Liz Hannah had a damn good time celebrating her 32nd birthday last week. “The Post,” which she wrote along with Josh Singer, premiered in Washington DC.
Until about a month ago pretty much no one had heard of Hannah. Now everyone knows her name. She is the originator of the script for “The Post,” which came in second on the Blacklist last year. The drama opens in limited release on Friday and wide in mid-January. Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks lead the star-studded cast. And it is directed by Steven Spielberg. Pretty impressive for a woman who didn’t have a screenwriting credit to her name.
The story of how “The Post” came to the screen is quite remarkable. Hannah read Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham’s autobiography, “Personal History,” and became obsessed with it. (Please put this on your list if you have not read it yet — it’s spectacular). Hannah wrote the script in three months, it was purchased by Amy Pascal’s company on Halloween in 2016, and it was in Steven Spielberg’s hands by February. “Spotlight” screenwriter Josh Singer was brought on to flush out the journalistic aspect of it, and he and Hannah worked together to rewrite it in 10 weeks. They were shooting the film in May. It’s impossible to overstate just how quickly this project was manifested compared to most films. And it couldn’t be coming out at a better time.
Hannah is already getting awards recognition for the film, which is clearly touching a nerve in our culture. It explores the release of the Pentagon Papers, first printed in the New York Times. After an injunction prevented the Times from continuing to publish, the Post stepped in and began publishing the shocking, game-changing material.
Streep plays Graham. She had taken over as publisher of the Post after her husband, whom her father gave control of the paper to, committed suicide, and she had to make the biggest decision of her life. It was up to her whether to go public with the story of this massive government cover-up or stay silent.
This movie shows the importance of the free press to the life of a democracy, but it’s also a very personal story about a woman who was trained to be a wife who becomes the main character in her own story. We see her stepping up and entering rooms that are just full of men — no wonder she is shaking every time she needs to speak. “The Post” is a movie about a woman who finds her voice and saves democracy in the process.
Hannah is clearly on the road to even greater success. She’s already secured her next gig, writing “Only Plane in the Sky,” a drama that takes place on Air Force One in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
