Lincoln’s dimensions
The friendship between President Drew Faust and “Lincoln” screenwriter Tony Kushner dates to the spring of 2008, when Kushner came to campus to deliver the annual Tanner Lectures on Human Values. “I remember a wonderful dinner where we talked about Lincoln the whole time,” Faust, a renowned Civil War historian, said Thursday. “I think the other people at the table thought, ‘What is going on? Could they please be a little more polite?’” The two Lincoln enthusiasts sat down again, at the Brattle Theatre, for a conversation about the beloved and mysterious president, following a Harvard-sponsored screening of Kushner and director Steven Spielberg’s new biopic. (This time, there were no dinner guests to offend.) When he first met Faust, Kushner recalled, he was already years into the difficult process of adapting a massive Lincoln biography (Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals”) for the big screen. By the winter of 2007, he had told...