[MUSIC PLAYING] OLIVIA MA: Hi, everyone. Welcome to "Talks at Google." My name is Olivia
Ma, and I'm so, so honored to welcome Bob
Odenkirk and Tom Hanks today to discuss their roles in
the upcoming Steven Spielberg film, "The Post," which hits
theaters on December 22. So please join me in welcoming
Bob Odenkirk and Tom Hanks. [APPLAUSE] So first of all, I
just want to thank you all for taking the time to
join us here at the YouTube space in New York. It's such an honor and
such a timely movie to be discussing today. I also just want
to start by saying this is deeply personal
for me because my father, my late father worked
for a long time as an editor and executive at
the Washington Post company. He worked under Kay Graham
when he first got his start, and then later for
his son, Donald. And so seeing the
movie last night, which I had the
pleasure of doing, was really, really meaningful. And so I just want to start by
asking about the timing of all of this. It's been reported that Steven
Spielberg got the script in March, I believe, and then
you all started filming in May. And here we are in
December, and the film is about to hit the theaters. Talk a little bit
about why you felt like it was important
to make this movie now, and what the urgency was. TOM HANKS: I'll go first because
I'm hip to some of this stuff, and Bob's not. [LAUGHTER] So Amy Pascal, who
is the producer, read Liz Hannah's
draft spec script that was written in October. We read it. And by that, I
think Steven and-- I don't know. When did you read it
for the first time? BOB ODENKIRK: After you guys. TOM HANKS: After you. BOB ODENKIRK: Or, I don't know. I may have. When did it start shooting? TOM HANKS: Well I
read it in February, and the first day
of shooting was May, which is a brutally
short pre-production time. And my last day was I
think the 26th of July, so it shot that fast. But at the same time,
Liz Hannah's screenplay was really about
Katharine Graham becoming Katharine Graham. The Pentagon Papers
were presented in it as though it was
a treasure chest, but we didn't know what was
inside the treasure chest. Josh Singer who
wrote "Spotlight," among many other things, he
ended up teaming up with Liz because Steven wanted more
information, more details, more of the procedure
that went on into this week of
American history, so that we were
constantly working with new pages, new materials. There were whole
scenes that didn't exist until, for example,
we met Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers
with the Rand Corporation. And there are scenes in the
movie that came directly from our talk with him. So it was greatly in
flux from the moment we first read it right up
until the last day we shot. Does that answer the
timeliness of it? OLIVIA MA: Yeah. TOM HANKS: It just so happens
that we're making a movie that took place in 1971. And if you invert
the integers to 17, it's like we were making a
movie about current events. [LAUGHTER] OLIVIA MA: Yeah. There certainly was
a lot of resonance with some of the events that are
happening in the world today. Talk to me a little about
preparing for these roles, and what the research
process was like. You mentioned you
had the opportunity to talk with Daniel
Ellsberg, who of course, was a critical
player in this entire story. What was it like to
really immerse yourself in the culture of
a 1970s newsroom? BOB ODENKIRK: Well, Tom knew Ben
Bradlee, which is pretty cool. TOM HANKS: Yeah, I had met Ben
Bradlee through Nora Ephron, and this was years ago. And believe it or
not, I actually met Katharine Graham
the day she died. That was a fluky thing. OLIVIA MA: Wow. TOM HANKS: We didn't
know that was happening. BOB ODENKIRK: It's a
service you provide. TOM HANKS: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] That's how deep I was willing
to go in the research. But knowing that
there is always-- Katharine Graham wrote
this amazing autobiography, as did Ben. And there's oceans of video. There's a lot of material
that you can find out about the particulars. But digging into the process
of the pre-Watergate, pre "All the President's Men"
version of the Washington Post, that was just grunt work. We met an awful lot of people. And we just asked them
every possible question we could about how
to get the paper out, and the importance of this
week, and the history of it, because it really was an
assault on the First Amendment. The New York Times
was, I think the word is enjoined or conjoined. They were forced
to stop publishing by the Justice Department. And the idea of the
Washington Post saying, well, we've got the papers as
well, so we're going to do it. They ran flush into
the danger of being imprisoned for treason for
giving up of national secrets. And [INAUDIBLE] from that
is also the background of the paper itself,
because they were not-- the Washington Post
at that time was not just competing with the New York
Times for national prominence. They weren't even the number
one paper in Washington, DC. The Washington Star, which
doesn't exist anymore, was the number one
paper Washington, DC. So you get all this kind
of magnificent flexing of journalistic muscles. I mean, you know, Ben Bradlee,
he was a man possessed. He was a hunting
dog when it came down to doing the work
of the fourth estate. And Katharine Graham had
to deal with the realities of her father started
the newspaper. And when he died, he
gave the newspaper to her husband, not her. So her husband ran it. Their son Don had actually
served in Vietnam, and at the whims of history. And these papers, this study
that had been commissioned and had been sitting around
the Rand Corporation for years divulged just the-- what's the word-- the rocky road
in which American involvement got into this thing
that was killing about 8,000 young
Americans every year, to the total of
52,000, I think, died. So it ends up
being this treatise on people who
understand that they have to have a
degree of cynicism, because both Ben Bagdikian,
and everybody in the news room, and Ben Bradlee, and Kay knew
that elected officials lie in order to curry favor
and hold on to their power. And yet, that cynicism
could not give way to a blanket statement
or a desire just to run with anything
that was not the provable codified research
driven truth that they then ended up finding out. And that's really
what the struggle is day in and day out in
the six days of the paper. BOB ODENKIRK: My
research was I read Ben Bagdikian's autobiography,
which is a great book. He's a great journalist, gave
his whole life to journalism and cared about it deeply. And there's a great
YouTube interview with him. And so that was pretty cool. TOM HANKS: How do
you find the YouTube? What do you do in order to-- BOB ODENKIRK: You got to get
one of these fancy computers. OLIVIA MA: It's right here in
this building, all the videos that are on there. TOM HANKS: Let's go ask. Let's go down t the
library, pull out the VHS. BOB ODENKIRK: You
call this building, and a woman goes down an
aisle, and she finds the file. OLIVIA MA: Well
actually, I wanted to ask about your character, Ben
Bagdikian, because, you know, he's somewhat a lesser
known character in history. BOB ODENKIRK: Sure, yeah. OLIVIA MA: But he had
this essential role in actually acquiring
the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. And there's an incredible
scene in the hotel room when you go to actually
meet him to get the papers, and you promise him that you
are going to publish them. BOB ODENKIRK: Yeah,
hoping that that's true. OLIVIA MA: And I wanted
to talk about that scene. TOM HANKS: Yeah. OLIVIA MA: Yeah. And just like the
courage that is sort of manifested in that moment. BOB ODENKIRK: I think it's
balls, not so much courage, because Ben isn't utterly
completely sure that it will get published. He's assuring Ellsberg
so he can have the story. And he wants it to be published. He thinks it's the right
thing to do, I think. But he didn't run
the paper, and he knew that whenever you hand
stuff over to the bosses, even though I think he
was tight with Bradlee, I'm not sure how long they'd
worked together, but to me, it seems like they'd worked
together for a couple of years, and he was a seasoned reporter
by the time he got hired there. So I imagine they
had a comradeship of years of journalism shared. But he had to promise Ellsberg
he would publish it in order to walk away with the papers. He also had to take a second set
of the papers, which he always felt bad about, because it
went against his rules of being a journalist. Ellsberg asked him to take
two copies of the papers, one to give to the
Washington Post and one that he secretly
gave to a congressman to read into the record, into
the congressional record, thereby making it public. And after the Washington
Post published papers and got in trouble alongside
the New York Times, then Bagdikian did
deliver the papers to a senator whose
name I can't remember who didn't read all the
papers, but he read a chunk. He read a couple hours' worth
into the congressional record. So that has to be public, so
thereby getting any which way, breaking this code
of silence on them. OLIVIA MA: Yeah. Do you think if this
moment happened today that journalists working
in the environment that we're living in today what
would make the same decision? TOM HANKS: Oh, absolutely. I think one of the things
that has been learned from this checkered
period of our history is that you have to take to
the barricades at some point, and they would. What's interesting is the
assault that would go on in regards to the
First Amendment would not be the same
as it was in 1971. At that time, they
had the power in order to literally cease the presses
from operating, and making it impossible to literally
physically publish the information. That what's going on
now is a different sort of assault on the
First Amendment, a different sort of fight. It is a constant de-legitimizing
of the truth, which at the same time, raises
up the legitimacy of what truly is a false media. You can decry, oh,
that's just fake news. That's just fake news that comes
out of the mainstream media. But they go the extra
distance in order to have the multiple sources,
and so all of this stuff can be confirmed. And yet, there is
also, as we know, oceans of outlets
that don't that don't give a damn about
the truth are forcefully are putting out news that
they know themselves is false. And in that way, that's a
different sort of assault on-- Let's understand that
you could take the First Amendment of the Constitution
and maybe not even bother with the rest of them, because
in that First Amendment is we are guaranteed that no
government will establish a national religion, so we
have freedom of religion. They cannot stop us from
the freedom of assembly, which means we get to hang
out with like minded people. We have freedom
of speech in order to say anything we want
to short of yelling fire in a crowded theater
when there is no fire, and a
freedom of the press. You cannot stop the
press from existing. Take that, that literally
is the foundation for the American democracy
in all of Western society. When you try to
conspire in order to attack any one of
those on any forum, you are doing literally the
same work of administration that was truly
taking on and putting the force of a government behind
the ceasing of publication, and therefore removing the right
to the freedom of the press. OLIVIA MA: I totally agree. I think one of my favorite
fun facts about you, which I think maybe you
should confirm here, is that you sent a coffeemaker
to the White House press corps. Has that happened? TOM HANKS: Long ago, when
I was just a visitor, we visited the empty
White House press room, and there were like
three people there. It has to be staffed
24 hours a day because if something
goes on, someone's got to be there to turn on
the cameras and the microphone and start rolling. And I saw they had the
saddest, oldest, shittiest little Mr. Coffee
that had already been there for like 12 years. Guys, you need a
new coffee maker. So I sent them a pretty
good espresso machine. But that was like 15 years ago. And when I went back
and saw it again, it was the same espresso maker. I said, guys, come on. So I sent them a new one so
that they could pursue truth, justice, and the American way. [LAUGHTER] And it's and it's
open for everybody, any member of the press corps to
get a decent cup of coffee now. OLIVIA MA: That's fantastic. Well, Bob, I wanted to ask you
a little bit about your decision to take on this role, because
your career has really spanned a lot of different genres. You've done "Mr. Show," and
comedy, and then of course, "Breaking Bad," and
"Better Call Saul." What was it like
to work with Steven Spielberg on a historical film? BOB ODENKIRK: It was
very intimidating, and I felt out of place. I really did. And it was hard. OLIVIA MA: It didn't show. It didn't show. BOB ODENKIRK: Well,
we tricked you. They used only the good takes. That's how they did it. It was truly-- I haven't been this
intimidated in like 30 years since I first got hired at
"SNL" where I wrote for this guy when I was 25. And so it's like literally
that's how long it's been since I had
that feeling that I had on this movie of like,
I'm going to be fired. I should be fired. I should call them. You should fire me. But it just felt
like it was just-- look, I've been
very lucky to work on some great dramas on TV,
"Fargo," and "Breaking Bad," and all. And these are
respected projects, and great, great
creators, and stuff, but this was another level. And I've always loved
Tom's work so much. And Steven Spielberg,
it's just he's an icon, and so it was intimidating,
but Steven's very nice. And luckily, I played a
guy who I could relate to. I think Bagdikian's anxious
energy coupled with-- in his biography, he
talks about learning to fade into the woodwork. He learned as a journalist
to just quiet himself down to get people to talk. And I thought I maybe was
able to combine those using my natural nervousness to both
recede away from the camera and then be energetic
when needed. So it was really fun. And I had some comedy in
it too with the nerves of trying to get the
phone call to happen, because I have some tenuous
connection to Ellsberg. Bagdikian actually worked
with Ellsberg at Rand, and he sort of put
together in his mind who would have the chutzpah
to put these papers out, and he chased down Ellsberg. And it was a tricky
thing to get the papers, and Ellsberg was scared that
he was going to get arrested. So there was a lot of
tension in my scenes, and I got to use that, use
my own natural nervousness to play it. I guess it played well. I feel good about it. And obviously, I think a lot
of you have seen the movie. Anybody? Yeah, a couple of you. One thing we
haven't talked about is Meryl and Katharine Graham. And Tom was talking about how
that early draft, Liz Hannah's draft was very much about
her journey as a woman to own her power that
she'd been given. But she internally
was like, I don't know if I have a right to this. As smart as she was, as
composed as she was as a person, it was so not done,
and it was so not something she was familiar
with that it was hard for her to assume the power
that she'd been granted, and that was hers. And so in this movie in
the course of the story, you watch her grow into that. It's really an amazing thing. Alongside everything
that Tom said about the stories of
getting the papers, and fighting back
against the government, and getting the crack
down, and sorting out this mystery, the suspense,
actually, of that, it's a mix of so many
things, this movie. And that story is all
there from Liz's script. OLIVIA MA: Yeah. I mean, two of my favorite
moments of the movie are when Kay Graham makes
the decision on the phone to go ahead and say, yes,
we're going to publish. BOB ODENKIRK: Yeah, yeah. OLIVIA MA: And my other
favorite movie moment is when she's walking down the
steps of the Supreme Court. BOB ODENKIRK: Oh, yeah. Holy cow. OLIVIA MA: And it's this
whole, all of these women are looking at her with a
sense of awe and inspiration. BOB ODENKIRK: Here's one
of my favorite scenes, just because it worked so well. When she goes to that boardroom,
and she's all prepared. She's going to give
this presentation. And it's all men, and they look
right past her as she talks. No one listens to her. And the way that plays
out, you feel it. You feel her being
ignored, and you're like, it's crazy to watch. OLIVIA MA: And it's a
moment in the moment that we're living right now. I'm going to ask
one more question. Then everyone here, please
have your questions ready. I want to ask you Tom,
I was surprised to learn this was actually the
first project you'd ever done with Meryl Streep. Talk about what that was
like to work with her. And then if there's other
actors that either of you have always wanted to work with. TOM HANKS: Well, you
dare not assemble a list. Because as soon as you
do, it'll never happen. It's just bad luck. We had never just been in
projects in which there was a Meryl Streep role
that we could go to her for, and I guess vise versa. I mean, I can't sing
a lick, so there was no way I could put
myself in "Mamma Mia." [LAUGHTER] Which would have been
the closest I could get. The intimidation factor
is truly off the scale. I mean, we knew each other. We met each other. We would say hello
to each other. But the mystery of Meryl
is, how does she do it? And it turns out she does it
just like anybody else does. You sit. You run your lines a bunch. You start. She stops. She goes back and forth. She's part of an ensemble. So she does it like
everybody else, but she does it
unlike anybody else. There's no way to do it. That scene where
she's only ever been either the daughter or
the wife of the person who ran the paper. And that moment where she's
getting yelled at on the phone by people who are saying,
under no circumstances can you publish. Well, I don't think you
should because if it was me, I wouldn't. To other people saying,
if you don't publish, we're going to resign,
because there's no sense of being a
journalist if you're not going to run with this. And that decision is
placed solely on her. And my voice is in it. Are you on the phone, too? BOB ODENKIRK: No. TOM HANKS: No, but
you're in the other room when it's all going on. BOB ODENKIRK: Yeah. TOM HANKS: You
threaten to resign. OLIVIA MA: You
threaten to resign. TOM HANKS: And you don't
know what's going to happen. And I think it's one of the-- it's a powerful moment in, I
think, the history of cinema, coming from-- she'd hate
if I said this to it, but I think the greatest
actor who has ever been on celluloid, Meryl Streep. OLIVIA MA: All right. We're going to take a few
questions from the audience. There's a microphone
here, and yeah. So we'll start with you. AUDIENCE: Yeah, hi. Thank you guys so
much for being here. Big fans of both of you. Really, really
quickly, Tom, I wanted to tell you a fast story. My mom is such a huge fan. She was about to give
birth to my brother in labor having
contractions while you were about to win the Academy Award. She didn't want to
go to the hospital because she wanted
to see you win. She went to the hospital
after much urging, and was able to see win, and
then successfully delivered my brother. TOM HANKS: Wow. AUDIENCE: So she's a big fan. [LAUGHTER] TOM HANKS: Is your brother OK? AUDIENCE: He is alive, yes. TOM HANKS: OK, that
would be my question. AUDIENCE: He's good. BOB ODENKIRK: His name
is "Forrest Gump." [LAUGHTER] AUDIENCE: But huge fans. And so the prelude-- TOM HANKS: Is your
brother smart or is he-- AUDIENCE: He's very smart. TOM HANKS: OK, I'm
glad to hear that. AUDIENCE: I wanted to ask-- I thought that
was very eloquent, your description of the changing
nature of technology in terms of disclosures back when
this movie takes place, and currently how a
lot of disclosures are affecting politics today. It's made me wonder
for both of you has ever working on a
movie, especially one that's political like this, really
challenged or changed any of your opinions about
a strongly held belief that you had going into it? BOB ODENKIRK: Well, I mostly
did comedy in my life, and I'd made fun of stuff
that came from my brain. And so no, I would say that
hasn't happened for me. TOM HANKS: The thing that
happens when you take on a job because you think you
know enough of the story, and then in the
process of it, you end up learning more and
more and more and more until you find out literally,
I didn't know that. Well most recently,
the movie "Sully" about Chelsey who landed
the plane out on the Hudson, all of the industry,
and union, and NTSB, National Transportation
Safety Board pressures that is on
somebody who did that was extremely eye-opening. It made you number
one, made me not want to fly on a commercial
airliner anymore, because you find out how little
they're paying their pilots and how they cut costs. But also, for 18
months, he had no idea if he was going to be found
responsible for landing the plane the way he did. In which case, he would
have lost his license and would have lost
literally the way that he could make a living. You find that stuff out, and
you kind of think, really? And yet, you kind of find out
these common ordinary details of truth that makes the
original reason we wanted to do the movie even kind of
grander, because you just find out how much truly is at stake. AUDIENCE: Thank you. TOM HANKS: You're welcome. AUDIENCE: Hi. So Mr. Hanks, your Instagram is
one of my all time favorites. You do the important work
of documenting ephemera around the world. And I was wondering-- you've
spoken so articulately today about some of the
challenges facing-- and how do you consider
using your platforms and speaking publicly
about things that are going on versus doing
fun things like that that just bring a little
pleasure to people's lives? TOM HANKS: Well, you
know, it's interesting. Do you have a big
internet social platform, kind of a presence? BOB ODENKIRK: Well, my
issue is that I did comedy for 25 years pretty
straight, just that. And so I have fans
from that world, and it's a very critical
world, and they're used to my political opinion. And then I have a
larger group of people who've seen me in drama. So even though I
spent most of my life with these fans who
would completely understand if I made a cynical
or crass political comment, I have to be careful
because I have more fans who don't know I ever spoke up
about my opinion about anything, and they think I'm
a dramatic actor. And if I were to say
something pointed, they might feel insulted and
wonder why I'm even commenting. So I keep my mouth shut. I'm trying to
navigate this thing. [LAUGHTER] I don't know what to do. TOM HANKS: I think the
desire is for authenticity in whatever you put out there. And if you have eight
bajillion followers and you're going to use them in
order to sell your new product or steer them towards something
that you're actually being paid to endorse, I think
that's disingenuous, and it removes a great promise
of what all this connectivity was meant to provide. I don't care by and large
what most people have to say about the issue of the day. You know, it's like this. Remember when the ice bucket
challenge came around? Well, that was
just a great thing. But you can't create that again. You can't suddenly, just
by putting it out there, make something become
as important as that. There is a natural kind of
microbiology to all this stuff. And I put up visual haikus
and every now and again post pictures of guys
I knew who fought in World War II who passed
away, and just say Godspeed. Thanks for being there. Because at the end
of the day, I don't trust somebody who
uses it for an agenda, be it either self-serving, or
kind of like you said, saying, oh, I have something
important to say about this. OK, fine, but I don't have
to pay attention to it. AUDIENCE: Well, thank you,
and please keep doing it. TOM HANKS: All right. OK. It means you've got to
wander around and look at the ground a lot. You've got to like
always be looking down. And why do people
always lose pacifiers from these babies, man? There's millions of pacifiers
lying on the streets all the time. I don't know why. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] Well, in order to
use them, you've got to run them through
your dishwasher. So I like to watch
TV with a found pacifier in my mouth sometimes. [LAUGHTER] DIANA: Hi. I'm Diana. I run a channel
about physics, so I have to ask an important
question about the universe which is definitely related. Why do you post pictures
of the solo mittens? TOM HANKS: There's a
story behind every one of those mittens. [LAUGHTER] It belonged to somebody. They got it as a gift. They bought it. Sometimes, it's an
expensive glove. Sometimes, it's a cheap one. But I just like to thank
someone was walking around, and their mind was
somewhere else, and they put their glove on, and
they walked a little bit more. And they reached for the other
one, and where did it go? What's going on in their lives? Why did they do that? And the one that really gets
me is little baby booties, when you find a little baby booty. So it means some kid
was rolled around in a stroller in the
middle of February and probably lost their
toes to frostbite. [LAUGHTER] They had to go to
the emergency room. It was a big thing. There is a before
and after story that goes along with those
gloves that I just find-- who hasn't lost a
glove in this world? And I think it unifies us. It's the great promise
of social media. It brings us all
together, doesn't it, in the form of one
last glove or mitten. DIANA: Thank you for
resolving the mystery. TOM HANKS: There you go. [LAUGHTER] AUDIENCE: Hi, Mr. Hanks. Hi. I'm a super big fan. And thank you for having
us all here today. So I'm a YouTube creator. I'm from India, channel
name is Rickshawali. So I can't talk too much, so
I will say it very quickly. So do you think since we're
all YouTube creators here, do you think is there
ever a way that there is a bridge that we
creators can have a bridge to traditional cinema? Do you think that's
ever possible? Being on YouTube, what
is your view on that? TOM HANKS: Well, I think
you guys are already creating original cinema. Years go by. I think we always get
this kind of question of how can I get started
in show business? And the answer is get
started in show business. Come up with something
and put it on. You can use your phone. You can use something decent. How many people
actually do create original stories as
opposed to things that are going on in their lives? See, the nature of how we are
entertained is in flux now, and it's not going to
land for quite some time. How we pay for our entertainment
is going to be determined. And I think the only
guarantee is-- or only the biggest signpost
of it is, is going to be the quality
of that entertainment. We all know people that
put on different sweaters and they say, I don't like
the way this sweater-- I was just hearing a story about
somebody who does it like that. And it turns out they
get paid in order to put on a certain
sweater, what have you. That's commerce. It's not art. If you're creating original
stories out there, it is art. And as people discover you,
because you put anything on YouTube, it's going to be
there for the rest of time. It will be part of your library. It'll be part of your
historical output. And you will attract
people who are anxious to see what you are
going to come up with next. And as soon as they
are that, they're willing to pay for that,
to a certain degree. So anybody who does it and
is good at it and pursues it will be able to attract
not only the audience. But someone is out there seeking
to have an alliance with you, because they want good content
and they want to take it up to whatever the next level. So I would say there's
no individual path to quote unquote, "legitimate
cinema," because what's the difference between someone
who never goes to the movies but instead watches everything
on either their phone or their laptop? There is no difference. They're seeking
entertainment, and they want good entertainment,
and they want to be inspired by what you do. So the answer is,
just keep doing it, and it's going to happen. AUDIENCE: Thank you so much. TOM HANKS: Thank you. AUDIENCE: Thank you. OLIVIA MA: Thank
you all so much. We're running out of time, but
a really big round of applause for Tom and Bob
for being with us. TOM HANKS: Thank you. [CHEERING]
