“Southside With You,” a movie telling the story of Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date, opens Friday. Most of the movie was true to the couple’s actual first date in 1989: A young Barack (played by Parker Sawyers) and Michelle (Tika Sumpter) spend a day looking at art, going to see “Do the Right Thing” and getting ice cream. In the film, they also go to a community meeting, something that happened early on in their courtship but not on the couple’s actual first date.
Solo-ish sat down with Richard Tanne, writer and director of the film, to discuss how a young Barack might have won over Michelle in the course of a single day — and how Tanne’s own love story inspired the film.
Lisa Bonos: There are many ways to tell the story of a relationship. Why focus on the Obamas’ first date?
Richard Tanne: There will be many biographies about Barack Obama and his presidency. But I’ve always been taken by the way that they show affection in public. The way that they look at each other and the way that they flirt, because it’s always felt authentic. It’s always felt a little sexy. It’s rare to see that in life, and it’s even rarer to see it in public figures. … When I read about their first date … I thought: “This is where it began.” This moment of: She was not interested at first, and he had one day to win her over.
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Bonos: Michelle was Barack’s adviser at the law firm where they both worked, and tells him very clearly that she doesn’t want to date him, that it wouldn’t look good for her professionally. In almost any romantic comedy, there’s often this sense: If this happened in real life, it would be creepy. How did you thread that needle between romance and the fact that Barack had to convince Michelle to date him?
Tanne: I probably drew a lot from personal experience. … I was certainly persistent with my girlfriend. … Our first date was really our second date because on our first date, we didn’t really know what it was. Then there was a year in between where I sort of dropped the ball and had to pick the ball back up and persuade. It’s less persuade and more show someone who you are. I think that’s the difference.
Bonos: Tell me about that first date.
Tanne: [My girlfriend and I] actually grew up in the same town [Livingston, N.J.]. We went to the same high school and the same Jewish synagogue, and didn’t really know each other. I knew of her, I’d see her around; she’s a few years younger. She moved out to Los Angeles, and we were reintroduced. I was kind of one-foot-in, one-foot-out of something when we met, and I thought it was just as friends. She maybe didn’t know that and so … I handled the whole thing very awkwardly, and I thought I blew it after that.
Bonos: How did you recover?
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Tanne: For a year, I thought she hated me. She did. … I kept thinking about her and what a stupid opportunity I blew. [About a year later] I texted her, and I said: “Are you still out in Los Angeles?” And she said “yeah.” I said: “I wanted to apologize for dropping the ball. Could we go out for drinks or something?” … She made me explain myself more over the phone. After hearing where I was coming from … we went and had dinner and had a real date. And we’ve been together ever since.
Bonos: That’s great. If you got material for the movie from things that you’d read, did you reach out to the Obamas to have them be involved?
Tanne: I didn’t. … I wrote this [screenplay] completely on spec. … I was and am a nobody, so there was no other way to do it. I read as much as I could and tried to extrapolate from there, who they might’ve been back then, what they might’ve talked about.
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Bonos: So the conversations they have — when Michelle asks Barack: Have you dated white women? Do we know if she asked him that question?
Share this articleShareTanne: We don’t know. I would imagine that, at some point, she probably asked him that question.
Bonos: A lot of conversation between Barack and Michelle in “Southside” made me think about the ways people judge each other on a first date. One person might make a statement about the other person — such as Michelle telling Barack he needs to forgive his father — and then there’s a little back-and-forth, where daters are essentially saying to each other, “You’re not seeing me correctly.” Your versions of Barack and Michelle had a lot of that.
Tanne: A lot of the things they did on the first date — the community meeting notwithstanding, because that was creative license — all the other stuff, they actually did. That’s a long first date. They also knew each other prior to that date, so I felt I could get away with them going deeper. All the dialogue is imagined, but it’s also extrapolated from established facts about them, for the most part. But on top of it, when you do have an amazing first date … there’s a pattern of: It was kind of an unexpectedly deep experience, a marathon experience. You talked about things you’re never “supposed” to talk about.
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Bonos: They challenge each other quite a bit. What were you going for there?
Tanne: I had the idea to do this film back in 2008, but I didn’t start writing it until 2013. It wasn’t until I fell in love that I was able to really sit down and work on it. … What I learned was that: When you meet someone really special, it’s not just that kind of mushy, gushy storybook romance, it’s the person that can hold up a mirror to you and show you how you can be better. I look at them now, and I feel that they make each other better. And so, I thought [that on] the first date … they’d have to show each other one another’s blind spots, or flaws. … Michelle Obama is a woman of high standards. … She’s not going to let some good-looking, smooth-talking guy come in and do a number. … He wasn’t going to just get away with charm; there had to be more. … He’s into her from the start, but he falls deeper and deeper over the course of the day because she is able to point out things that other people in his life probably don’t.
Bonos: While watching “Southside,” I thought about the effortless way Michelle and Barack are telegraphing to each other: “I’m intellectual and worldly,” without saying it directly. For example, when they’re at the art exhibit, Michelle drops a French phrase into the conversation. Or when Barack casually mentions something that happened in Indonesia, prompting Michelle to probe further. On a first date, you might not ask someone — “How many languages do you speak?” or “Have you lived abroad?” — but daters find ways to drop clues about themselves. The language of the first date is kind of elliptical.
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Tanne: One way you know you’re not on a good first date is when you do drop a piece of information, and the other person doesn’t question it or pick up on it or investigate it at all. … You’re just like: This isn’t going so well. This other person’s not interested in me.
Bonos: They do talk about politics and religion, stuff you’re not “supposed” to talk about on a first date. Are there ways that you think first dates are inherently political? Not by talking about politics, per se, but in the sort of polite way daters talk to each other when they’re practically strangers.
Tanne: I think they can be [political], and they typically are when you’re not riffing with someone, when you’re not really connecting with someone. But the good ones, you forget about the rules and you begin to open up. And that’s what the movie is: It’s two people who are guarded in certain ways and are protecting themselves in certain ways, opening up. That’s what courtship is. It’s a gradual opening up, if there’s something real there. I think it gets less political the more dates you go on and the more connected you are.
READ MORE:
Barack and Michelle’s first date, coming to a theater near you
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