Steven Spielberg: The urgency to make The Post was because of Trump's administration

Steven Spielberg: ‘The urgency to make The Post was because of Trump's administration’

The Post has an added quality that some earlier Spielberg movies may have lacked: an uncanny topicality. That is not wholly coincidental. The director first read the script for The Post just 11 months ago, deciding instantly that he wanted to make this story of a Republican president at war with the press – and he wanted to make it right now, assembling screenwriters, crew and A-list stars (including Streep and Hanks making their first film together) in a fraction of the usual time.

“The level of urgency to make the movie was because of the current climate of this administration, bombarding the press and labelling the truth as fake if it suited them,” Spielberg tells me, recalling the sense of offence he felt at documented, provable events being branded fake news. “I deeply resented the hashtag ‘alternative facts’, because I’m a believer in only one truth, which is the objective truth.”

So The Post shows a silhouetted Richard Nixon pacing the White House, while we hear the disgraced former president’s voice – taped on his own, notorious recording system – as he tramples on the first amendment, seeking to use the might of his office to hobble the free press. No one needs to mention Donald Trump for his shadow to loom over this movie.


https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/19/steven-spielberg-the-urgency-to-make-the-post-was-because-of-this-administration?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=261122&subid=17536001&CMP=GT_US_collection