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Backlot<br />
Awards<br />
Watch<br />
‘ I Found My Voice While She Found<br />
Hers’ Liz Hannah and Josh Singer on<br />
penning Katharine Graham’s story By Rebecca Ford<br />
L<br />
iz Hannah wrote the screenplay for <strong>The</strong> Post with the hope that<br />
she’d get an agent. Instead, the 32-year-old screenwriter saw<br />
her spec script turned into a movie directed by Steven Spielberg<br />
and starring Meryl Streep as <strong>The</strong> Washington Post publisher Katharine<br />
Graham. <strong>The</strong> timely ’70s-set drama has been nominated for the best picture<br />
Oscar, and Hannah and her co-writer, Josh Singer (who won the<br />
original screenplay Oscar in 2016 for Spotlight), will receive the Writers<br />
Guild of America West’s Paul Selvin Award at the Feb. 11 ceremony.<br />
Both writers spoke to THR about their process and the “high bar” set by<br />
working with Spielberg.<br />
What was it about Graham’s story<br />
that made you want to adapt it?<br />
HANNAH I only had vaguely heard<br />
about her, but I didn’t know<br />
anything about her life. And she<br />
lived one that I felt deserved to be<br />
out in the world. For me<br />
personally, it was about<br />
a woman finding her<br />
voice, finally ignoring all<br />
the naysayers — and even<br />
herself — telling her she<br />
couldn’t do it and standing on her<br />
own two feet. <strong>The</strong> irony is not lost<br />
on me that this is the script I got<br />
noticed on. I found my voice while<br />
she found hers.<br />
How did the two of you collaborate?<br />
SINGER Liz wrote an incredible spec<br />
script, but it wasn’t a shooting<br />
GOLD STAR SCRIBES<br />
A comic book icon, an LGBTQ<br />
activist and two veteran<br />
writers land WGA honors<br />
WGA West<br />
Awards<br />
Feb. 11<br />
Beverly Hilton<br />
draft. With these fact-based dramas,<br />
you want to vet them — send<br />
them out to the world and get<br />
lots of notes, because you want<br />
to get it right. With Spotlight, I<br />
had terrible fear of not getting the<br />
journalism part right.<br />
Plus, the needs of a spec<br />
script and the needs of<br />
a Steven Spielberg film<br />
are slightly different.<br />
Because with a Steven<br />
Spielberg film, you’re going to<br />
get the highest degree of scrutiny<br />
you can possibly get. Fairly or<br />
unfairly, you get held to a pretty<br />
high bar. We had to make this<br />
as accurate as possible within the<br />
context of telling a good story.<br />
HANNAH I had never written a<br />
movie that had been produced<br />
◄ DUSTIN LANCE BLACK<br />
<strong>The</strong> Valentine Davies<br />
Award will recognize the<br />
Milk writer’s work for<br />
the LGBTQ community.<br />
↑ From left: Singer, Spielberg, Hannah,<br />
Tom Hanks and Streep on Jan. 4<br />
at the Palm Springs Film Festival.<br />
before, let alone written a movie<br />
produced and directed by Steven<br />
Spielberg. <strong>The</strong> thing about Josh<br />
is that he’s not only an incredibly<br />
talented writer, he also has an<br />
enormous amount of experience in<br />
the journalism world and in the<br />
political world with Spotlight and<br />
<strong>The</strong> West Wing. We really tackled<br />
it more like a writers room; it was<br />
a very collaborative experience.<br />
Because of the quick timeline, he<br />
was used to working under the<br />
gun and under the pressure that<br />
the first choice is the best choice<br />
and the only choice.<br />
JAMES L. BROOKS<br />
<strong>The</strong> Mary Tyler Moore<br />
Show co-creator<br />
gets the Laurel Award<br />
for screenwriting.<br />
ALISON CROSS<br />
<strong>The</strong> Paddy Chayefsky<br />
Laurel Award goes to the<br />
writer-producer (Roe vs.<br />
Wade, Murder in the First).<br />
What is your worst habit as<br />
a writer?<br />
HANNAH Procrastination. I think<br />
it’s every writer’s worst habit.<br />
But when you’re procrastinating,<br />
you’re still thinking about it.<br />
SINGER My wife, who is a novelist,<br />
makes fun of me for this all<br />
the time: I tend to get lost in<br />
the research. I go on really deep<br />
dives. Lawrence O’Donnell told<br />
me early on that the word<br />
“author” comes from authority.<br />
I am not a huge risk taker, so I<br />
really don’t like writing about<br />
something unless I feel like I’m<br />
quite knowledgeable about it.<br />
Is there one thing you must have<br />
in order to write?<br />
HANNAH Because I’m 90 years old<br />
in a 32-year-old’s body, I have<br />
a heating pad on the back of my<br />
chair. When you’re sitting there<br />
for hours at a time, I don’t care<br />
how comfortable that chair is,<br />
it can get pretty gnarly. So a heating<br />
pad kind of wakes me up.<br />
SINGER I need headphones and<br />
music. I tend to love classical,<br />
but it can be any kind. It really<br />
depends on what I’m working<br />
on. <strong>The</strong>re’s a trick I learned<br />
from my wife: I’ll listen to the<br />
same thing over and over again.<br />
So good Bose headphones with<br />
music to drown out the world.<br />
And then I must have a baseball<br />
cap, because I need blinders.<br />
“<strong>The</strong>re’s an<br />
immediate<br />
connection as<br />
a woman,<br />
knowing what<br />
it’s like to be<br />
in a room full<br />
of men and<br />
not have your<br />
voice heard,”<br />
says Hannah<br />
of Graham’s<br />
story (Streep,<br />
center).<br />
LEN WEIN<br />
<strong>The</strong> late comic book icon,<br />
co-creator of Wolverine,<br />
will be honored with the<br />
Animation Writing Award.<br />
SINGER: VIVIEN KILLILEA/GETTY IMAGES FOR PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. POST: NIKO TAVERNISE/20TH CENTURY FOX. BLACK: DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES.<br />
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER<br />
82<br />
FEBRUARY 7, <strong>2018</strong>