Spath: For this film, we did look at the ALEXA 65, but I think Janusz knew full well that Steven was going to stick with film, but he wanted to do a comparison and show it to Steven, because it does give you a beautiful image. But with the texture of film, as soon as the movie starts you’re just dropped into it and you feel the film. For this one, film really fit, given the time period in which it takes place. It enhances the story, and that’s what it’s all about. Dubin: Yes, Steven loves film. I thought that after The BFG, he would make the switch to digital, but the very next movie we were back shooting film. He will shoot film as long as they make it. Unfortunately, film cameras have really deteriorated since the days when everyone was shooting on film, and the viewfinders are terrible now. It’s sad. CO: Where was The Post filmed? Spath: Most of the film was shot in and around White Plains, New York. For a lot of the stuff that takes place at The Washing-
ton Post, we weren’t on a stage, we were in a practical office building in White Plains. So there wasn’t a lot of ceiling space, and Janusz couldn’t light through windows because we were on the tenth floor. It was a challenge. But for our stage, we shot at Steiner Studios. Dubin: This was definitely a New York film. Even the Vietnam sequences were shot there. Believe it or not, State University of New York in Purchase served as our Vietnam location. We shot that just off campus in what I think was a botanical garden. Towards the end of the film, the newspaper printing press sequence was shot at the New York Post, and all of that was authentic, with the actual employees who work there. CO: What was the most memorable shot for you working on this film? Dubin: There’s always one shot that Steven comes up with that requires quite a bit of planning, and there was a specific shot that Steven had in his mind, weeks before we shot it. It was the shot when Katherine
Graham, Meryl Streep’s character, makes the decision to publish the Pentagon Papers. It is a spinning overhead shot in her home office. When Steven described the shot, we didn’t know how we’d do it. Eventually the key grip, Mitch Lillian, figured out a way: we rigged a jib arm upside down, suspended from the ceiling on some complicated rigging. And we mounted the camera on a Libra head with a zoom lens at the end of the jib arm. The camera could then spin around the room precisely and without track, suspended from the ceiling. It was interesting because once we had it all set up, just before we were going to shoot it, Steven decided he wanted to push the camera around the room himself. He wanted to control the speed and the pace of the move. This was the first time in my career where Steven was the dolly grip on the shot! Spath: The way they suspended it, there was a pole rigged to the camera head, so it was very light and Steven could just circle the room walking with it. But it was such
TRIVIA: This is the first major film collaboration of actress Meryl Streep and director Steven Spielberg. Streep previously performed the voice of "The Blue Fairy" in Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Tom Hanks (Ben Bradlee), David Cross (Howard Simons), John Rue (Gene Patterson), Bob Odenkirk (Ben Bagdikian), Jessie Mueller (Judith Martin), and Philip Casnoff (Chalmers Roberts) in Twentieth Century Fox’s THE POST. Photo by Niko Tavernise
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