From a Chance Meeting, 'Lincoln' Emerges Watching the two-and-a-half-hour "Lincoln," with its wartime scenes, epic Congressional and marital showdowns and presidential death, viewers might not think that its backstory involved a lot of winnowing and trimming. And yet, that's exactly what was necessary, as Kathleen Kennedy, a producer of the film, revealed in a recent panel discussion hosted by the Producers Guild of America. The movie began when the director Steven Spielberg ran into the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin around the turn of the century, as he was helping put together the millennium celebration in Washington D.C. "They were standing off to the side chatting," Ms. Kennedy recounted, "and he simply said, 'What are you working on?' And she said, 'Well I think I'm going to do this book on Lincoln.' And that's what really planted the seed. Mr. Spielberg kept tabs on the project and even began consulting screenwriters, but it wasn't until the book, "Team of Rivals," was finished that work began in earnest. Mr. Spielberg drafted Tony Kushner to write the script; his first draft was famously 500 pages long. When the 500-page script arrived I remember I got this call from Steven, and he's like, 'What are we going to do?' Ms. Kennedy said. And I said, 'Well we're going to have to talk to Tony.' And then I had Tony on the phone saying, 'Do you think this could be a mini-series?' But Mr. Spielberg and Ms. Kennedy, who has worked with him since "E.T.," wanted to make a feature, so director and screenwriter went back to the drawing board. "It sounds strange to think that there was a suspense drama inside of legislation," Ms. Kennedy said. That is not something you walk into a studio and say, 'Hey, here's a great idea.' So it was something that really the two of them got focused in more and more and more until they realized yes, they could find the cinema and the drama inside of this story. The material for "Lincoln," came from "essentially 15 pages of Doris's book," published in 2005, Ms. Kennedy added. But I think the philosophical idea behind Lincoln having the foresight to bring people in his cabinet who didn't necessarily agree with him was really the foundation of this story.