Nice in-depth article by the Hollywood Reporter. Also, check the following update for their cover story: In late February, Steven Spielberg hit a wall. Six years after he had started work on period piece The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara — and just weeks before he was due to start filming in Italy — he couldn’t find a boy to play the lead. In need of distraction, he picked up a spec screenplay that his CAA agents had sent him, and fell in love. The Papers, as the script was then called, didn’t just tell the story of The Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham, both of whom he knew; it also touched on one of the most relevant issues of the day: freedom of the press, and Graham’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971, at the risk of losing her family-owned newspaper. After mulling things over, Spielberg told his longtime production partner, Kristie Macosko Krieger, that he was going to shut down Mortara and immediately jump onto the other film, which he wanted in theaters by the end of the year. “Everybody thought that I was off my rocker,” he admits. “But the great thing about having these decades-long collaborations is that the whole scrimmage swung to the left and we seriously started to prioritize the bare necessities.” “He said, ‘Can we make this movie this year? Can it come out this year?'” recalls Macosko Krieger. “So I [went] to my editorial staff, my postproduction crew, and said, ‘I know we can shoot it, but can we post it in time?’ Because we were also in postproduction on Ready Player One, the gigantic movie at Warner Bros. We sat down and did a giant war room, and we felt pretty confident that we could make it work. But we knew it would be tight.” The complete article can be read over at the Hollywood Reporter.

A lenghty, very interesting article on “The Post” by The Guardian: It has been described as a Hollywood all-star team’s riposte to Donald Trump. Steven Spielberg’s new film, The Post, headlined by Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, dramatises the Washington Post’s publication of the classified Pentagon Papers, which exposed government lies about the Vietnam war. But while there are well chronicled parallels between the administrations and obsessions of Trump and Richard Nixon, the movie is also provoking debate about the role of media as watchdog – and whether a similar leak today would survive partisan attempts to discredit the messenger. Spielberg consulted Daniel Ellsberg, the Rand Corporation strategic analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers – a top-secret 7,000-page document detailing US strategy in south-east Asia from 1945 to 1967 – to New York Times journalist Neil Sheehan in 1971. It was a bombshell that revealed the White House knew it was fighting an unwinnable war. After the Nixon administration won a court injunction that stopped the presses, Ellsberg gave a copy of the documents to the Post and 17 other newspapers. The Times and Post fought the order for 15 days until the supreme court overturned the ban in a 6-3 decision. Justice William Douglas wrote: “The dominant purpose of the first amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of governmental suppression of embarrassing information.” But the justice department still pursued a vendetta against Ellsberg. He went on trial in 1973 on charges of espionage, conspiracy and stealing government property. The charges were dismissed due to gross governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering against him. The Pentagon Papers were declassified in 2011 and released for the public. The complete article can be read over at The Guardian with many thanks to Glenn for the heads-up.

USA Today reports about the Lincoln Square Q&A with more insights: There’s a reason why Tom Hanks never worked with Meryl Streep before The Post. “I failed my audition for Mamma Mia!” Hanks joked at a panel Sunday night, following the first New York screening of Steven Spielberg’s new movie at AMC Lincoln Square. Somewhat surprisingly, he “never came close (to co-starring with her). I never dreamed that it would be possible.” The Oscar winners certainly picked a timely film for their first vehicle together. Set in 1971, The Post (in select theaters Dec. 22, expands nationwide Jan. 12) centers on the unlikely partnership between The Washington Post’s Katharine “Kay” Graham (Streep), the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks), as they wrestle to publish the Pentagon Papers, a massive cover-up of government secrets spanning decades. Most of the action takes place over just a few days, with the drama stemming from the Nixon administration’s efforts to stop The Washington Post and The New York Times from printing top-secret information about the Vietnam War. The film’s resonance in the era of “fake news” and journalist bans from White House briefings wasn’t lost on Spielberg, who read Liz Hannah’s script just nine months ago and rushed it into production. “I need a motivational purpose to make any movie,” Spielberg said. “When I read the first draft of the script, this wasn’t something that could wait three years or two years — this was a story I felt we needed to tell today.” The complete article can be read over at USA Today.

“It was a relationship between a man and a woman that wasn’t based on any other feelings. It was a friendship that was so deep, it was like family. The script interested me because it was about the working atmosphere. This is so important right now to think about: the atmosphere in which men and women can deal with each other, especially if the woman is the superior. You see in the scene where she and Bradlee have breakfast, she treats him like he is the boss – and that’s usually how that works. There is an accommodation to the ego of the men.

When December cover star Meryl Streep agreed to come to the Vogue offices to be interviewed by Anna Wintour, the questions were swirling. Who would wear the highest heels? The darkest glasses? In fact, the pair had a frank and far-ranging conversation filled with humor and insight. Streep came to discuss her role as Wintour’s friend, the late Katharine Graham, in Steven Spielberg’s new movie, The Post, about the Watergate crisis. Just like Streep, Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post, knew how to say—and do—the right thing at the right time. That was then. This is now: Connecting the dots was a given. Much is revealed in the interview above, between the Pentagon Papers and the Mueller investigation, sexual harassment, female empowerment, and what Meryl and her daughters talk about around the dining room table. Key questions: Will either of these ladies run for office? And which was the most challenging female character Streep ever played? The devil is in the details. The whole interview with Streep can be read on Vogue’s website, alongside the Wintour interview and a slideshow of her most challenging on-screen transformations.

A couple of new magazine scans, including three cover stories, have been added to the photo gallery. The new magazines come from Germany, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic, with many thanks to Marci for sending in the latter. For a complete overview, have a look at the previews below.

And the final update to complete today’s addition of 170 new articles brings us remaining coverage of “The Iron Lady, lots of British and Spanish articles on “August: Osage County” and more recent articles on “Ricki and the Flash”, “Suffratette” and “Florence Foster Jenkins”. I hope you enjoy all the new articles – and let’s thank Alvaro once again for putting so much work and effort into collecting such a wide range of articles for us all to read and enjoy.

While this part features quite a few articles on “Julie & Julia”, no film with Meryl has garnered more attention by the press, especially the British press, than “The Iron Lady”. So below you’ll find a lot of interviews from US and European articles. Kudos to whoever came up with Iron Ma’am cover for the National Post, very funny.

This part features some amazing coverage on the releases of “Mamma Mia”, “Doubt” and “Julie & Julia”. The British press especially has had some great covers for the promotional run. Also, quite an impressive collection of Spanish newspaper articles throughout, featuring reviews and interviews with Meryl for various releases.

Part two rushes through the 1990s with articles covering “The River Wild” and “The Bridges of Madison County”, the “comeback” years of the early 2000s with “Adaptation” and “The Hours” and the superstar years, staring with “The Devil Wears Prada”. Once again, some great new cover stories, especially for 1990’s “Postcards from the Edge” and for the late 1990s promotion of “One True Thing.”

If you thought last week’s magazines update was massive, brace yourself. My friend Alvaro has made good use of the latest technology to digitalize stacks and stacks of old magazines and newspaper articles to share on Simply Streep. So today’s update is split into five posts because there are a whopping 170 articles added with over 450 pages. Many many thanks for this wonderful contribution. Let’s start with early articles beginning in 1979 and covering Meryl’s rise to stardom with “Kramer vs. Kramer” through the 1980s and articles on “Out of Africa” and “A Cry in the Dark”. Lots of great covers, especially from Canada. The 1979 Cosmopolitan article features a stunning full page photo, as you can see below. A full list of new galleries can be found below the previews.