48 Fun Facts About The Post (2017 Film)

The Post was nominated for Best Picture at the 2018 Oscars but lost to which film?

The Shape of Water won; The Post, which its director had raced from first reading the script to a first screening in about nine months, left the ceremony with nothing.

Which actress plays Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham in The Post?

Meryl Streep plays a publisher still finding her voice, talked over in a boardroom full of men until the night she gives the order to print.

In The Post, Katharine Graham faces her big decision in the same week her company does what?

Sells shares to the public: the stock offering was brand new, and its backers could walk away if a "catastrophic" event struck, which criminal charges against the paper might be.

Which two writers share the screenplay credit on The Post?

Liz Hannah and Josh Singer came from opposite ends of the business: she was a first-time screenwriter who sold the script on spec, and he was brought in for rewrites after his Oscar for Spotlight.

Which former Sony Pictures chief bought the spec script for The Post at auction in October 2016?

Amy Pascal's new production company won the auction, paying from her own discretionary fund; five months later the script had its director and both of its stars.

Spielberg made The Post while post-production continued on which other film he directed?

Ready Player One was deep in effects work at Warner Bros., so his team held a scheduling "war room" to be sure both could be finished, and The Post still reached theaters first.

How does The Post put Richard Nixon on screen?

With his real White House tapes: no actor speaks the president's lines, so each threat he makes against the press is heard in Nixon's own recorded voice.

Where did The Post hold its premiere on December 14, 2017?

The Newseum in Washington, D.C., was a museum devoted to the press, a pointed choice of venue; the film then opened in nine theaters and went nationwide on January 12, 2018.

The Post's leading lady was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar but lost to which winner?

Frances McDormand won, then asked every female nominee in the room to stand with her, calling on The Post's star by name to get up first so that the rest would follow.

The Post opens in 1966 with analyst Daniel Ellsberg in which setting?

On patrol with troops in Vietnam, he sees how badly the war is going, then watches the defense secretary tell reporters the opposite.

Which organization named The Post the best film of 2017?

The National Board of Review handed over its prizes at a New York gala where Robert De Niro, introducing The Post's leading lady, turned his speech into a profane attack on President Trump.

Which composer wrote the orchestral score for The Post?

John Williams had been due to score the director's next film as well, but both were being finished at once, so he chose this one and gave the other up.

Early in The Post, the paper's reporter Judith Martin is shut out of covering which event?

Tricia Nixon's wedding was closed to Martin, accused of crashing her sister Julie's reception, and Bradlee refuses to send anyone in her place.

Which actor plays Daniel Ellsberg in The Post?

Matthew Rhys plays the military analyst who smuggles the secret study out of his office and photocopies it on the quiet, long before a page of it reaches a newspaper.

Which Breaking Bad actor plays Washington Post editor Ben Bagdikian in The Post?

Bob Odenkirk's Bagdikian does the legwork, hunting down the leaker from one pay phone after another and spilling his pocketful of change across the pavement as he goes.

In The Post, Ellsberg first leaks the study to which New York Times reporter, a former Vietnam War correspondent?

Neil Sheehan had covered the war for UPI and the Times; a Times team then spent three months studying the documents before the first article ran.

In The Post, which think tank employs Daniel Ellsberg when he copies the classified study?

The RAND Corporation held a copy of the study in its own files, which is how one of its analysts was able to carry the pages out to be photocopied.

In The Post, which former Secretary of Defense, a friend of Graham, warns her about an unflattering story?

Robert McNamara had commissioned the secret study himself in 1967; in the film he tips off his friend Graham that the Times is about to run a story drawn from it.

In The Post, how do other newspapers respond once the Times and the Post are taken to court?

They publish the documents too: dailies around the country ran their own stories from the study, a show of solidarity the film hands to Graham as vindication.

In The Post, why do the paper's lawyers panic after Graham gives the go-ahead to print?

Bagdikian shared the Times's source, the leaker himself, and the lawyers warn that this could bring criminal charges down on the paper and the people who run it.

Which justice wrote in the 6-3 ruling behind The Post that the press serves "the governed, not the governors"?

Hugo Black went on: the government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government.

The final scene of The Post shows a security guard discovering a burglary at which building?

The Watergate complex break-in came a year after the court ruling, and the film closes on its discovery: the first thread of the scandal that brought down a president.

Which former New York Times counsel praised The Post as a movie but dismissed it as "bad history"?

James Goodale, the paper's top lawyer in 1971, argued that the film hands the Post credit his own paper had earned, as if Hollywood had filmed the Times cracking Watergate.

The closing credits of The Post dedicate the film to which filmmaker, once a newspaper reporter herself?

Nora Ephron, who died in 2012, was close to the people who made it: she had written or directed films starring each of The Post's two leads.

Which 1976 film, in which Jason Robards played Bradlee, begins where The Post ends?

All the President's Men rebuilt the Post's newsroom on a California soundstage rather than film in the real one, and had boxes of the paper's actual trash shipped in to dress the set.

Which cinematographer, Steven Spielberg's regular since 1993, shot The Post?

Janusz Kaminski shot it on film, as Spielberg insists, and chose soft, undirected light so that a 1971 story would feel like the present day.

Katharine Graham's 1997 memoir, which won a Pulitzer Prize, has which title?

Personal History was the book Spielberg handed his lead actress to prepare, along with Ben Bradlee's own memoir, A Good Life.

How had Katharine Graham come to run The Washington Post by the time of The Post?

Her husband, the publisher, died by suicide in 1963; her father had handed the paper to his son-in-law, not to her, back in 1946.

Which actor plays Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee in The Post?

Tom Hanks plays Bradlee as an editor furious at being scooped by The New York Times; when a court order halts that paper's series, he sees his opening and goes after the documents himself.

With which friend and former colleague did Daniel Ellsberg photocopy the secret Vietnam study in 1969?

Anthony Russo, a friend from their days as fellow researchers, helped with the copying and was later indicted alongside Ellsberg as his alleged accomplice.

Where was Daniel Ellsberg working in 1971 when he leaked the secret Vietnam study to the press?

MIT had employed him as a research associate since 1970; by the time of the leak he had left the think tank where he copied the study.

Which Alaska senator read the leaked Vietnam study into the record at a Senate subcommittee hearing in 1971?

Mike Gravel, an outspoken critic of the war, read them aloud; that put them in the public record, and a published version of the study is still known as the Gravel Edition.

Why were the criminal charges against Daniel Ellsberg dismissed in 1973?

A break-in at his psychiatrist's office by a secret White House team, the "plumbers", came out during the trial, and the judge threw the case out for government misconduct.

Which institution released the full Pentagon Papers in 2011?

The National Archives released all 7,000 pages on the 40th anniversary of the first newspaper story; about a third of the report had never been made public before.

Katharine Graham is credited as the first woman to do what?

Run a Fortune 500 company as CEO: quite a turnaround for a woman who took charge with no training for the job and described herself as shy, insecure and unprepared for it.

Which president awarded Ben Bradlee the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a year before the editor's death?

Barack Obama presented it in 2013, citing the editor's fight to publish the leaked Vietnam study and his paper's Watergate coverage; Bradlee died the following year at 93.

Who bought The Washington Post from the Graham family in 2013?

Jeff Bezos paid $250 million out of his own pocket, not Amazon's, and ended eight decades of Graham family ownership.

Which branch of the military did Daniel Ellsberg serve in during the 1950s?

The Marine Corps made him a platoon leader and company commander from 1954 to 1957; an early supporter of the war in Vietnam, he came to believe it could not be won.

Which Oscar-nominated 2009 documentary tells Daniel Ellsberg's story?

The Most Dangerous Man in America takes its title from what Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's national security adviser, called Ellsberg after the leak.

Under what working title was The Post briefly known during its 2017 shoot?

The Papers was the name on the production notice when shooting began in May 2017; on August 25 the studio went back to the script's original title.

In The Post, Ben Bradlee looks back uneasily on his close friendship with which president?

John F. Kennedy had been his friend and neighbor, and the leaked study shows Bradlee that even his friend's White House had misled him about Vietnam.

Who beat The Post's director to the 2018 Best Director Golden Globe?

Guillermo del Toro won a category that presenter Natalie Portman had pointedly introduced as "the all-male nominees", and when the orchestra tried to play him off he talked it down and finished his speech.

Spielberg turned to The Post after shutting down which long-planned film just weeks before shooting?

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara collapsed because he could not find a boy to play the lead; needing a distraction, he picked up a spec script and fell for it.

In The Post, what is Katharine Graham doing when she is called to the phone to decide on publishing?

Hosting a farewell party for a retiring colleague, as the real Graham was that night: she breaks off, hears the arguments and gives the order to publish.

The Post's composer gave up Spielberg's next film, which was scored instead by whom?

Alan Silvestri got the call because Spielberg had produced the Back to the Future films he scored; it left one of the very few Spielberg features without his usual composer.

On its wide-release weekend, The Post finished second at the box office behind which holdover?

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was four weeks into its run and still won the Martin Luther King weekend, while The Post led every film new to wide release.

Which real security guard, shown in the final scene of The Post, phones police about a burglary in progress?

Frank Wills was 24 when he spotted tape holding a door latch open and called the police; the arrests that followed began the unraveling of a presidency.

Which studio gave The Post its limited US release on December 22, 2017?

20th Century Fox was changing hands as the film came out: Disney announced its deal to buy the studio on December 14, 2017, the very day The Post had its premiere.