Steven Spielberg RUBEN V. NEPALES
LOS ANGELES—For a Hollywood movie, especially for one directed by Steven Spielberg, “The Post” was a quickie. It took only nine months from the time Steven read the script to make the film starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks—that’s a record.
Why did the award-winning filmmaker temporarily stop doing postproduction work on his new movie, “Ready Player One,” to make “The Post”? Steven felt that the true story in the ’70s of how then President Richard Nixon attempted to gag Washington Post and The New York Times reporters strikes a chord in this Trump era when journalists are standing up to an adversarial presidency.
With amazing speed, Steven was able to assemble topnotch talents led by Meryl and Tom to portray Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and legendary editor Ben Bradlee, respectively.
The duo fought to publish the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret documents on the Vietnam War, even in the face of
a legal threat from the Nixon administration.
Nominated for best picture drama at the recent Golden Globes, “The Post” thrillingly narrates how military analyst Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) snuck thousands of pages of the classified reports exposing a massive cover-up involving the US government and Vietnam out of the RAND Corp. to leak to the media.
While The New York Times first broke the Pentagon Papers story, the Post took over the story and got additional documents when the Times was temporarily blocked by Nixon’s White House.
Steven believes that Graham and Bradlee’s experience with the Pentagon Papers emboldened their journalistic paths, leading to the Post’s biggest scoop, the Watergate exposé as uncovered by its reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Steven is thrilled to direct Meryl for the first time. It was also Tom’s first opportunity to act alongside the iconic actress. Steven, Meryl and Tom earned Golden Globe nominations for their work in this film.
The director, dressed in a suit and tie but shod in sneakers for this interview, said, “I’ve known Meryl for many years because we were both very close friends with Carrie Fisher. So I knew her socially, but never professionally. We had always fantasized about working together. But I knew Katharine Graham, too.
“When this project came to me, I felt that there was nobody on the face of the earth who could play Katharine Graham better than Meryl. I’m so pleased that I got to be the director of the debut of two great actors (Tom and Meryl) onscreen together.
From left: Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks —AP
Excerpts from our conversation:
Do you think if USC (University of Southern California) said yes to your college application, you would have been a different filmmaker today? You went to Cal State University, Long Beach, instead. Had I gone to USC, I might have been holding lights for George Lucas, instead of directing (laughs). So maybe it was good that I went someplace without any competition.
Do you think you could have been a good journalist? Yeah, I could have been a good journalist if I weren’t a filmmaker.
You’re part of a generation that grew up with newspapers as an important source of news. Do you hope that “The Post” will inspire a new generation to turn to newspapers? I certainly hope that our movie makes people aware of the effort that goes into searching for, seeking and printing the truth. That’s more important than bringing back print, because print is becoming an antiquity. Everything today is digital. But the truth is never going out of style.
I’m making another movie right now called “Ready Player One.” When our 31-year-old writer (Liz Hannah) wrote a spec script that was sent to Amy Pascal (producer), who then sent it to me, I couldn’t believe the timing. I thought that the issues and the answers in this particular story needed to be told immediately and not wait until I’m available again to make a movie in 2018.
Can you talk about the parallels with what was happening with the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago and today? When we were making the film, we saw the fact that the film was a mirror looking forward. When I looked at what was happening today, Nixon and other presidents who have not held the truth in the lofty position that it deserves to be held, the parallels are obvious.
This, to me, is a patriotic movie, and I don’t think it’s a partisan film. I didn’t make this as a Democrat. I made this as a believer in a free press, in our First Amendment rights in the Fourth Estate, as a believer in journalism and, also, as an antidote for this horrible term that makes us wonder what’s true and what’s false, and that term is “fake news.”
The heroes of this film are the journalists, and Ben Bradlee, Katharine Graham and the entire news staff at Washington Post, as well as the entire news staff at The New York Times. They did an amazing thing because I believe that suddenly, both newspapers, with the release of the Pentagon Papers, then later in reporting Watergate, became a check and balances [system] and almost a fourth branch of government.
Is this film also your reaction to Donald Trump and his administration? Yeah, we all know how powerful movies can be, because movies can distill something and make it understandable. And because of that, it’s a good thing for people to have a new appreciation, with all the attacks on the Fourth Estate, on the press today.
What do you think was the real significance of publishing the Pentagon Papers? I felt that the Pentagon Papers created such a stir on college campuses in America. Protest marches increased tenfold after The New York Times and The Washington Post revealed the Pentagon Papers, then the Supreme Court cleared them to continue publishing. I think it brought the [Vietnam War] to a quicker end.
The point is about character. Katharine Graham found her voice, she found herself as a leader. It was a huge epiphany for her as a human being and as a leader.
If Washington Post had not published the Pentagon Papers, I seriously do not believe that Katharine would have allowed Ben to allow Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to pursue Nixon right up to the threat of his impeachment and his resignation.
What’s your source of news these days? I have a lot of news sources, but I still read newspapers. I read The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal to be able to get some balance. And I still read The Boston Globe, sometimes. I watch CNN, MSNBC and, sometimes, Fox News.
At which point in Katharine Graham’s life did you meet her? When I was doing press in DC for “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998, my partner David Geffen said, “You have to meet my good friend Kay Graham.” David brought me to Washington Post and up to her office. He left me with her for an hour and a half (laughs). She had lunch brought up to the office.
But like any good publisher or journalist, she asked me 10 questions for every one question I tried to get to ask her (laughs). So there was no parity in the meeting. I just think it turned out that we liked each other.
The other story that I have to tell you is that Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn (Bradlee’s wife, also a journalist) were my neighbors for 15 years. Ben told me great stories about Washington Post.
We had these great social soirees on Sunday, and Tom would come out with Rita. It was an amazing time. This was long past Watergate, when Ben was retired but doing a lot of interviews and writing his book (“A Good Life: Newspapering and other Adventures”).
How did you guide Meryl Streep in her portrayal of Katharine Graham? I don’t think anybody had to tell Meryl anything. She exceeded her high bar with her performance as Katharine Graham in this film.
It was great to see Susan Lacy’s HBO documentary, “Spielberg,” especially with all those icons of cinema together. Can you talk about those days in the late ’60s and ’70s? George Lucas, Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and the whole group of us—we just wanted to make movies. We didn’t think anybody would let us do it. Francis was the first success. He was a real mentor to all of us.
Marty and I met in 1967. George, Brian and I met in 1968. It all happened a long time ago, but we have stayed friends.
Can you talk about the importance of the international market for films, especially Asia? The Asian market has very hungry people who are looking for entertainment of all kinds—movies of substance. It gives us more people to show our movies to.
What advice would you give your younger self? I probably would have said to my younger self, “You’re going to really succeed, so why don’t you friggin’ relax (laughs)?”
E-mail rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.