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There isn’t much we know about “The Post” as of now – sure, we know it’s eagerly anticipated and a serious contender for the 2018 awards season, simply because Spielberg, Hanks and Streep are involved. But we don’t really know anything about its storyline, except that it will follow 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. From what I’ve read since the project’s announcement, and from the Spielberg films I’ve seen, I was expecting Hanks to lead the picture and Streep playing second fiddle, an important one, but not a central one. But as screenwriter Liz Hannah has told Vulture in an interview, her script puts the focus onKatharine Graham. After reading her autobiography Personal History, “I absolutely fell in love with her,” Hannah says. Given that Graham had enough drama in her life to make “10,000 movies,” the problem was how to write something more than a broad biopic. By using the Pentagon Papers as a turning point, Hannah could zoom in on Graham’s struggle to find her voice – at age 54 – “and to become the person she was really going to be for the rest of her life.” The article also notes that Hannah was partnered with Josh Singer, a veteran screenwriter who won an Oscar for Spotlight, after Spielberg came on board. This sounds really exciting, as does the rest of the article, which can be read here.
