The Hollywood Reporter recently gathered Steven Spielberg, 70, and some of the key women who worked on the film The Post (first-time screenwriter Liz Hannah, 31; producer and former Sony chief Amy Pascal, 59; Meryl Streep, 62; and the director's longtime producer Kristie Macosko Krieger, 47). Here is an excerpt of their conversation:
This film came together on very short notice. Why?
STEVEN SPIELBERG I read the script without any intention of telling the story myself or of committing to a production while in the middle of [another one,] Ready Player One, which was only half sane. But I was really curious about the subject matter. Ben Bradlee was my neighbor for years in East Hampton. He and his wife, Sally [Quinn], and Nora Ephron and [her husband] Nick Pileggi would come over and we would have these soirees. When I finished Liz's script, I thought this was an idea that felt more like 2017 than 1971 — I could not believe the similarities between today and what happened with the Nixon administration against their avowed enemies The New York Times and The Washington Post. I realized this was the only year to make this film.
KRISTIE MACOSKO KRIEGER He said, "If I can't make it this year, I'm not making it."
SPIELBERG My first reaction [reading it] was I got scared — which is good for me because fear is my fuel. The more frightened I become of something, the more I have to work through it. This was a topic that was scaring everybody I know on my side of the [political] street — and quite rightly.
What are they scared of?
SPIELBERG That we've lost the majority of good listeners, that our conversations have turned into skirmishes. We live in an area where we don't know a lot of red-state voters. Well, I know a lot because I have friends and family in other parts of this country, and so at dinner-table conversations outside of California, I'm completely mute or I get into these huge rows. The gray and the blue have become the blue and the red. And it is as vast a chasm as our nation faced before the Civil War. I've never seen anything like it.
MERYL STREEP We don’' know where north is. People disagree on what actual facts are. Whether this table is really a table.
LIZ HANNAH We need to see each other. We need to look each other in the eye and know you're not a villain, you are not evil.
Would you have had the courage to print the Pentagon Papers?
STREEP I don't know. I think you only confront your courage in the moment that it's asked of you.
SPIELBERG I don't think as an actor you have to identify with the character you're playing. You just need to find relevant and metaphoric comparisons to the person you're playing. I always find it a bit of a fallacy that actors have to be who they play.
STREEP Yeah, thank God. If you're playing Lady Macbeth.
Of the women you've worked with, has any shifted your thinking?
SPIELBERG Kathy Kennedy, when we first started working together. She started off as my secretary — you're putting it in the context of 1978.
PASCAL I was a secretary.
SPIELBERG Basically, I was a little bit of a hothead, impatient, and I would be hard on my crew — loving to my cast but tough on my crew. And about 15 days into shooting E.T., she pulled me into her office and sat me down in a chair and gave me the bollocking of my life. Because she did not like the way I was talking to the crew. She didn't care for my impatience, she didn't care for my sharpness. She said, "This is unacceptable behavior," and I hadn't heard that since a teacher in school or my own mom — and that was a big shift in my life. I became mindful because somebody I trusted and respected had called me out.
MACOSKO KRIEGER Kathy taught me how to work hard. She was always the first person on set, the last person to leave. There was no job beneath her, no job above her.
Read the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter.
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