Lincoln

Lincoln is an upcoming 2012 biographical drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln.^[3] The film is based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Filming began Monday, October 17, 2011^[4] and ended on December 19, 2011.^[5] The film is scheduled for limited release on November 9, 2012 and wide release on November 16, 2012, by DreamWorks through Disney’s Touchstone distribution label in the U.S.^[6] and internationally by 20th Century Fox.^[7]

Plot

DreamWorks has announced that the film “will focus on the political collision of Lincoln and the powerful men of his cabinet on the road to abolition and the end of the Civil War.”^[8] According to Spielberg, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s entire book about Lincoln’s presidency is “much too big” for a film, and said that the film will focus on the last few months of Lincoln’s life (similar to The Passion of the Christ), the ending of slavery and the Union victory in the Civil War. Spielberg said that “what permanently ended slavery was the very close vote in the House of Representatives over the Thirteenth Amendment – that story I’m excited to tell.” Spielberg plans to show “Lincoln at work, not just Lincoln standing around posing for the history books…arguably the greatest working President in American history doing some of the greatest work for the world.”^[9]

Screenwriter Tony Kushner has said that he worked on the script for six years and that he was very interested in “the relationship of Lincoln to the abolitionist left” and that Lincoln’s “incredible ability to finesse very, very treacherous political circumstances and continue to move the country forward, I mean, to lead the country forward in the midst of the most horrendously difficult period in its history, I think, is breathtaking and awe-inspiring.”^[10]

In Team of Rivals, Goodwin describes the following episodes of the final months of Lincoln’s life in detail:^[11]

• The fight in the House of Representatives over proposing the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery forever, which succeeded on January 31, 1865
• The unsuccessful Hampton Roads Conference, which took place on February 3, 1865, at which Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward met with three Peace Commissioners from the Confederate States of America
• Lincoln’s second inaugural address, delivered March 4, 1865
• Lincoln’s 18-day trip to visit General Ulysses S. Grant at his headquarters at City Point, Virginia, starting March 23, 1865. He was accompanied for parts of his trip by his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and both of his living sons. Lincoln also met with General William Tecumseh Sherman on April 1, and later that day Petersburg, Virginia fell to the Union Army. Lincoln visited Petersburg the following day. The Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia, fell on April 3, and Lincoln visited there on April 4. Seward was seriously injured in a carriage accident in Washington on April 5, and Lincoln returned to the White House on April 9, 1865, and immediately visited Seward.
• On the evening of April 9, Lincoln received a telegram informing him that General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered at Appomattox Court House, in Virginia. For all practical purposes, the war was then over.
• Lincoln’s final cabinet meeting on April 14, 1865, where he discussed his plans for Reconstruction
• Lincoln’s visit to Ford’s Theater that night, where he was fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth, at the same time that William Seward was seriously wounded in a separate but coordinated attack by Lewis Powell.

Cast

• Daniel Day-Lewis as President Abraham Lincoln^[8]

Liam Neeson was originally cast as Abraham Lincoln in January 2005.^[12] In preparation for the role, Neeson studied Lincoln extensively.^[13] However, in July 2010, Neeson left the project, saying that he was “too old to play the former commander-in-chief”.^[14] In November 2010, it was announced that Day-Lewis would replace Neeson in the role.^[15] Doris Kearns Goodwin described Lincoln in his final months as a leader with “the rare wisdom of a temperament that consistently displayed an uncommon magnanimity to those who opposed him”.^[16] Producer Kathleen Kennedy described Day-Lewis’s performance as “remarkable” after 75% of the filming had been completed, and said, “Every day you get the chills thinking that Lincoln is sitting there right in front of you.” Kennedy described Day-Lewis’s method acting immersion into the role: “He is very much deeply invested and immersed throughout the day when he’s in character, but he’s very accessible at the end of the day, once he can step outside of it and not feel that – I mean, he’s given huge scenes with massive amounts of dialogue and he needs to stay in character, it’s a very, very performance-driven movie.”^[17]

• Sally Field as First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln^[18]

Field was first announced to join the cast as early as September 2007, but officially joined the cast in April 2011.^[19] Field said, “To have the opportunity to work with Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis and to play one of the most complicated and colorful women in American history is simply as good as it gets”.^[20] Spielberg said, “she has always been my first choice to portray all the fragility and complexity that was Mary Todd Lincoln”.^[21]

• Joseph Gordon-Levitt as their oldest son, recent Harvard graduate and new Union Army captain Robert Todd Lincoln^[22]

Robert Todd Lincoln had returned to the White House on April 14, 1865 to visit his family, and his father was assassinated that night.^[11]

• Gulliver McGrath as Tad Lincoln^[23]

Tad was 12 years old, and toured Richmond, Virginia, with his father.

• Tommy Lee Jones as Radical Republican Congessional leader Thaddeus Stevens^[22]

A fervent abolitionist, Stevens feared that Lincoln would “turn his back on emancipation.” Stevens “excoriated him on the floor of the House” for meeting with a Confederate peace delegation.^[11]

• David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward^[24]

According to John Hay, “The history of governments affords few instances of an official connection hallowed by a friendship so absolute and sincere as that which existed between these two magnanimous spirits”, namely Seward and Lincoln. Seward had been seriously injured in a carriage accident nine days before Lincoln’s assassination. He and his son Frederick W. Seward were attacked by Lewis Powell simultaneous with Lincoln’s shooting, and were both severely injured but both survived.^[11]

• Lee Pace as former Mayor of New York City Fernando Wood

Wood became a Copperhead Democratic Congessman sympathetic to the Confederacy

• Jackie Earle Haley as Vice President of the Confederate States of America Alexander H. Stephens^[2]

Stephens had served with Lincoln in Congress from 1847 to 1849. He met with Abraham Lincoln on the steamboat River Queen at the unsuccessful Hampton Roads Conference on February 3, 1865

• Gregory Itzin as John Archibald Campbell^[25]

Campbell was a former Supreme Court Justice who had resigned at the start of war and then served as Assistant Secretary of War in the Confederate government. He was also a member of the Confederate delegation that met with Lincoln at the Hampton Roads Conference

• Bruce McGill as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton^[26]

Stanton took charge of the investigation of the assassination plot^[11]

• Walton Goggins as Democratic Congressman Wells A. Hutchins^[27]

Hutchins broke with his party to cast a decisive vote in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery

• Gloria Reuben^[28] as Elizabeth Keckley

Keckley was a former slave who was dressmaker and confidant to Mary Todd Lincoln

• Jared Harris as Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant^[25]

Commanded the Union Army from March 1864 and directed the strategy that led to Union Victory.

• Wayne Duvall as Radical Republican Senator Bluff Wade
• David Oyelowo as Ira Clark^[29]
• James Spader as Democratic Party operative William N. Bilboe

Bilboe had been imprisoned but was freed by Lincoln, and then lobbied for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.^[28]

• John Hawkes^[30] as Colonel Robert Latham

Latham founded Lincoln College in 1865

• Hal Holbrook^[30] (who won an Emmy portraying Lincoln in a 1976 mini-series) as Francis Preston Blair^[25]

Blair was an influential Republican politician who tried to arrange a peace agreement between the Union and the Confederacy

• Tim Blake Nelson^[31] as Richard Schell

Schell was politician who later represented New York in the United States House of Representatives.

• Joseph Cross as John Hay

Hay was assistant and secretary to Abraham Lincoln

• David Costabile^[30] as James Ashley
• David Warshofsky^[30]
• Jeremy Strong^[30] as John George Nicolay^[25]

Nicolay was secretary to Abraham Lincoln

• Dakin Matthews^[30] John Palmer Usher^[25]

Usher was the Secretary of the Interior in Lincoln’s cabinet

• Boris McGiver^[30]
• Byron Jennings^[30] as Montgomery Blair^[25]

Blair was the son of Francis Preston Blair, was the former Postmaster-General and was a political opponent of the Radical Republicans

• Richard Topol as James Speed^[25]

Speed was United States Attorney General and brother of Joshua Speed, Lincoln’s oldest personal friend

• S. Epatha Merkerson as Lydia Smith^[25]

Smith was Thaddeus Stevens’s biracial housekeeper. Stevens was a bachelor and Smith lived with him for many years.

• Julie White as Elizabeth Blair Lee^[25]

Lee was the daughter of Francis Preston Blair, and wrote hundreds of letters documenting events during the Civil War

Production

While consulting on a Steven Spielberg project in 1999, Goodwin told Spielberg she was planning to write Team of Rivals, and Spielberg immediately told her he wanted the film rights.^[32] DreamWorks finalized the deal in 2001,^[12] and by the end of the year, John Logan signed on to write the script.^[33] His draft focused on Lincoln’s friendship with Frederick Douglass.^[34] Playwright Paul Webb was hired to rewrite and filming was set to begin in January 2006,^[12] but Spielberg delayed it out of dissatisfaction with the script.^[35] Neeson said Webb’s draft covered the entirety of Lincoln’s term as President.^[36]

Tony Kushner replaced Webb. Kushner considered Lincoln “the greatest democratic leader in the world” and found the writing assignment daunting because “I have no idea [what made him great]; I don’t understand what he did anymore than I understand how William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet or Mozart wrote Così fan tutte.” He delivered his first draft late and felt the enormous amount written about Lincoln did not help either. Kushner said Lincoln’s abolitionist ideals made him appealing to a Jewish writer, and although he felt Lincoln was Christian, he noted the president rarely quoted the New Testament and that his “thinking and his ethical deliberation seem very talmudic”. He denied any interest in portraying Lincoln as homosexual – as had been speculated due to Kushner’s sexuality – because “there’s [not] enough evidence one way or the other to make a definitive statement about Lincoln’s sexuality”.^[37] By late 2008, Kushner joked he was on “my 967,000th book about Abraham Lincoln”.^[38] Kushner’s initial 500-page draft focused on four months in the life of Lincoln, and by February 2009 he had rewritten it to focus on two months in Lincoln’s life when he was preoccupied with adopting the Thirteenth amendment.^[36]

While promoting Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in May 2008, Spielberg announced his intention to start filming in early 2009,^[39] for release in November, ten months after the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.^[32] In January 2009, Taunton and Dighton, Massachusetts were being scouted as potential locations.^[40] Spielberg arranged a $50 million budget for the film, to please Paramount Pictures CEO Brad Grey, who had previously delayed the project over concerns it was too similar to Spielberg’s unsuccessful Amistad (1997). Spielberg had wanted Touchstone Pictures–which agreed to distribute all his films from 2010–to distribute the film, but he was unable to afford paying off Paramount, which DreamWorks had developed the film with.^[41]

Filming took place in Petersburg, Virginia. According to location manager Colleen Gibbons, “one thing that attracted the filmmakers to the city was the 180-degree vista of historic structures” which is “very rare”.^[42] Lincoln toured Petersburg on April 3, 1865, the day after it fell to the Union Army. Scenes have also been filmed at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, which served as the Capitol of the Confederacy during the Civil War.^[43][2] Abraham Lincoln visited the building on April 4, 1865, after Richmond fell to the Union Army.

On September 4, 2012, DreamWorks and Google Play announced on Lincoln’s Facebook page that they will release the trailer for the film during a Google+ hangout with Steven Spielberg and Joseph Gordon-Levitt on September 13, 2012 at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT.^[44] Then, on September 10, 2012, a teaser for the trailer was released.^[45]