The director of a film which reincarnates the story of Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date said he did not realise there would be “political ramifications”.
In an interview with CNN, Richard Tanne, whose film “South Side With You” premiered at the Sundance Festival, said he just wanted to “write a love story”.
“It's embarrassing to admit it, but I never considered the political ramifications,” Mr Tanne said. ”I really wanted to tell a love story, but as I was writing it, and as we were making it, it did occur to me that there's a sort of dramatic irony in the sense that everyone watching the movie will always know what they went on to do.”
The film is set in Chicago in the summer of 1989 when the now President Barack Obama pursued his wife Michelle, who was working as an adviser at the same law firm. She was reluctant at first to be “distracted” from her work by going on dates.
“Now how's it going to look,” Michelle Robinson's character said in the film, “If I swoop in and start dating the first cute black guy who walks through the firm's doors? The liberal-minded people will think it's precious and the close-minded people will think it's pathetic.”
“You think I'm cute?” Mr Obama responds.
Mr Tanne said he drew on news reports and other accounts to script the dialogue. Read The Independent's review of the film here.
The two Obamas went to the Art Institute to see Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing”, a film about racial divides in Brooklyn.
Tika Sumpter, who plays Michelle Obama, said the President and First Lady are aware of the film and gave it the non-official “thumbs up”.
“And we know from a very reliable source that they're both excited and baffled that it exists,” added Mr Tanne.
