Meryl Streep And Tom Hanks Graced The London Screening Of The Post

But as the Post gets ready to print what it has, a new wrinkle develops: A federal judge, at the request of Nixon (who is heard throughout the movie via Tricky Dick’s own secret tapes), orders the Times to cease publication of its Pentagon Papers stories – the first time a government body has stopped a news outlet before it printed something.

Receiving top billing is Meryl Streep and surprisingly, this is her first leading role in a Steven Spielberg film (she had a vocal cameo in Artificial Intelligence).

CBS News’ Alex Wagner spoke to them about the power of Graham’s story, the movie, and why the movie had to be made now.

She had to make a quick, but informed decision, though, as The Washington Post only had a small amount of time to share the scoop. The ace filmmaker will also be producing the film with Amy Pascal and Kristie Macisko Krieger.

I was reading the Los Angeles Times because my wife and I were there last month to visit our daughters.

That means an editor walks through the cluttered room filled with rows of desks dragging behind him a 10-foot long sheet of paper, ripped from the wire service teletype machine, while reporters pound away on manual typewriters and look for pay phones to call sources when they are out of the newsroom. “And I loved it because it beautifully encapsulated a story of a woman finding her voice”. When more of the papers end up at The Washington Post, which was struggling to stay afloat and in the midst of a risky public offering, Owner/Publisher Kay Graham (Streep) and Executive Editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks) have to make some hard decisions that could incriminate their entire organization for the benefit of the American people and the world. Hanks’ Bradlee is gruff and blunt in his dealings with everyone, including his boss Graham, and a sharp contrast to her diplomatic style of speech. One of its few flaws, Graham never appears in the movie and is only mentioned in a vulgarity from the mouth of Attorney General John Mitchell. “And she could have been wrong”, Pascal said. Washington, D.C.is not a large enough town to have a national brand name paper and of course, she’s a woman. Is there any way it wouldn’t be great or least very good? Pascal moved quickly on the production.

That Spielberg shot and is releasing it in under a year was perhaps the only potential handicap.

Spielberg also dots the cast with comedians, who make this movie feel like an ensemble piece despite the headliners.

“Amy bought it 10 days before the election”. The Post seems heading for the Oscars on more counts than one but that’s not the real feather in the cap of this fantastic venture. “Where we have to decide what the baseline is of our morality and our ethics, and what the baseline of truth is”.

The timing of “The Post” couldn’t be better: Ever since Donald Trump got elected, the free press in America has been under attack again.

For most of the film, Graham walks a fine line between hostess and publisher. “The Post” is a rare coming of age film, in that it’s about a woman’s coming of age in her mid-fifties. Not only do we have an American president who has declared the mainstream press “fake” and “the enemy of the people”, but we have a gender reckoning all over America which couldn’t possibly be more in need of a rousing tale of an unlikely American heroine.

“I want her to run for president”. Both got Golden Globe and other nominations, as did the movie. While the script does reveal the sadness of human life losses that could have been avoided, unfortunately the film uses it to glorify newspapers using old news. “Or is it more subtle than that?”

Now it’s your turn People’s Choice fans, which of Hanks and Streep’s movies are your favorite? But I think it will.