're compelled to then find out more and learn more about it yeah and talk about it and get and be able to just discuss it right the second best draft of history yes that's lovely I do want to circle back again you know the the impetus for acting so quickly and getting this into theaters this year was was I I assume and I've read feeling galvanized by current events and I was reading our own paper today which I don't know if you've all had a chance but there is an absolutely devastating brilliant story by Greg Miller Greg Jaffe and Phillip Rucker about president Trump's Russia policy or lack thereof and I just want to read this this quote nearly a year into his presidency Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House the result is without obvious parallel in US history a situation in which the personal insecurities of the president and his refusal to accept but even many in his administration regard as objective reality have impaired the government's response to a national security threat the repercussions radiates across the government and I can't help but think of those Nixon tapes that play in your movie of that insecure paranoid man desperately trying to suppress the truth and now it's as if the president it's not suppressing the truth it's it's trying to say the truth doesn't exist yeah I feel like what we the guy now makes Nixon seem like you know Albert Schweitzer in terms of that level of I mean it first of all it's the like I'm not just trying to kiss your ass but it is the first amendment you know it's not the seventh like there's a reason it's a number number one and I I have never in my life experienced a strategic assault on the idea of truth and it's and it's it's indi legitimizing the press obviously there's there's conflict and she should be conflict there I actually think the movie is is it's a very interesting point about the dangers of complicity in order to have access I mean is is a big criticism of the press and of the post and of you know the relationship but this is we this is an outrageous I hope anomaly do you is there any risk in making a movie in that context I mean but as you very rightly point out it's about much more than that you know it's it's it's like I we say it is arousing ly entertaining it is about a woman's journey but do you alienate your audience by making something so pointedly political I don't think it is partisan how was this a partisan so patriotic it's a patriotic film how I keep looking at what could be partisan about it you'd have to really love Nixon to find it right partisan I don't know right right all right well no it's a big Democrat I also think the the issues of it just are things that we always have to think about and to care about the fact that they seem hot right now and in so many ways it doesn't change the fact that they're this these things matter forever in America and and and certainly when it comes to women and power and power sharing among all people that hopefully will not let not matter as long but still for probably a couple hundred years no I was just gonna say it's not I I see it as an extremely patriotic patriotic film because it isolates this one moment in time where Nixon was defending only Nixon's ability to defend Ally he wasn't really at that point complicit it was it was about it was about all the subsequent administration's after Truman Eisenhower Kennedy Johnson yeah it was all of it wasn't about Nixon I mean none of the papers writing a lie about right Vietnam for which so many people continued to be fed into the furnace for nothing but really as is this brilliant scene with Matthew Reese you have to bring him in yeah for a sizing place Daniel Ellsberg Ellsberg and he and he said you know the reason it it's the reason the war was fought was ten percent for the Vietnamese people twenty percent to contain China and then seventy percent to save face over every one of these administration's suppressing suppressing this information and that that was breathtaking it was the fact that and I remember it because I was it was the year I graduated from college and it was when it was the beginning people thinking God they're always lying to us yeah yeah even pre Watergate we tend to yes exactly we're not here I'm more awake yeah we do tend to trace the sinister cynicism into the Watergate but you're exactly right you know it was it was earlier but in into and Watergate I mean we reference all the president's men but there was a woman at the center of that controversy too and she's not in the movie that that writes the history for so many kids who watch who don't read and who watch movies to know what happened back in the day so this is kind of this is setting that that setting a correction oh and that history as well absolutely it's it's it's a it's a stirring example of that and and that actually well you know as I full disclosure Marilyn I actually met last week in New York where we had a wonderful conversation with Amy Pascal and Christi McCaskill Krieger who's here in the screenwriter Liz Hanna and a wonderful conversation about how this movie morphed you know it's moment morphed it might have started as a trump era movie it's now a Weinstein era movie in terms of woman finding the voice it is great well I mean you can mention that along with the Civic vegetables really appreciate but here's another quote here's another quote from this very same story and this is women were harmed in the making here we go but here's another quote from this story today and it's about the top Russia advisor fiona hill and one of her first encounters with the president an oval office meeting in preparation for a call with Putin on Syria this woman knows I mean she's an absolutely leading expert on Russia Trump appeared to mistake Hill for a member of the clerical staff handing her a memo he had marked up and instructing her to rewrite it mm-hmm so even you know it did his coffee come on give him a chance [Laughter] that's going to be the quote coming hour the whole hour will come down to the vegetables Weinstein give Michiko today um but do you is this a sea change I mean tell me how it feels from all of your perspectives what it feels seismic to me but I'm not in your business I'm observing it from afar I'm a cynic don't ask me okay I'm not going to give you a happy answer carry on well Merrill let's let's continue our conversation just where it's where is this leading I mean is this going do you feel optimistic that it might lead to some structural change in terms of I see it leading straight to a backlash and then reckoning with that and out of that will come something really good but I don't think we move in an easy progress a trajectory towards an enlightened future I think we go two steps forward one back and we're going to hit the wall on this one soon but I really do think that young people read the events of these these recent days differently than than older people and that's that's the hope yesterday we were at the competition BuzzFeed and they were all why it's all young they were really kids but it was it was a that question came up sort of in the same context and they were you could feel that they were very optimistic about about the changes that will come and I think they will but I don't think it'll be easy I don't think it'll be easy when Katherine Graham so in 1971 when the events of this movie took place and she was the owner publisher of The Washington Post just the year before 46 women at Newsweek which the post owned sued the post and her because for discrimination because there was one I believe writer Nora Ephron who who she wasn't the writer I think it was someone Liz Pierre who was the only person allowed to write who was female everybody else Elizabeth drew Nora Ephron Susan Brown Miller we're all allowed to get to researcher and then that then somebody else put their name on the story so and Katherine Graham was on the management side of that of that battle and she writes so eloquently in her book how slowly even she came it's to your point about your mother conquering the interior voice that tells you that corroborates that you are less than just slightly less intelligent capable qualified to have the job you're in to lead that's the most sort of damaging damaging part of this story that I've that I found in the original script and that Steven retained in in the film that we have that tells a story of a political story but one is an interior politics and one is the politics writ large and it's just it's a great movie because it stands up for both things yeah right well and and to but to the men on the panel has this has I mean it we've I do feel that a new consciousness has been reached about sexism in a lot of industries but you know starting with the energy no this did this story did start with the entertainment industry yeah as this led you to reframe your thinking or reframe your priorities going forward or your projects or I think what it for me it's a national reckoning that creates a great deal of accountability on the part of men to be able to do some deep diving and to see do we travel by a code of conduct is there a code of conduct in our lexicon of values and and and I think it's a question that's easy to ask of yourself and I think what it has done is it's gotten a lot of men to basically first of all search their memories because are they the next ones to be called out on national television hey the next one is sympathy you know they have the whistle blown but also just just not in the media not so much in show business where we get the microphone we get the camera a lot faster than any other probably a field except maybe news and sports after that and music but what about the rank and file of this country and and and manie's women these courageous women that are coming forward and unburdening themselves of 40 50 years of truth they've been withholding and because feeling war for all the reasons you know shame you know and and and all kinds of reasons that they're not coming out but this kind of tsunami of truth and and and reckoning if it filters down to Main Street and gets people men and women to various degrees questioning their own values and how have they behaved in any way shape or form like those that are in the news right now when that starts to ripple out like throwing a rock into a pool of water that's what we're going to see some real movement I thank you that's Leroy that's that's our dog Thank You Leroy I appreciate that yeah it's weird because talking about this I feel a mixture of optimism and pessimism I mean didn't we think anita hill was a watershed moment i think it's one of the interesting things and one of the powerful things about a film like this is that history is living now history is not is is is not a dead thing and I think that's why films like this which which can attach you know heart muscle and and and and emotion to history are very are very important I mean it we you know we we have this arrogance that like you know five thousand years of socialization went out the window with the first Village People album I mean no like we're stuck you know and we're just like climbing out of the muck and and we have to acknowledge that we have you know 200 years of this country ignored basically the talents of half half the people and that will will only strengthen us I the hope I find is in the aspirations it sounds corny but these like founding documents like you got to hold them to that and this movie is about you don't get it democracy you got to make it every day you can't sit back well but you know my question I guess to put to you or my challenge is very much like the scenes in the post where K Graham is walking into an all-male board meeting or an all-male you know she's going to do the IPO through that sea of secretaries how you know what will it take for a man to get onto a movie set and say where are the women why is this why there's so many men around to walk into a meeting at the highest level of leadership and and not be feel it's weird that it you're all men there right that there are two women in nine men that should feel sort of off something should feel off because you're not if you're running a company that that serves the population at large you're serving 51% or women and yeah I think I think you're right about that but and then use your power to say say that out loud and say hey where the where the women you know where's the women cinematographer or the woman but it's a the the part of this whole conversation is that these are issues with which every woman is away we're all aware of it and all men are not aware so this is it's hard to have the the whole thing it's just like you know the movie is all white there's all white people that's just as weird yeah and and sort of the whiteness of it is and the fact the fact of that phalanx of faces that is so not diverse it it feels weird to me looking at it you know now but that's the way the world was that's the way it was and we're changing it it's really good we're changing it but you never changes faster yeah it's up to the people who have the power to open the door to seed the power to see it it's like women have learned the language of men have lived in the house of men all their lives we can speak it you know how when you learn language you learn French you learn Spanish it doesn't really it isn't your language until you dream in it and the only way to dream and it is to speak it and women speak men but men don't speak women women they don't dream in it I think what Merrill is trying to say Oh God I love him I love you no hi Don it was just I have to explain one thing getting back to the movie I have just came back to the movie we would be ready for a very intense scene with Meryl she was all prepared for it the whole crew is quiet myself Jeff before I see action Bradley says something like that tomorrow well in speaking of current events in addition to that what feels like an upheaval in in in the world of gender politics your business my business - we're going through these technological upheavals we're going through an upheaval even today we you were joking about it in the green room that this is a Fox movie that you know the Fox is being purchased by Disney this very day which I'm sure we're all still processing and I don't expect you to talk about that in specific but I do think it's an example of a larger shift that's engulfing the entertainment industry I know that journalism is just as destabilized at this moment and I'm I'm coming at it from my readers point of view which is they want more movies like this what will it take to preserve a place in the ecology for this kind of film well they have to go the opening weekend that is what will make the movie is to go to the movie that the numbers crunch is gone nobody went in a very distinguished between wait two weeks you can't wait two weeks you ever distinguish between going to the movies and going to the living room because there's two different worlds completely and and and god bless them you know I love I love the fact that there are so many different places that young people and old people can get work and that is there are places where stories can be told more today than ever before in the history of our medium of our business you've got Amazon you've got a hulu you've got Netflix you've got all these different places where you can make tell stories Jeff thank you Jeff Jeff is there I think the sooner we all just all gonna work for Jeff one day the better off we'll be we're all working for Jeff right now we love it those other Hut out of it and Amazon and Amazon but but handy lines that the but but they're therein lies the rub it's great to be able to tell stories I'd like there's all these places all these homes that are willing to accept good storytellers but how will the movie theaters react when everybody decides to go to the movies at someone else's living room as opposed to out into the world into a theater and my only whole thing about this is and I've I just feel very strongly that if we're gonna make a movie we got to call it a movie and if we're gonna make a TV movie we gotta call a TV movie and one has an Emmy and one has an Oscar and you can't parse that you can't spin that you can't fool us into thinking that a television movie is a theatrical motion picture release so that is the only confusion that I feel is threatening we're putting a threat on movie-going attendance in the future we're starting now I'm going into the future yeah but kids are watching them here they are they're watching a movie here you know and it doesn't matter to them because somehow they haven't gotten the habit of that other enveloping great experience that's true but when they're watching one of my movies because I don't shoot a lot of close-ups yeah I should they have to go like this they're gonna have to watch the whole thing like that because I just don't you know do this all the time who among you has streaming a streaming project anybody a streaming on a streaming site you do oh no no I have I'd be streaming do I have a stream priming project yeah are you working on a project due to a huge project on Cortez and Montezuma for Amazon oh yeah because I'm wondering if right because I'm wondering if that's part of your creative life now is making sure that you're in that space hey give me 12 hours I'm not gonna ask an audience to go out to the to an arc light right venue and see a 12 hour movie I'm not Andy Warhol but but but but I want them to go well maybe not now maybe later okay we can stipulate that but but but but you know I want to watch the crown I want to watch Game of Thrones I want to watch you know you know you know um Emmys tail I want to see 12 hours I want to see 20 hours of that there's places for the big kind of sagas and then this place is for the message the drama and the the action of a film like the post you know that I don't I don't know that a feature-length film which is three acts around 1:00 somewhere between a hundred and somewhere around 120 minutes in the movie I don't know that an unless it is played as a theatrical release I don't know that any has touched a zeitgeist I think I think streaming there are stories that beg to have 10 hours or 12 hours or three seasons 30 episodes three hours I don't know that there has been a movie that you could only see on your TV or on your watch that has captured the you know the lightning and a bottle that certain films do I mean if I don't know that if get out for example that that feature is Brad Bradley Cooper Bradley Cooper here that only but had only been available on some of those other lesser outlets I don't know that if it would have had the social purchase that it does there is something about not only the fact that it plays abroad and you have to make a decision to go and pay in order to sit in a communal room and watch it which has a power all into itself if it didn't have that as well as all the attendant attention that goes along with it because of you know marketing and interviews and and in a press that covers Big Time movies I don't know if it would have entered into the the national discussion maybe it's it's also sighs sorry matters and did I just say I think it does no but I mean the Greeks you know they put the the actors on big catherine i those big shoes right to make them bigger and and and and the bigger image does affect us in a different way than the one that's this big and you can pause you know and take a phone call and then go eat something yeah but you know rewind where were we it's it has a different yeah right now we've all experienced the post playing with in front of an audience it is a it is an audience participatory movie yeah the audience makes noise in the movie they are part of the experience you don't get that when you're watching it at home so optimistic pessimistic quick-quick but all about the future of this medium and above optimistic others yeah optimistic I mean I've been part of Breaking Bad and better call Saul and I'm optimistic about features because I think this streaming thing came to everybody only it's a fairly recent phenomenon and everyone got very excited and I heard a lot of people describe it as well it's a ten hour movie but it's not a 10 hour movie it's a different experience and we just don't have the words or the we haven't dialed in how it's different yet as a group but we will and then we'll start to see like oh the post that's a different experience that's not a short version of a 10 hour thing and and so it's just people need I think some these massive changes that have happened in the last few years and everything seems to happen bigger and faster it seems to me or maybe I'm just getting older but it just give it everyone needs time to sort out why that's not quite the same thing as that other experience and I still want to have that other experience it I think all of us are lucky and probably get screeners from the Academy and it's very scary it's it's almost like I've taken a sleeping pill it's it bothers me I put screeners on of these wonderful movies and I'm at home with my dog and I'm I'm out I would like fall asleep halfway through at the Zapruder film I mean it's there's something about that experience that doesn't I can't concentrate on movies even though I feel lucky I have them so I hope that people don't lose the theater going communal you haven't weighed in yet Meryl optimistic oh I am optimistic because I think you want to get out of your house you know sometimes you want to get away from us that little screen which many people work on all day and yeah the TV is about that much and you're still watching and you want to also that that thing of feeling other people even if they're annoying and especially if they're annoying there's a moment in an annoying movie theater when everybody goes quiet and everybody's watching the same thing then you know you have a movie then you have something and nobody wants to make their own greasy cheese nachos give me a give me a double slug of coke and all she's nachos and please tell me you had red vines not Twizzlers Twizzlers all right I'll take the Twitter tell that story about Katharine Graham the Nightbeat oh okay I met Katharine Graham the last day she walked the earth was at the I was invited said would you like to have lunch with Katharine Graham I said sure I sat right next to her at the end of lunch we we bid her goodbye she took her golf cart back to the cabin she was staying where she passed away yeah we were in Sun Valley at that herb almond conference of bajillion heirs you were there take it back and we were we were and we were talking about movies it was a wonderful conversation and I was waxing eloquent of what the future was going to be and as a guy who tells stories and it's gonna be great because we can we can have stories that will go on for 10 hours or 13 hours and even regular movies people watch them at home and eventually all everybody will have a great TV and everybody'll have great speakers and they'll be able to choose anything they want to watch anytime they want to watch a West Side Story no Lawrence of Arabia no it's close to Canada now let's go oh let's watch this thing about cats falling off of a have to close watch that but see and I said and and it's going to be that's just way the business is going to be and she said to me sis oh but people will always want to go out to the movies and god bless her yeah I think I think it is that desire yes she was she was even then she was still writing her autobiography right indeed wow it was a special day well that's a lovely note to go out on I'm afraid our time is up Bradley Bob Tom Merrill Stephen thank you thank you all for spending the afternoon with us before we leave this one more word sorry before we leave the stage I'd like to remind our audience to stay seated as Tom will be back on stage in just a minute joined by my boss the post Marty Baron thanks thanks again

Channel: Washington Post

Views: 236,919

Rating: 4.5962615 out of 5

Keywords: Washington Post YouTube, Washington Post Video, WaPo Video, The Washington Post, News, The post film, the post, steven spielberg the post, the post actors, washington post movie, the post oscars, Katharine Graham, Katherine graham movie, katharine graham washington post, OSCAR, ANN HORNADAY, ENTERTAINMENT, STEVEN SPIELBERG, ACADEMY AWARDS, NOMINEE, TOM HANKS, ARTS ENTERTAINMENT, OSCAR NOMINEES

Id: gBy3DKdJMhY

Length: 65min 5sec (3905 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2017