[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - The best response you can have to a payoff in a thriller is someone goes, "Oh, right, I forgot, of course..." [multiple voices chattering] [Narrator] On Story offers a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

All of our content is recorded live at Austin Film Festival and at our year-round events.

To view previous episodes, visit OnStory.tv.

[Narrator] On Story is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

Support for On Story comes from Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers creating sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the Bogle family values since 1968.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is On Story.

A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

This week's On Story, "The Post" writer, Liz Hannah.

- I gravitate towards the underdog stories, and I found the idea of a woman who, for her entire life, had been told she wasn't good enough and she wasn't pretty enough and she wasn't smart enough, then she was the only one who was actually the one to do it.

I found that story really inspiring.

[paper crumples] [typing] [typewriter ding] [Narrator] In this episode, writer and producer, Liz Hannah discusses her career from her sudden rise in the industry with her first screenplay, "The Post" to her role as writer-producer on the Netflix true crime series, "Mindhunter".

[typewriter ding] - So we're going to spend some time talking about "The Post" today, but I'm wondering if you could take us back pre-Post.

Could you tell us a little bit about your academic preparation- about the professional work you were doing?

What were you doing before "The Post" that kind of led you to "The Post"?

- I was a creative executive, which meant I read scripts every day and gave notes to writers and worked with directors and I, about two years into it, was like, "I think maybe I can write as well as some of these people," not in an ego way, but in a "I see how hard it is.

I see, see the challenges, but I think I want to try to do that."

I had read Katharine Graham's autobiography when I was in my early 20s and sort of became kind of obsessed with her and was like, "Why isn't there a movie about her?"

And then my husband kept telling me, who was my boyfriend at the time and I've subsequently married him because he told me this, was like, "You should write that Katharine Graham movie probably."

And I was like, "No, it's too hard."

I just kept saying it was too hard.

And then I worked on something that was really like a very, very difficult experience and was like, "I think I'm done.

I think I'm going to go back to...

I'm going to go beg for my job back and hope that after four years they haven't forgotten me."

And he was like, "Well, before you do that, you should probably write that Katharine Graham movie."

And so I took the summer and I wrote it and the first draft was 165 pages and my sweet, sweet husband read it.

And then the next draft was a little better and a little shorter.

And by Labor Day, I had the draft that actually is pretty much the draft that everybody signed on to.

- What was it about Katharine Graham's story that spoke to you and said, "I'm willing to give up a job for this.

I'm willing to put my life on the line?"

- I was naive enough to not think of it that way.

[laughing] I gravitate towards the underdog stories, and I found the idea of a woman who, for her entire life, had been told she wasn't good enough, and she wasn't pretty enough, and she wasn't smart enough.

- Just a couple of bucks.

It's 1.35 million shares.

So it is... - Three million.

- ...over $3 million less.

That's a lot to a newspaper.

How many reporters is that?

- It's 25.

- Let's not get bogged down.

- It has to be quite a few.

- At least a dozen, Fritz.

- It's, uh, 25 reporters.

- Twenty-five reporters.

Twenty-five reporters.

- I found that story really inspiring, and I felt like, the election happened, and for about a split second, both of us were like, "Does anyone want to see a movie about a woman?"

And it was this moment where we were like, "Does anybody care?"

And then Amy, very rightfully, was like, "Shut up."

And I was like, "Okay."

And she was like, "Well, now we need to make this more than ever, because we have to show that women can win."

- And this is no longer my father's company.

It's no longer my husband's company.

It's my company.

And anyone who thinks otherwise probably doesn't belong on my board.

- Can you guarantee me that we-- - One hundred percent.

- All right then.

My decision stands and I'm... going to bed.

[typewriter ding] - The production history of this film is like fascinating.

Could you tell us a little bit about how Spielberg got attached, about how you worked alongside the production, and maybe what you learned in the process?

- First of all, it was like, "I'll go send my script to Steven Spielberg."

No.

In reality, it was never something I thought of.

And then Tom read it, Meryl read it, Stephen read it, and Steven was like, "I'm prepping a movie, I'm shooting it in three weeks or six weeks, but I don't have the lead of the movie.

So I'm going to go back over the weekend and look at like 10,000 audition tapes and then I'll get back to you."

And so we were like, "If somebody knows that there is a person on this audition tape, find it and burn it and then don't, nobody tell anybody."

Steven came back on Monday and was like, "I'm in."

We were prepped to shoot the movie.

We shot.

We started production 10 weeks later.

He literally picked...

He and Kristie Macoska Krieger, who's producer on the film, she's Steven's producer, picked the entire crew up, who was building sets in Italy and moved them to New York.

It was like off to the races.

But the night that I found out that Steven and Meryl and Tom had signed on, I was deathly ill.

I had that end of the year flu or whatever it is, and I was like in bed hallucinating.

It was like six o'clock at night and Amy was like, "You have come to my office right now."

And I was like, "I don't think I can drive."

I was like, "I'm really messed up."

And she was like, "You have to come to the office right now," which is not something you say no to when it's asked twice.

So I went and she was like, "I just wanted you to talk to Steven."

And she put Steven on speaker and he was like, "I'm going to make the movie."

And it was genuinely like the most insane experience, and also I was so high on cold medicine.

[laughing] [typewriter ding] - Are there scenes that you're particularly proud of that you feel like you really captured what you wanted to do and what you loved about Katherine's story?

- There's two, definitely, that come to mind.

I mean, I think Sarah Paulson's speech to Tom Hanks about Katharine Graham was what I was feeling about Katharine and what I was feeling in that moment of what it means to be brave.

- You're very brave, but Kay... Kay's in a position she never thought she'd be in.

A position I'm sure plenty of people don't think she should have.

And when you're told time and time again, that you're not good enough, that your opinion doesn't matter as much, when they don't just look past you, when, to them, you're not even there.

When that's been your reality for so long, it's hard not to let yourself think it's true.

So to make this decision, to risk her fortune and the company that's been her entire life, well, I think that's brave.

- Sarah Paulson is an exceptional actress and... Hanks is pretty good.

[laughing] It was just [bleep] insane to watch Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep say things that you wrote and make everything better.

I just learned so much from them.

There's a scene in the movie where Katherine Graham wakes up and sees her daughter in the bedroom, in the living room.

And she comes in, and they're reading the newspaper.

It's just sort of this introduction scene between the two of them.

And Meryl did the first few takes and she was touching-- Alison Brie plays Lally Graham, her daughter-- was like touching her hair in this very maternal way.

It was something that we had not talked about, wasn't in the script.

I was sitting on set watching it and I was like-- it was like such an interesting choice because Katharine Graham is not necessarily, like, affectionately maternal.

And then in like the sixth take, which is in the movie, she was like... - Why don't you cut your bangs... - Mommie... - ...a little bit?

- ...I'm right in the middle.

- And I was like, "You're a genius."

Because she wanted, it was this... As an actress in this character wanting this connection to her daughter, but also realizing who the character was at the same time and trying to balance it and she said that line.

She wrote that line.

Josh and I did not.

She added that in because it was what justified the move.

And that for me said so much about Lally and Kay Graham's relationship.

Said so much about Kay as a mother.

You don't need a speech.

You don't need a lecture about what it means to be Katharine Graham.

It was in that moment you understood everything you needed.

[typewriter ding] - I want to talk a little bit about adaptation.

How did adapting Katharine Graham's memoir lead you into breaking the stories for those novels?

And I guess, maybe it's two questions, what hard choices did you have to make in adapting these works for the screen?

- I think, I mean, there's a huge connection, I think, to adapting a novel and writing a story about something that happened in true life, which is, you have to understand the integrity of the characters and you have to understand the integrity of the story.

You cannot get every page on screen.

Katharine Graham's memoir is like 600 pages long.

I would love to put it on screen.

You can't.

I'm not a huge believer in cradle to grave biopics.

I think frankly, Forrest Gump and Benjamin Button are probably the only two that can do it.

The Katharine Graham adaptation for me was, what is the moment in Kat-- And I look at this with any adaptation of, of a true life event-- what is the moment in their life that they suddenly became the person they were going to be for the rest of their life.

- Fritz, are you on?

- I'm here, Kate.

- What do you think?

What do you think I should do?

- I think there are arguments on both sides... but I guess I wouldn't publish.

[dramatic suspenseful music] ♪ ♪ - Let's... Let's go.

Let's do it.

Let's... Let's... Let's go.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Let's publish.

- I would hope that none of us in this room actually came of age at 16 when you are supposed to, because that would be terrifying.

I definitely hope I didn't.

I hope I'm constantly coming of age.

I think you're constantly having moments in your life where you are making a decision of who you want to be and who you're going to continue to be.

With adapting a novel, it's not dissimilar.

You really want to find what the central event is.

Not just terms of plot, but what the central emotional event is and what the journey for that character is.

And you kind of have to take everything away.

You strip it almost, and then you start putting things back.

"Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" is a book that I just adapted and we're going through the process of it right now.

It's such an exceptional book, but it's also told in first person, and there's a constant narration happening in it.

You see her in her mind in a way that you cannot see on film.

And so that is a different challenge than anything else I've done.

- Could you talk about maybe some places, either in "The Post" or in "The Long Shot" or elsewhere in your work where you felt like you were able to use your stuff and make connections with people that made the story work for you?

- Yeah.

In "The Post", I was like, I work in an industry that is extremely driven by men and it's something that you can't ignore.

It just is.

It's a reality we're changing.

We're trying to change it.

We're making, I think, humongous strides, but it's still extremely white male driven.

And that was something that I knew.

And every woman on the set knew and everybody had experienced.

And so that was really real.

"Long Shot" is interesting because it's a movie that...

The script was written by Dan Sterling and then I was brought on to co-write it with him and sort of...

He had written the movie like 10 years prior.

His life had changed a bunch.

He had written it, I think, in his early 30s and so he was like, "It was just a very different time."

And I, at the time that I did the movie, was engaged and "Long Shot" inadvertently really became a love story to my husband and the idea of friendship and trust and respect.

And that was really, for me...

I mean, talking about Nora, thinking of sort of my favorite romantic comedies, or even romantic films, it's really about respect.

It's really about the person that, yeah, you want to do all the fun stuff, but you kind of want to make sure you wake up every morning and you're like, "You're the only person I actually care about's opinion."

Like "Long Shot" really was like my kind of love letter to him.

- Here's the deal, I love you.

I know I do, because I've never been so scared in my entire life.

And I once shared an elevator with Saddam Hussein, just me and Saddam.

But this is way scarier.

I love you.

Okay, you're really going to have to say something right now because I'm freaking out.

- I've been in love with you since I was 12 years old.

[groovy music] [typewriter ding] - Let's talk about "Mindhunter".

So you've been doing features.

What was it that led you in this direction?

- David Fincher.

I was having dinner with Shirley and she said, "Do you want to do "Mindhunter"?

Would you like to meet David?"

And I was like, "Wooo."

But they were at a point where they were just looking for people to write freelance scripts.

And so I was like, "I'm going production, but writing an episode sounds good."

And so I met with David and very instantly, I think, we kind of realized we were on the same page in terms of storytelling and what we wanted to do on the show, what he wanted to do on the show, how I could help.

So it sort of progressed from there.

And so what started as one script then became much more involved.

- What about these three major characters?

So it's Holden, Bill, Wendy are kind of your three major investigators.

Like you, I am drawn to character.

That's what makes me want to tell stories.

What was it about these three characters that made you want to tell stories about them?

- This was an opportunity to basically get very intensely into the minds of people who make decisions-- who make a conscious decision to spend their time with psychopaths.

And so that...

Which is really an allegory for Hollywood, but, um...

I found that fascinating.

And I think it's fascinating to look at people, in the same way as any profession, like I find politicians fascinating, like the idea that this is a decision you've made to actually do this, people who are sacrificing their personal lives for not even professional success, but for like other people's benefit is fascinating to me.

And then how does that sort of corrupt you and does it corrupt you and what do you highlight within yourself when you're exposed to this sort of radioactive material of a sociopath?

- One of the episodes that you wrote for "Mindhunter" is one of the greatest episodes.

And it's the one with Charles Manson.

So I'm wondering if you could talk about what you did in trying to create him as a human character.

What did you do with Charlie Manson?

- So that scene in particular, we worked on for months in terms of writing.

There were multiple drafts of it.

It was something we knew was for Bill Tench's character, who's played by Holt McCallany.

We knew it was a very pivotal moment for him in the season, and we knew as a pivotal moment for him as a character in his life.

He's dealing with a trauma connected to his younger son.

He's dealing with Holden, who's being Holden.

He's dealing with the Atlanta child murders.

He's dealing with a lot.

And he's now having talked to Charles Manson.

Andrew Dominick directed that episode, and Andrew had been fascinated by Charles Manson for a very, very long time.

So there was an enormous amount of research.

There's an enormous amount of responsibility felt in how he was going to be depicted.

In terms of him, it was like, "What is his goal in this scene?

And if I was Charles Manson and I was making an excuse for everybody else or making an excuse for myself of why it was everybody else's fault and why I didn't do anything, regardless if I believe it or not, what would that be like?

What would I say?"

- I'm Pavlov's dog, man.

I'm anything you want me to be, but what you want is a fiend.

Cause that's what you are.

See, I never had any say in your world.

You created it.

How do you feel about those murders?

That's what counts.

Happened in your world, not in mine.

- What counts is that you ordered the deaths of seven people.

Eight, if you count an unborn baby.

- And now you can reflect it back on me and you can lock me up in your penitentiary.

And you can say that your world's better.

The prison's a frame of thought.

We're all our own prisons.

We're each our own wardens.

We do our own time.

Prison's in your mind.

Can't you see I'm free?

- You don't look so free to me, Charlie.

- You don't know freedom mean.

You look like a composite of what someone told you you are.

- If you're choosing to write a character, regardless if they're a villain, you have to at least have empathy for them as the writer.

You don't have to care about other people liking them or understanding them or anything like that.

If you walk into writing a character with judgment, they're going to be two dimensional and they're going to not last with anybody and not affect anybody because you're putting your own [bleep] onto it.

But if you are writing them with empathy and you're writing them from a place of just, "This is a human.

This is a human being," regardless of diagnosis, they are who they are and you have to make the effort.

It is your job to make them a three-dimensional person.

- Are there particular scenes from those episodes that you reflect on and you think, "Damn that was good," or "I think I hit the mark that I was shooting for?"

- In the other episode I wrote, there's a scene where Holden is carrying a cross through a parade.

[chaotic music] ♪ ♪ When we started talking about it, we knew that was a place that we wanted Holden to get to, and so we were reverse engineering how to get there, and it was really hard because it's a bananas thing to do.

I think that was really well done.

I think, in terms of the direction, in terms of John, and I think, in story-wise, we kind of finally were able to get it to a place where Holden carrying a cross on his back made some modicum of sense.

- We've never found any evidence that these crimes are racially motivated.

- Son, we've got 19 dead black children.

You telling me that's a coincidence.

- This is Atlanta.

Don't have to carry a burning cross to be a racist.

- Some of the biggest ones are sitting behind a gab, Holden.

- They have a point.

We've had two white callers, the Terrelle case and the Jeter case.

It's hard to rule them both out as hoaxes without.... - Crosses.

- What?

- We set up memorials for some of the victims, put the crosses at a couple of the Dem sites.

We make an announcement, hold a vigil.

We can tie it to one of the stock marches.

- The press will eat that up.

It'll go everywhere.

- You won't be able to stay away.

- Photograph license plates, canvas the crowds.

Look for anyone that fits our profile.

- He could show up at an odd hour when it's not populated - Hold on!

This sounds like a whole lot of screwing around, not a lot of police work.

- Frankly, sir, you have a better idea?

- What is the story payoff for that?

Like how does that connect to his character and what you were trying to do in that episode?

- Well, in that particular storyline, Holden and Tench are very invested in the Atlanta child murders case, and Holden, I think particularly as a character, is extremely... is not intuitive in terms of regular people's emotions.

He's has blinders and is also very driven by his ego and by his success.

And doesn't understand why other people aren't.

In that scene in particular, what we wanted to get to was that he actually finally makes eye contact with the mother of one of the murder children.

[church bell chimes] [church bell chimes] [church bell chimes] It's sort of a moment that we wanted to have where Holden realizes this is bigger than him and realizes the gravity of the situation.

And at the time in Atlanta, young black children were being murdered at a constant and consistent rate.

And it was being ignored by the country and by the world and by the state and the city.

So that was something that I think, for me, was like, everybody does need to stop and pay attention at what is happening in the world, and sometimes you need to carry like an eight foot cross and stare at the mother of a slain child to realize it.

[typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching a conversation with Liz Hannah on On Story.

On Story is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project.

That also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]