|
 Spielberg rushed to get the movie filmed and
released within a year. It is about the battle by newspapers to
publish the leaked Pentagon Papers detailing the U.S.
government's misleading portrayal of the Vietnam War.
"I just felt that there was an urgency to reflect 1971 and 2017
because they were very terrifyingly similar," the Oscar-winning
director told a Hollywood audience after a screening of the film
on Monday.
"Our intended audience are the people who have spent the last
13, 14 months thirsting and starving for the truth," Spielberg
said. "They are out there, and they need some good news."
Starring Meryl Streep as the late Washington Post publisher
Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as late editor Ben Bradlee, "The
Post" on Monday was named the best film of 2017 by the National
Board of Review, a New York-based 100 year-old group of
academics, filmmakers and professionals.
Streep was named best actress and Hanks was voted best actor,
setting the film up as an early front-runner for the Oscars.
Spielberg, a prominent Hollywood Democrat, did not mention U.S.
President Donald Trump in his remarks. But "The Post" arrives in
movie theaters in December at a time when the media has been
under repeated attacks by Trump since his election in November
2016.
[to top of second column] |
Trump has called the press "the enemy of the American people." He
uses the term "fake news" to cast doubt on news reports critical of
his administration, often without providing evidence to support his
case.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in August the Trump
administration was considering requiring journalists to reveal their
sources amid Trump's push to stop leaks to the press.
The film dramatizes the decisions by the New York Times and the
Washington Post to publish the top-secret Pentagon Papers about the
Vietnam War in the face of injunctions by the Nixon administration
in a battle that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Spielberg said that before making the film he was "really depressed
about what was happening in the world and the country."
After getting the script in February, "suddenly my entire outlook on
the future brightened overnight," he said.
"The Post" was shot in June and opens in U.S. movie theaters on Dec.
22.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant and Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Cynthia
Osterman and David Gregorio)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
