The Press Box - 'The Big Picture': The Urgency of ‘The Post’ With Screenwriters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer (Ep. 409)

Episode Date: December 29, 2017

The Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey chats with first-time screenwriter Liz Hannah and Academy Award-winning scribe Josh Singer about 'The Post,' their collaboration for Steven Spielberg about the men and women who published the Pentagon Papers in The Washington Post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He's like, you know, when you're at a store and you see a shirt and you're like, it's just like 50 bucks more than I want to spend. And then you think about that shirt for the next three months. That's basically how I pick projects. I'm Sean Fennacy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is the big picture. On this holiday edition of the show, I'm joined by the two screenwriters behind Stephen Spielberg's acclaimed new movie, The Post. Liz Hanna, little known and hoping to make a name for herself in Hollywood, wrote the original script less than two years ago and focused it on Catherine Graham at a turning point in Graham's career. Set in 1971 and the legendary and long-time publisher, The Washington Post, is faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to publish the findings about the Vietnam War in the

Pentagon Papers. In the movie, Graham and her editor, Ben Bradley, risked the future of the paper and decades of relationships to publish the truth about decades of conspiracy inside the government. Hannah's script was eventually bought by the producer Amy Pascal, who put it in the hands of Steven Spielberg. Not bad for a first-time screenwriter. Soon, Merrill Streep was on board as Graham, Tom Hanks joined her as Bradley, and the screenwriter Josh Singer, fresh off his Oscar-winning work on 2015 Spotlight, came aboard to work on the script on set with Hannah. I talked with Hannah and Singer about their collaboration, how they made a story about documents into a compelling character study, and how their movie parallels some of the more absurd occurrences in our modern-day administration.

So without further ado, here's Liz Hannah and Josh Singer. Very excited to be joined by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, the screenwriters behind the post. Guys, thank you for coming in. Thanks for having us. This is a unique scenario. two screenwriters on the show at the same time. And it's a unique scenario for how the movie came together. Liz, obviously the story started with you. Tell us a little bit about what you were what you were doing here when you first started writing it and what your expectations were.

Before I started writing it, the thing that inspired me was Catherine Graham's book, her memoir, personal history. I had read it a number of years ago and sort of always thought her story would make a great film. I just didn't know kind of what part of her story would make the best film. I think biopics often, if they're the cradle to grave story, that's a real problem for me. If you do the cradle to grave, you tend to water down the things that are really unique about somebody's life or oftentimes universal about somebody's life by just trying to get all the facts in. And so when I finally sort of realized it was, I think when I was reading Ben Bradley's book a couple of years ago, that this film was not only a two-hander between the two of them, but also

this moment where they are having the conversation of whether or not to publish the Pentagon papers was really the turning point in her life. It was really the moment when she found her voice. And that was always what was relevant to me that I related to. And so that was sort of like where it started. And then my expectation was to get an agent because I didn't have an agent. Right. You were just writing it entirely on spec. I was writing it on spec. I didn't have an agent. I had been developing it with this company called Star Thrower, who are executive producers on the film. You know, I just, I hadn't written something that I thought was really my voice yet. And I hadn't written something that I thought was indicative of the type of stories, types of stories

that I wanted to tell. And so we sent it out, and I think the beginning of October, to some agents to see if they would be interested in signing me. And then it sort of leaked out into the studio world. And then the Friday before Halloween, Amy Pascal bought it. What does that mean it leaked out into the studio world? So it had gone to some agents and agencies. So the script was floating out there in the ether. And it means, I think, that an agent wanted to sign me. and show me that they could what they could do for me. But it kind of went, took off like wildfire.

And so once it, the script landed on one person's desk or in one person's email box, it kind of, so the leaking out is really, it was intended to go to one person, and then it spread to a few dozen people. Interesting. Yeah. Josh, you know what I was reading about Liz's story,

I was thinking about yours, you've obviously been doing this a little bit longer than Liz, but did you have a similar at the start of your career spec moment where you were writing something just to get attention? or did you, because you worked in television a lot before you were writing films? Oddly, I did, and oddly. It was similar in the beginning,

although not with the Hollywood ending, at least not yet. I wrote a speck about George Gershwin writing Porgy and Bass. It was one of these things where I had done like a year of research and this is all while I was working in television and was just trying to find my voice, you know, as it were. And I'd done a year of research

and written like a 45-page outline and was like 20 pages into the script when I was working on Fringe at the time and a buddy of mine, this great writer, Dave Wilcox was, you know, I walked in his office, he's like, hey, I just read in the Hollywood reporter that Steven Spielberg is working on a movie about George Gershwin. And it was true, he was working on about George Gershwin

and about Porgy and Bess, in fact. I was devastated. I didn't know what to do. And a good friend of mine, an executive named Sam Brown, really lovely guy, said, look, keep writing it. You never know if he's going to make it. And so I did. And I finished the script, and they bought it.

But that got me the job writing, The Fifth Estate, which was the first movie I wrote that got made and the first journalism movie I wrote, actually. Yeah, we can talk about that in a little bit. But Liz, you know, so you mentioned that Amy Pascal, I got our hands on your script. What happens from there when a producer says, I want this? You know, how did you receive all that information? Receiving the information about Amy buying it was stunning, and it was like 1130 at night,

and I was in bed, so that was pretty shocking. Is it a phone call that's like, this is Amy? Yeah, well, it's a phone call from my managers. and my lawyer that are saying, this is what happened. Amy wants to talk to you. And me sort of not having any concept of what that means. And then Amy calling you and her saying that, you know, there were, I think, a number of things about this script that Amy really connected to and about this story. One was the two things that I didn't know were that Amy's father had worked at Rand with Daniel Ellsberg and her husband had worked at the New York Times for a long time.

So she was connected to two of these sort of arcs of the story. And then the thing that she and I were completely connected to was Catherine Graham's story and the story of a woman being in a boardroom surrounded by men and trying to have your voice heard. So both of us really saw, I think, a lot of potential in having that voice in the world and having that woman's story in the world. And so, you know, that was really what our conversation was about was about the importance of telling her story. And so from there, it kind of just kept, you know, I have to say, Amy basically took this boulder and pushed it up the mountain as much as she could. How much time passes between the 1130 p.m. call when you're in bed and Stephen Spielberg wants to do this movie? I think about three months, maybe two months, two and a half months. Stephen read it in the end of February. So basically-typical to Hollywood time frame.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, I was going to mention this is how this happens, guys, right? This is all happened in less than a year, which is pretty incredible. Yeah, this is totally how these things happen. Amy bought it the last week of February, the last week of October, and then the last week of February was when Stephen and Tom and Merrill all read it. And Stephen signed on. Christie, as I said, had given him the script, and he basically was like, I want to make this movie if we can make it this year and it can come out this year. And so Christy and Amy put their heads together and we're like, okay, we can make it this year. And so he got it to Tom and Merrill, and we were off to the races.

And I think when they signed on, we had less than 12 weeks to shoot. Josh, when do you come into the equation here? Yeah, meanwhile, I mean, so one of the great things about this movie is it is a movie about a great woman written and produced and created by great women. You know, I got the call from Christy, God's lieutenant, as it were, early March. And she said, you know, you want to come, you know, and join the Zer. I had a little trepidation because, you know, it's like, oh, of course you want to go work for Stephen, but it's about journalism, and I had just done actually two journalism movies, you know. And just won an Oscar for Spotlight, so, you know, it's understood what you're capable of.

I mean, well, I don't know about that, but, you know, spotlight went pretty well, in Fifth State, you know, less so, although I was quite proud of that movie, too, and and I just didn't know if I wanted to tread in those waters again. but I read Liz's script, and it was the best spec script I'd ever read. She had taken this potentially thorny, didactic, wonky issue of the Pentagon papers and framed it within this incredibly compelling personal story of K. Graham. And I just thought that was genius. Liz, when you get the call that Josh is going to be a part of this,

you know, you hear a lot of stories about how another screenwriter will come in and rewrite your script, or we'll take over, we'll take credit. We hear these stories about the WGA and these kerfuffle's like, what is it going through your mind where you're like, oh, an Academy Award winning screenwriter is coming on to my first script. Well, I think that's an important part of it is that it was Josh who came on and not somebody else. I think it could have been any number of those scenarios that you just mentioned if it was anybody else. And what was wonderful about this experience and what I think, for me,

I feel very fortunate of is that it was collaborative from every aspect. When Josh came on, I felt sort of immediately an enormous amount of relief that I wasn't the only person that everyone was looking to for answers. I had never written a movie that had been produced, let alone produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. So for me, it was a really wonderful now there was two of us. You know, it wasn't that it was me and then Josh. It was that was Josh and I. And so I think there was never any feeling that it wasn't anything but the best decision.

What's it like trying to pitch lines to Tom Hanks and Merrill Street? Terrifying. Yeah, I don't even know how to answer that. I think I'm still traumatized by it. Everybody just wants it to be good. So once you take away kind of any fear that you're going to kind of like fail in front of them, because failing is just a huge part of it. You have to mess up.

You have to not have the best idea. You need to kind of get through all of those bad things to get to a good thing. And once you realize that it's what Josh said, two heads are better than one, three heads are better than one, four heads. So once you realize that all of us are on the same team and we're all just trying to get it going, it kind of does take the fear away and you are more willing to play and more willing to figure it out and find out what's the best version of whatever you're trying to say. Yeah, I was in a writer's room. I remember Jeff Pinkner, who was one of the showrunners, saying at some point, just let it suck for a minute. Just we've got to let it suck, you know, and that's pretty much true. And then slowly, you know, hopefully, you know.

It gets unsucky. It will get better, as Daniel Stripe and Tiger tells my son all the time. It will get better. I promise you, Liz, that I wouldn't ask you what it's like to work with Dean Spielberg. But I was hoping you guys could describe what a set is like, especially one that is a little bit more breakneck than the usual. You know, what is the atmosphere? What are people doing?

It never felt breakneck. I would say that. We felt it felt that there was an urgency to tell the story. But I never felt like any of us were rushing against a clock. I think we knew that we had this deadline of, and we had this time set for us, and so we just had to make it through that. It's a little like writing a newspaper story. Yeah, it is actually.

There's a lot to it that's similar. One of the things about how Stephen works, so Stephen is, and I don't know how many directors do this, I don't think it's a lot. He cuts while he's shooting. Yeah. So every moment when he's not actually, you know, setting up a shot or rehearsing or shooting, he's in the editing trailer, you know, with Mike Kahn and Sarah and that team, you know, literally cutting the scenes he shot two days ago.

So he cuts every scene five times before he gets to the end of the picture. So by the time, so he never has a typical assembly, which is the editor throwing together scenes. And then he's literally cut every scene such that when he watches the movie for the first time, you know, all the scenes are humming pretty well. And so it enables him, you know, to do things with, I think, more speed than typical. And with Stephen, there's a certain just joy. There's a quote which a friend of mine told me, I can't remember who said it, but it said something like Stephen Spielberg on acts like someone who works for Steven Spielberg. Yeah.

And it's true. He's just so excited to be there. And he can't, can you believe it? There's Merrill Streep and Tom. It's like he's like, he's just so thrilled to be there. And that joy and excitement at the process is infectious. The other thing I'll say is that the reason that I think it runs as well it does as, as well as it does is that he has a crew that he's been working with for, I think, the last 20 years. That is just the best crew that I've ever seen.

I mean, Yanush is incredible. Rick Carter. Carter. Everyone on set, his AD, Adam Sumner, who's the best AD I've ever, who is like, Yeah, who's, who has a way of like being very nice. He's British. So he can be very nice. And at the same time, you're like, I think he just yelled at me to do something. I think I just got yelled at, but he said it so nicely and so Britishly that I don't totally know. Liz, I was thinking about it, you know, you talked about making this a K. Graham story and you read Ben Bradley's book, but were you obsessive about the research and the history?

Was this a story in American history that it consumed you before, or were you just thinking about characters at the forefront? It was characters. The characters are where I came out from. I mean, it all really was finding the moment in Kay's life to tell, and then it did sort of back up into being about the Pentagon Papers. And then once it was about the Pentagon Papers, it sort of became two films.

And I think the story of the Pentagon Papers, the exposure of the truth by the New York Times and the Washington Post is an incredible story in and of itself. And we did a lot to give the New York Times their due in that because, you know, for us, that was just one story of what we were telling. We did really want to focus on K. And so there was a huge amount of research that I did when I wrote the spec. And then, you know, once Stephen came on and brought everybody else on board, we had amazing access to the Graham family and to Ben Bradley's family and to the Post itself that then just gave us a whole other level of research and access to this authenticity that would never have had before. What about you, Josh? Are you a junkie for all of this information?

So I like research-based stuff. You know, I love to go deep and research. But to me, the thing that I think enabled the film to hold all of that is, you know, the genius of Liz Hannah in framing this around K's story. And because that narrative arc is so compelling and clear, I think the movie can hold a bunch of stuff about the Washington Post being, you know, not even in the same league as the Times and just trying to catch up to the Times. And, you know, and stuff about Ben Bradley and stuff about, you know, You know, and obviously the IPO plays right into Kay's story.

But I think we can hold a lot in that first, you know, 30 minutes in the movie because your focus is on K. And look, it helps that we've got, you know, a pretty great actress playing K. But I think that was there from the very beginning in the script, you know, this sort of, you know, clear focus on this is our story. You know, I mean, there are many elements of the genius of Liz Hanna, but that was for me. Go on. But that was one of the first one where I was like, wow, that is fantastic.

Liz, what was the hardest part about unlocking Kay, the character as opposed to the person that you read in a memoir? There's a very fine line between writing a woman who's vulnerable and a woman who's a victim. I think particularly Kay as a character and as a woman in real life was soft-spoken at times and very insecure about her own voice. and those things can be very much misconstrued as victimizing herself or putting herself in a corner. And that was never who she was and that was never what this story was meant to be about her character. But at the same time, staying true to who she was, she wasn't outspoken in that way. And so there was a very fine line to be subtle about her character, about having a woman have insecurities and having a woman be very three-dimensional in those.

with those insecurities and still having her have her moment where she stands up, but having all of that feel natural and not overwrought. Guys, this movie is resonant to the times. I assume you gave that a lot of thought when you were on set, but if I'm wrong, correct me right now. I don't know what you're talking about. Was that something that was talked about? Obviously, Stephen wanted to make this movie quickly

because there felt like there was some urgency around the country, but is that something that you were literal about when you would talk about the movie? Well, I can't, you know, we were making this movie over the summer. So we were watching, you know, I mean, we're all consuming the news and consuming what's going on in the world. But we were never literal about changing anything in the script to reflect anything that was happening in, like, in 2017. You know, I think what was really important to us and is very fortunate is that history, I think Stephen said this, history is a great storyteller. Yeah. And we would just rely on history.

And so all of the things that happened in the film happened. You know, the birthday dinner, the IPO, the TELX, all of those things happened. And so we really relied on those things to tell the story. And the Nixon tapes were really the only thing that were the addition that we put in towards the before, right before we went to production. Yeah. One of the challenging things in the script is, you know, what's the thing? the real antagonist here, right? And obviously, Brad Woodford's character, Art Parsons is a bit of an antagonist. The board is a bit of an antagonist. But they really all have the best interest of the

Washington Post at Art, however misguided their advice might be. But, you know, the real antagonist, you know, in some ways was Nixon, right? And, you know, Stephen kept, you know, walking around those, I think one of the first times, you know, I sat with him. He played me, the recording that's at the end of the movie about Nixon going on and on about how the post should never be in the building and I don't want the post and the post, you know, just railing on the post, which we use at the very end of the movie. And so we got the idea, well, what if, what if there's more of that? And so we went and we looked back at the Nixon tapes at, you know, the arc of Nixon learning about this and then, and then eventually, you know, sending, you know, his attorney

general to go after the times, right? And it's just, not only is it great and powerful, but it's eerie. I mean, it's uncanny because it sounds a little bit like the guy in office now. And so that was one way, you know, where, you know, I think we thought, okay, this is a really interesting parallel. And yet we don't have to make anything up to make this parallel. And in fact, what you're hearing the movie is Nixon, right? It's, you know, Stephen, Stephen likes to talk about how he got his first choice in casting for this movie with every role. And he also got it with that role where he got, we got Nixon himself. And so while we have, you know, we have an actor that we shoot, miming and mimicking, the voice is Nixon's voice. We use the actual tapes in the movie.

And we didn't editorialize them. We didn't adapt to them. You know, we trimmed them here and there where we had to just because you can't have the whole thing. But we're not, you know, we're not putting words in his mouth at all, right? And so one of the things I love so much about Liz's script was that, you know, that question of feminism, right, is evergreen, right? I think that's one that is incredibly relevant and was relevant when she was, when Liz was writing our script and was relevant now. I mean, you know, six weeks into shooting, you know, we read, there was a New York Times article that said, lo and behold, only five, six percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. And here we were thinking we were telling a story that was way in the past about the first woman, you know, Fortune 500

CEO. Well, it turns out there aren't that many now. And why is that? And isn't that kind of a shame? Maybe there should be more women running big companies and running big countries as well. So that was always going to be a fantastic, timely theme because I think that's... It's unfortunately always timely to have conversations about women being the only... Having a woman be the only one in a room full of men. Do you think this movie happens if Hillary Clinton is the president? I mean, I sold this movie 10 days before the election.

So I think there was... I think there is always an appetite to... to see a film about a woman becoming empowered. You know, I think we fortunately get movies a lot where we already see women empowered. Like Wonder Woman, we need the Wonder Woman's of the world. I think I am very inspired by stories about women finding their voice because I think that's often much more relatable to me. Because you never actually find it and then hang on to it forever.

Often you find it and then it goes away and then you got to find it again. And so I think that's for me is really inspiring when you see women who you as the audience are saying like, of course you should be speaking up. Of course you're strong. And they don't get it yet. That feels really universal and relatable to me. So I do think there's a world that this movie exists in. Like I said, I think I'm always down to hear women speak up. What did you guys learn from one another doing it this way?

Tell me, Joshua. What did you learn from me? He gets to go first with this one. Think hard. Don't blow this. You know, I mean, look, I think you're always trying to learn for me. I'm always trying to learn from everybody. And Liz is a great writer.

So reading her writing, and there are some things that she wrote, I mean, that speech that Sarah Paulson gives, which I just love. I think I learn more, you know, I'd like to hope to, I'd like to hope that I learn more about how challenging it is for a woman. in a field predominantly in a field that's predominantly men. I think Liz has a boldness to her writing and her approach, and I tend to hesitate

and be, you know, a bit more nervous at first. And I found that really inspiring. Did you learn how to be nervous, Liz? Is that really from Josh? Actually, yes, I did. That's funny. In a very basic level,

I learned how to be an on-set writer from Josh. I learned how to be a production writer from Josh and how to work with the crew, work with director, work with cast, to incorporate notes from any number of sources. And so that's invaluable. And so it is really one of those experiences that it feels like everybody's trying to make it put a bow on it. But it's not. It was everybody did really learn, I think, from everyone else. Josh, you talked a little bit about First Man, which is the new film you have coming with Damien. But I want to hear from both of you guys about how you decide what to do next, you know, how you make choices in the industry.

You were coming off an Oscar win, and then you decided to jump in on this project that was just about to get started. Liz, you know, you obviously have been shotgunned into the spotlight, so to speak, pardon the pun, Josh. You both, I assume, have a lot of opportunity. How do you figure out what's next? For me, it comes down to sort of if I'm going to be mad that I didn't do the job, if I didn't do the project. And that's different from jealousy. I'll be jealous about like a dozen things that I see, if not more. I'm jealous of everything that I didn't do.

That's amazing. But if it's something that I think I didn't do because I was afraid or because I was like, oh, I don't know if I have the time. Or if it's that, then I have to do it. Because I think it's really easy to get scared out of doing something. I mean, I just wrote a feature that sort of, scared, like scared the hell out of me writing it. And it was such an incredible experience to do that because now I know that I can do something like that. But yeah, I think it's mostly if I'm

going to just be mad at myself in six months. It's like, you know, when you're at a store and you see like a shirt and you're like, it's just like 50 bucks more than I want to spend. And then you think about that shirt for the next three months. That's basically how I pick projects. That's it. For me, it's really all about the people. My first job out of college was at a consulting firm called McKinsey, which is this sort of odd, you know, odd choice, I suppose. And someone told me, you know, it doesn't matter what, because you work on all sorts of different projects,

and some are cool and you're working for a media company. Some are less cool when you're working on factory that makes a spun bond, which is a product used in modified bitumen roofing, right? And that was my first project. And someone said to me, it's really not about the project, it's about the people. Because, you know, the guy who inspired me actually to start writing, this guy, David Carrick, was a guy I met working on, you know, the modified bitumen roofing, Spunbond, right? And, you know...

Say that five times, that? Yeah. Which is not to say I would want to write a movie about modified bitumen roofing, necessarily. But which is to say, you know, when I got called about First Man, the Neal Armstrong movie, you know, I was like, I don't know. I don't know. Sure. You know, and it was this guy, David Lernernerner. And it was this guy Damien Chiselle who nobody had heard of, right?

Who had done this movie and the Sundance that wasn't released yet. It was called Whiplash. And my agency said, just watch, we'll get you a copy of Whiplash, which nobody had because they were giving it tight to the best. Just watch it. My wife and I sat and watched it the morning before I was supposed to meet with Damien. And I watched the movie, and my wife and I turned to each other. We were like, oh, my God.

And I was like, that guy. I want to work with that guy. You know, and I went in, and I got big ears and listened. and his take on Neil and the story I thought was really interesting. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. You know, it's not necessarily what I thought I'd be working on. Like, it doesn't feel, you know, it's not a natural area of interest for me. Like, yeah, I liked space growing up as a kid, but, you know, I'm much more interested in music

or the press at that time or whatever it is. But I thought, let me dive in because that's a guy I want to work with. I end every show by asking people what's the last great thing they've seen. I realize you guys have been on a crazy press tour, but what is the last great thing that you have seen? The Crown. Why? Break it down. I think the Crown is sort of everything that we're talking about and how you tell a story through character, in that they have no problem jumping through time.

They have no problem jumping through time in episodes to get the correct story out for the character arc. And it's about those characters and about those performances. There's a scene in the first season that I was watching it. Last December, I was sort of doing this water bottle tour of Los Angeles and was watching the Crown while it was happening. And I was so angry when I saw the scene because I was like, that's the scene that should be in the post because it's when Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth are arguing about how she wants to keep her maiden, wants to keep her husband's name.

and he says, but you're the queen, and she says, but I'm a wife and a mother, too. And that for me said everything you needed to know about who she was and what was important to her. And then because then she changed and went, like I just thought it was such incredible writing, and I was just so jealous and angry about it. But, yeah, so I think that show just has a remarkable way. And it's also a show that is exactly the amount of time that that show is supposed to be. I don't think the Crown could have been a two-hour movie. I don't think The Crown could have been a 100-episode television show.

I think it is sort of existing in exactly the amount of time that it should exist in, which is hard nowadays when you have access to kind of everything. That's a good one. Josh, what about you? Well, I have a self-serving answer, which is really not an answer to your question entirely. But you brought up the crown. So there's a scene in the Neil Armstrong movie. So Claire is in the Armstrong movie, and she plays Neil's wife, Janet.

And one thing that's not well known about Neil is how much loss he endured over the 10 years before he went to the He lost a young daughter right before he joined the Gemini program. And then he joined the Gemini program, which was the precursor to Apollo, with eight other guys. And his two closest friends in that program, Elliot C and Ed White, both died. One died during the program. One died. Ed White was in the Apollo one fire. And right after Elliot dies in our movie, Neil sort of just leaves the wake.

And Janet has to catch a ride home with Ed. who's still alive at that point, and talks about how tough it is to be the wife, not to be the wife, but how tough it is to deal with, you know, because as fighter pilots, they lose people all the time. There was one year back when Neil was working out at Edwards

that they lost four fighter pilots in it, four research test pilots in a year. And so it's just this little scene, and Janet has this little soliloquy, and it was dead of night. It was like midnight and more on a rig, you know, they rigged up a card and I got to write on top of the rig

for the stuff that was on Janet, on Claire. And it's freezing cold. We ran it like, you know, a dozen times. And I couldn't notice the temperature at all because she did that scene in so many different, I mean, the different colors she put into that scene. And this is, I mean, she'd been wonderful

across the board and it's amazing to see someone who you know from the crown who's so good as that character become a totally different human and be so good as the different human but to watch her it's the greatest one of the greatest pleasures you get

as a writer to be on set and watch an actor ride the horse as John Spencer used to say do a scene you know differently every time and it was astonishing to me I mean she just was astonishing so that's not really a direct answer

your question no it's a great flex it's a film that none of us are going to see for another year that's the first time of God, Matt. I loved it. Liz Hannah, Josh Singer. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you very much.