Interview: Director Barnet Bain on “Milton’s Secret”

Posted on October 10, 2016 at 3:50 pm

Barnet Bain co-wrote and directed “Milton’s Secret,” based on Eckhart Tolle’s book about a bullied boy who learns some strategies for coping with his anxiety from his grandfather, played in the film by Donald Sutherland. In an interview, Bain talked about using classic Donovan songs on the soundtrack and dealing with the “internal bully.”

Why did you decide to use Donovan songs from the 1960’s on the soundtrack?

Well you know the character played by Donald Sutherland is a guy of that era. So it is the soundtrack of his life. And all of those Donovan songs, they are all love songs to the divine.

Really? I thought Season Of The Witch was about being arrested for marijuana or something. Wasn’t it?

That may be the story that was told back in the day but to me that’s a song about egos and being flung out of the moment.

One of the biggest challenges that any director faces is in casting children, so tell me a little bit about how you went about that and what you were looking for.

I looked at a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of really fabulous actors, just so many of them. I was looking for, first of all children that were real in their bodies, not in their head, so that they inhabited their bodies, they were more grounded and were not so cut off by over -thinking or by attachment to their devices that they were inaccessible to their feelings. And so I found these incredibly beautiful kids who are so sophisticated precisely because they are so in touch with their emotions.

That’s a challenge to find in people, I would say actors of any age but people at any age.

It is such a challenge and that is one of the themes of the movie. We have so many strategies for splitting off from being connected to ourselves and to each other and just in our bodies. And one of the ways is to be overly attached to our devices, to our virtual world. They are just extensions of our minds, not a bad thing, beautiful, beautiful tools but we become addicted to them in the same way that we become addicted to over-thinking.

It’s a concept, it’s an idea, a mental idea and real connection doesn’t happen in the head, it happens in the body. When we are only operating there it doesn’t have the ability to deliver on the promise of what makes us human, we cannot connect through a device.

Milton in the film is a little older than the boy in the book. I loved the portrayal of that moment on the brink of adolescence when they are old enough to begin to ask big questions but still young enough to believe in alchemy.

There is that moment right before puberty that is just right for a movie about uncertainty, the uncertain times that kids, adults, communities, families that we are all living in. And so at that time of puberty there’s a whole bunch more issues, just a whole other range of issues that get laid on. So at around puberty, as challenging as life already is there’s a whole other bunch of preset challenges that get loaded on. And so I thought it would be a more complicated story to tell, a wonderful story but a more complicated story to tell and that we would be able to see through the veil a little more simply.

That’s why it happened there and so there is a certain kind of purity in his ability to perceive and conceive what’s going on in the world. It’s a period that you can look at it and say, “Well it’s overly simple,” and that’s a legitimate point of view, but on the other hand these are very, very complicated ideas about self witnessing and finding a boundary between yourself and what’s going on in your world and your parents and when you add on other things it starts to become so chaotic, it pulls us into our heads. Life is already such an invitation to be a head trip, so that was the investigation that went into that decision.

It was such a pleasure to see Donald Sutherland — he is perfect as Milton’s grandfather.

He is such a good guy, I know. He’s been in 180 movies with a leading role with everyone, from Fellini to Robert Altman. He is absolutely masterful and one of the beautiful things about him, one of the reasons that I was so grateful that he fall in love with the role is that when you have an actor with those skills they become present. And so it’s only a really masterful actor that has the ability to both self witness and not engage and that is a level of consciousness that I am exploring in my own life and that I wanted to make the movie about.

That’s the theme of the film but I know as a filmmaker that the very, very finest actors among us operate that way. They are aware of themselves and they are aware of the inclination to want to observe and ask “Am I doing well? Could I have done it better? How is somebody else responding to me?” They are aware of their inner voice. They are aware of what they’re feeling but they are relating to it and identify with it. And so to have an actor of such skill play someone who is more in touch with, more conscious than he might’ve been in earlier parts of his life, he is certainly more consciously self-aware than the others in his family and he is able to pull it off. If it was somebody less skilled they would be triggered, they would be caught up by their own inner self talk and it would not have been as generous a performance.

You seem to gravitate towards spiritual themes in your work, is that right? Do you do that consciously?

I do. I don’t really make any distinction between my work life and my family life and my life as a member of the community, it’s all one big martini. There’s only one thing going on; I don’t see anything else going on and so it would be hard for me to make a choice in my personal life that was suddenly out of character. It would be hard for me to make a choice in my professional life to make a movie about psychotics unless there was something in that story that pulled back the veils that reduced a little more of the clutter that stands between who I am now and who I could become.

What do you want families to talk about when they see this movie?

I realize that everybody comes to movies and everything from their own developmental place, so nothing in life is a one size fits all. So there will be people who come to this story and see themselves in it in different ways. Somebody might say, “Maybe it would create a better environment in my home if I put down the phone, my device.” Or “Maybe I can create a healthier environment for my children by being a little bit more aware of how much ruminating about the future and anxiety and worry I project and maybe I am creating an environment where my kids are picking up on that, but these are self bullying thoughts and maybe I can be aware of them,” and put the question on them just a little bit. So maybe some people will see that.

The themes that I’m investigating in the movie are themes of the impact that we have on our children as parents in subtle ways, how bullying is not only a physical violence but is the end product of an internal self bullying that we do to ourselves in our thoughts about ourselves that we begin to project on others. We begin to become either reactive or are responsive along a spectrum. I’m willing to allow people to come to it however they come to it. I have hopes that however people come to it they will slow down a little bit and find something in it that touches their hearts and opens their minds, at least breathe if nothing else, at least breathe. We learn to bully ourselves long before we start to either become bullies or be bullied but everybody in my movie is bullied, or feels bullied. The parents are bullied by their fears, they are bullied by the financial markets. And we’re in a world today where lots of uncertainty and chaos is going on politically. Some people say one candidate or the other bullies or feels that the rules don’t apply to them. The real question of our movie is where are you coming from and what is it that formed your perspective of where we’re coming from? We think our thoughts are our own and they are never our own until we ask the question, where have these come from? And only then can we begin to sort through to see what is our own. Everything about this little boy, Milton, all his anxious behaviors were trained. Even though his parents love him, they were trained. And we learn from examples. That’s the conversation I had with Eckhart going in because we have lots and lots of fine teachers and tutorials are an effective way of teaching but the more powerful way of teaching is when we see it modeled. If we could see it modeled in real life, in our family life, in our environments that’s great. If we see modeled in art and on film that’s great, it has a much greater impact. You can cut through 15-20 years of development on lecturing by having one good night at the theater.

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Interview: Father Joseph of Haiti on His New Documentary

Posted on October 5, 2016 at 3:46 pm

“Father Joseph” is an inspiring new documentary from Floating World Pictures about a priest in Haiti who has helped Fondwa, one of the poorest communities in the world, to develop schools, a radio station, and a bank and to build homes to make micro-loans to support the local economy. Almost all of it was wiped out by the devastating earthquake of 2010. And so, he is starting all over again, working with the Raising Haiti Foundation.

I spoke with Father Joseph, and the documentary’s director, Jeff Kaufman, and producer, Marcia Ross.

Father Joseph, what’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?

FJ: Oh, it’s to be with myself and to be with God. First I want to stay awake and to talk to myself and to talk to God to see what is His plan for the day. I do have mine but what is His? But that helps me to stay out of trouble. And then take my shower. If there is any breakfast, I’ll take it and then continue. My day starts sometime at 5:00 and finishes at 10 PM.

So much is needed. It can be overwhelming and frustrating. Where do you begin?

FJ: Okay, as you know I am religious, I belong to the Spiritans and also I am a priest, a Christian and a Haitian. The first thing for me is to proclaim the good news, the gospel values. I cannot do it by myself, I need a lot of people. People who have the skills and people who are the beneficiaries. My aim is really to put the political struggle of the people, to put it together with my prayers and with the liturgy. And also to help other people to help themselves in such a way that we can break the cycle of poverty, to break the cycle of economic dependence.

Like in Fondwa, the first thing I did was to help the people to get organized and to identify the problems in their own living environment and to see how best they can help themselves. The country has been independent since 1804 but if the people still cannot get access to water, to healthcare, to education, to some of the basic human needs, that means nobody cares. The one who has to care is themselves. To give them the confidence in themselves to get back their human dignity, to help them to realize that they are somebody, they have been created in God’s likeness. They can do greater things that people think they cannot do. That struck me when we are looking at Jesus’ approach to the leper is in the society at that time. A leper in Jesus’ society was not sick but he was rejected and he has to accept that he is nobody in the society. More than that, he has to ring a bell when you are very far from him to say “don’t get close to me because I am not good.” Not only you are poor, you’re sick, but you have been disregarded and people put in your mind that you are nobody. And for me that’s BS.

That’s why also for me when I’m in front of you or in front of somebody else I think first, “I am walking on a sacred soil because you have been created in God’s likeness. I can help you as much as you can help me.” That’s why also basing on the gospel values for me I cannot be the only one who was access to water in my community, I cannot be the only one who has access to healthcare, the only one who can feed my children, the only one will have access to education. That means your failure is my failure, the suffering of somebody is the suffering of humanity. When somebody is hungry, it’s the whole humanity which has been disregarded. Nobody should go hungry, nobody should go without water, without healthcare, without education. That’s why as believers, I said believers, because in my work I work with Muslims, I work with Jewish people, I work with Voodoo people, I work with all types of Protestants, we see even celebrate the eucharist together because the work that we are doing for the poor bring us together.

That’s why I think as believers we are called to heal whatever is broken in our society. We have to become healers, we have to become build ‘bridgers’ and we have to be a living good news, a living gospel, we have to become a eucharist, the broken bread for each other. For me, that’s why it’s a big challenge for me to continue to work with the poor, to realize that so many young people are hungry and when they shower me with problems, I can only listen to them and that bothers me a lot to see that I cannot help them. Like a lot of young people in Haiti want to go to school, they cannot. They finish with high school they want to go to university, the college they cannot. That’s why I think this movie will bring more attention on the people of goodwill here of big heart who can get involved with us. I think together we can really create a better world for all of God’s children. So this movie is a part of the work of making those services and opportunities available.

Father Joseph, how does your home inspire you?

FJ: For me there is a beauty of spirituality by living on the top of the mountains. When you read the Scriptures you see that Jesus goes most of the time on the top of the mountain to meet with his father. And for me to be at the top of the mountain, to look at the sunrise or the sunset or to watch the stars, for me it’s a magical experience.

Marcia, how did you get involved with this project?

MR: The first time I met Jeff he was about to leave on his first trip to Haiti to meet with father Joseph. He had met him here prior to our meeting and I was very taken with what he was telling me about father Joseph and the work. I’ve had a wonderful career, including 16 years at Disney and doing casting, but I was really looking to do some other things with my life things to sort of open up my life experience. One of the great things about casting — it was my opportunity to help other people achieve their own goals. As a casting director you see talent and you try to help them get into parts that can change their lives and I think that was really fulfilling. But after so many years of doing it I really wanted to find other work that was fulfilling in a new way. And when Jeff told me this story I just started wanting to get involved into doing it. Making documentaries you meet people very totally outside anybody I have ever met. You meet people like Father Joseph, who do a lot of selfless work, the only reward is purpose in life really, there is no financial reward, there is no fame, there is no a lot of things but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to make a difference in the world. His motivation is not for fame and fortune for himself or recognition for himself, his motivation is for making a difference in the lives of others and I think that’s a very important idea.

FJ: You know the fact is people who join me in this work not only they help me to transform the lives of others but their own lives.

Jeff, you seamlessly integrated archival footage with new material in the film. How did that happen?

JK: We started getting footage of father Joseph in 2011 and started shooting initially in 2012 and had a series of shoots but one of the things that was kind of amazing was, we wanted to have a sense of the modern history of Haiti and also the evolution father Joseph’s community Fondwa. We reached out to a lot of people and what are the odds but here is this guy who grew up in the mountains of Haiti far from anywhere and we were able to basically find 25 years of videos of him here and there and other places speaking and it was from six or seven different sources.

It was great to get the video but it also represented the magic of this film. All these people you’ve never known before, you reach out to them and they help you in the most amazing way and they become partners in the effort. And then later on one of our executive producers is now helping with the University of Fondwa another of our executive producers is now helping with Father Joseph’s Peasant organization and its a miraculous thing to see. That’s always the intent of the film was to be more than just a film.

What kind of a crew did you have for your own footage?

JK: The first time I came to Haiti I worked by myself. I had done this film about Ella Fitzgerald and jazz in the 1930s, and by necessity I had done the audio myself, not a good way to proceed. You can’t bring a traditional crew to Haiti, you can’t ask them to work that hard and you can’t ask them to put themselves through the risk but my son Daniel had come out of film school and he had worked on a couple of projects first doing audio, editing some pieces, and his talent level just kept rising and rising and rising. And after a lot internal debates, and some concerns about physical safety, I asked Daniel if he would like to be the the cinematographer. Daniel was immensely talented and so I did the field audio and Daniel was the cinematographer. It was an an amazing father-son experience and I think Daniel made a lifetime of connections for himself as well.

FJ: That fits what we are trying to accomplish. As a priest, I gather as many people as I can to help them to discover their inner self and define the meaning of their life and to give back as much as they get. For me this is what I have been able to accomplish on my own and I want to share it with others, to really share what you have and what you are with others. For me if anybody can accomplish that, that means you have accomplished your goal in life.

JK: One of the remarkable things about father Joseph — he’s the perfect example of not just faith but faith and action. Faith has a lot more meaning if you actually use it to do good. More than that, he is the most inclusive priest, not cavalierly but based on who people are. He is a very passionate Catholic priest who really believes in that faith but he also really sincerely believes that good people of other faiths all have their own path to heaven. I probably couldn’t embrace him if it wasn’t for that and I love that openness to other ways of life and other paths. Where it came from in this guy I don’t know but it’s really unusual.

FJ: I think we cannot put God in a box and say that my God is the better God. We have to let God be God and contemplate God wherever we are and in whatever we are doing. In Creole we used to say “del mon de mon.” After each fountain there is another fountain.

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New Book: The Oliver Stone Experience

Posted on September 19, 2016 at 3:54 pm

From “Scarface,” “Midnight Express,” Natural Born Killers,” “Wall Street,” “JFK,” “Nixon,” “W,” and “Platoon” to this month’s release, “Snowden.” Oliver Stone has been one of the most provocative writers and directors in movie history. Also one of its most lauded, with awards and nominations that include three Oscars in two separate categories: Best Adapted Screenplay (“Midnight Express”), and Best Director (“Born on the Fourth of July” and “Platoon”).

A new book, The Oliver Stone Experience, is part memoir, part critical assessment of Stone’s work over three decades. Working with critic Matt Zoller Seitz, Stone shares memories of serving in the Vietnam war, his childhood, his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder, and his continual struggle to reinvent himself as an artist. The book includes never-before-seen material that dates back to Stone’s childhood in the 1950s, personal snapshots, private correspondence, annotated script pages and storyboards, and behind-the-scenes photography.

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Interview: Natalie Portman on “A Tale of Love and Darkness”

Posted on August 31, 2016 at 3:44 pm

Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman wrote, directed, and stars in “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” based on the international best-selling memoir by Amos Oz. It was a pleasure to speak to her about the challenges of adapting the book and directing a child actor.

What do we learn from the troubled but tender relationship between Amos and his mother?

The film and the book are very much about what happens when expectations don’t line up with reality. And I think that a lot of the things that they might tell young people about what happens once you have a job or once you go to college or once you get married, these things are like the way to happiness or something, once you’ve got to those realities and you achieved those whether you call them goals or expectations and then they are different than you expected them to be, and then dealing with those differences can be one of the most challenging things in life.

In the film, the child’s father is fascinated at the derivation of and connection between words, possibly because it takes place at a time when modern conversational Hebrew was being invented.

It’s a really fascinating time in history because not only was this country of Israel being created by a group of refugees, which I’m not sure has happened before, but also they were revising the language as you said, a language that has been spoken purely in a religious context, in a Biblical or liturgical context for hundreds of years and then all of a sudden it needed to be used for everyday usage and needed to be updated rapidly. And so it’s really fascinating seeing how they came up with new words, what they drew from. Ohad talked about his uncle in the book who was one of the architects of modern Hebrew, creating new words, from biblical words and he created the word for “shirt” and he says in the book, “If my uncle hadn’t invented the word for shirt we would still be saying, ‘I put on my coat of many colors this morning.'” And it’s really amazing how they introduced these new words and got them really accepted into everyday usage. And what an exciting time to be a writer, too, because you could literally invent your language as you were inventing your story.

You began acting when you were very young and now in this movie are working with a very young actor. What did you learn from your experiences as a child performer that helped you direct this actor?

I think the most important thing was that when I was a kid I felt that everyone on set made sure that the environment felt like playing more than working and I wanted to repeat that for Amir because the film is quite serious in tone. The atmosphere should always be positive for him so I really tried to make sure that everyone was very calm on set and between takes we would goof around and make jokes and not have it be a stressful environment for him.

You have worked with so many outstanding directors, very different directors in terms of their approach and their style. What were some of the things that you tried to take from your experiences and use as a director?

I have been lucky to work with so many people who I admire so much and I took a lot from many different directors I worked with. From Darren Aronofsky, I saw how he worked with each actor really individually. He would do different things with different actors to elicit their performances from them which I thought was really smart because everyone needs something different. And from Terrence Malick, I saw that you don’t have to play by the rules at all. You just need to make movies the way that you make them and the way you want to tell them. And then Mike Nichols just always always says, “Keep reminding yourself what story you are telling, where you are in the story and claim the big moment.”

What do we learn from the scene at the end that gives us a glimpse of the main character as an adult?

The book actually deals with many different time periods including the present. I felt that it was important for me to show where he ends up because he did and end up fulfilling his mother’s dreams in a way by becoming this pioneer by becoming a writer. After all of her storytelling, somehow his mother’s absence turned him into the man he became. He was so influenced by her but also he gave himself his own name. Ohad means strong in Hebrew and it.s part of remaking himself.

How did you use your character’s clothing to tell her story?

I actually was lucky enough to have the great designer Alber Elbaz who formerly designed at Lanvin for the past ten years and is originally Israeli also. He did all of my costumes for the film. We really wanted to tell a story through the wardrobe. I like this European elegance that they had but also poverty. They don’t have a lot and she’s wearing the same clothes over and over again. But they’re beautiful clothes that she had from Europe. She had three outfits. Also the clothes helped tell the passage of time. We go from a more 40’s silhouette to a more 50’s silhouette which helps us understand the time that has gone by.

What were you looking for in the movie’s score?

The music was an amazing part of the film to do and to learn. It’s actually really surprising to me how hard it was because I really love music and I’ve always known very specifically the kind of music that I want. But the problem with this film, the music that I felt fit emotionally, when you put it next to the actual emotion on the film, it kind of doubled the emotion and was too much. And so I realized that you have to actually had to go against, and again, it can’t be the exact same emotion you’re going for. I worked with a really close friend, the composer Nick Britell who was amazing. He would just sit with me and try hundred different things because I really needed to hear it to make sure it was right. He wrote so many beautiful pieces for the film. I’m so proud of the work that he did and he added immeasurably to the film.

What do you want this film to tell people about Israel?

I don’t intend to be educational on this film. It’s really very much about a family. But I think if there’s anything that movies can do it is that they can remind us that people and places that we might not know about or that we might have preconceived notions about or even prejudices against, they can make us relate to someone as a human and hopefully you just see them in a different way. A movie can help you relate to the emotion and it might of someone that you might never meet your whole life.

“Southside With You” Interview — The People Who Made the Obama Date Movie

Posted on August 25, 2016 at 8:00 am

The most charming and romantic film of the year is the lovely “Southside With You,” the story of the First Couple’s first date. Michelle Robinson was recently out of law school herself when she was asked to be mentor/supervisor of a law student named Barack Obama. She agreed to go with him to a community meeting and insisted that it was not a date. But it ended with their first kiss, at a Baskin-Robbins that now has a plaque commemorating the historic event. “Southside With You,” like “Before Sunrise,” is the story of two bright, curious, vulnerable, committed young people getting to know one another and falling in love. Three journalists spoke to the people who made the film, writer/director Richard Tanne, and stars Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers.

Tanne said, “I was just really struck by the two of them as a couple, just the way they looked at each other, the way that they flirted, there was something authentic about it and vibrant and even a little sexy. I think that that is a rare thing in people and I think it’s an even rarer thing in public figures. So when I did end up reading about their first date, it just got me really excited because the conflict was: she’s not interested and he has one day to win her over. That felt like a really good romantic conflict to hang a movie onto. Not to mention there’s another aspect of it that we know what they went on to accomplish together, and the history that they have made, but the two characters don’t, so there is a dramatic irony running through the entire movie. Whatever your relationship is to the Obamas you’re going to bring that to it as well. And there’s a tiny bit of almost suspense in the fact that if something had just gone wrong on that date where would we be today? It would be a different world.”

Sumpter and Sawyers were careful to give performances, not impersonations. Sumpter said “We definitely when we started this process Rich and I said, ‘We do not want to impersonate; we want to embody the essence of who they are,’ and so for me I took the whole ‘Okay this is Michelle Obama’ off and went back to the girl who went to a magnet high school, who was told no, that she couldn’t get into Yale, just back to that family, the essence of her family, her parents who worked really hard, and I related it back to my life and said, ‘okay a lot of girls can relate to her’ and that’s why she’s so accessible. Even in the dancing scene, with the drumming, it’s like look at Michelle now, she’s dancing with Beyoncé! So I read books, Invisible Man which we thought they obviously would read in school and then also her brother’s book A Game of Character really helped me to see who she is and who she was during that time. So that informed me a lot about their family, like how tight they were and how they gave those kids so much confidence that they could do anything they really wanted in the world, even if the world told them they couldn’t, so that was part of my process….I think what intrigued me and what I really got from her, I just felt like she didn’t apologize for who she was. She didn’t dumb herself down. She spoke her mind and I think a lot of the time women are constantly saying ‘I’m sorry’ for the things they shouldn’t be sorry for or trying to dim their lights so that somebody else can feel greater. And it’s like ‘No, if I’m going to be here you come up here and we see each other.’ And so that inspires me to this day because I’m like ‘Wait, I can be just as smart, I can say what I need to need to say’ without people looking at me like ‘she is such a bitch or whatever.’ It’s like ‘No, nope, I am actually smart and I’m speaking my mind like you would.’ So I think that inspired me and intrigued me for the movie and in life.”

Sawyers said, “I took Richard’s notes before I sent in my tape for the audition. He told me, ‘Just be a guy, trying to get a girl,’ that’s it. And so obviously I worked on Barack Obama as we all know him now and then dialed that back and then overwhelmingly used Richard’s notes just to be a guy talking to a girl. He’s really trying to charm her. He knows he is going to graduate from Harvard and do well, he knows he’s working in a law firm, he knows these things in his life, he knows he is probably going to make a lot of money but he doesn’t know if he can get this girl if he doesn’t act right and really put his best foot forward and so for me that was the goal in that film…So to normalize how I think and just to realize how normal they are, that was the biggest thing.”

As the couple discuss their families, we see the contrast between Michelle’s loving, stable home and Barack’s absent father. Sumpter said, “I think sometimes life brings you the person that needs to teach you something about yourself and I think she came from such a stable background and he didn’t, full-family wise. I think she was a little bit wound up, like she wasn’t used to telling people about MS and all that stuff, so there’s something about him that made her feel comfortable enough to speak about that. There is an empathy there as you go on in the movie the way he speaks about his father. There’s some kind of connection there where she felt comfortable enough and I think that affected her, it enabled her to share about her dad and what’s going on and her dad was a huge influence in her life.” Sawyers added, “I think she helped him understand what a father could be. What he missed out on. And he enjoyed hearing that. And then perhaps looking forward to the future he thought. ‘I can be a good father even though I didn’t have one.’ I listened to his interview with Marc Maron, and in it President Obama does say that Michelle had the family, the roots, not a perfect family but a great support system. That’s one of the things that attracted him to her and he also mentioned that he was late like all the time and she had to stop him once and say, ‘Listen, my dad had MS and we would get to my brother’s basketball games two hours before so he could walk the stairs. He didn’t want to sit in the handicapped section, and he wanted to walk up the stairs by himself and he was always on time, so stop being late.’ He told that story.”

Tanne said first and foremost was the love story “and to try my hand at a movie where I could be in an unfolding mood over the course of a day. I love movies that take place over the course of one day. One of them being “Do The Right Thing,” which takes place on a hot summer day. And that’s one of my favorite movies, obviously the Linklater movies and then those were sort of a gateway drug to the Éric Rohmer films where he invented the romantic walk and talk and philosophical ambling movie. The opportunity to show all the little moments between two people that most romantic movies leave out.
I wanted moments on the cutting room floor, that’s what I wanted in this movie to be. So we were cutting it together from the kind of quiet minutiae that other movies might ignore. I really like that. And the great things about these two actors is that with Tika, she almost could be a silent film star, like a Lillian Gish but now. And I think one of the great discoveries of the movie is her facial reactions and her eyes and the way that she responds to things. In a way I wish I could go back and rewrite the script and have less dialogue. The more we made the movie the less the dialogue was important and just the way that they were interacting. Parker for this being his first leading man role in a movie ever, Tika has been leading on TV shows and other movies but for him it was the first time out and he was able to meet her at that level and they were able to really exist in the moment. And for a movie like this that’s what it needs to be, you need to find those moments. They would just sit with each other and we could just roll the camera and wait for them to react and have those little moments where she looks at him and he is not aware that she is looking. And then she looks away and he looks back. And so they found those things organically, some of them we worked on, some of them we said, ‘Hey this is a turning point where emotionally where you are starting to let your guard down,’ but for the most part it was all found organically in the moment. So again the fact that he was able to do that his first time out, the fact that she’s kind of a master at it, it was really nice to have that.”

A turning point in the movie is when Michelle sees Barack speak to a community group that has had a setback and is feeling disappointed and let down. Tanne spoke about the challenge of writing a speech for a man who is known as one of the greatest speakers of our time. “It wasn’t too daunting because by the time I got to that scene in the movie, which is the middle of the film, and I wrote it in order, so by then I was really familiar with the characters. I knew who he was at this point in the story, I knew who she was at the point in the story and the underlying goal was, he’s got to impress her with this speech. Now there is a duality there because it’s not like he wouldn’t have been there if Michelle wasn’t there that day but it’s a benefit that she is. So he may have even been showing off or hitting it harder that day because she was there. So I knew how powerful it needed to be but I also was aware that he was a little bit rough around the edges, not as fully formed yet and I was familiar with the Altgeld Gardens at that time. I had done my homework and I just felt like I had a good sense of what a meeting like that could have been like. So without sounding too artsy fartsy it sort of just wrote itself. And then in doing it, Parker actually came to me before we shot it, maybe a few weeks before, and he was like ‘I think we should start working in some of the more practiced Obama mannerisms because this is him in a different setting.’ And it’s public speaking. He brought up how there was a video of Obama at age 29 on the Harvard campus defending a professor at the rally. He was already sort of fully formed as a public speaker at that point. So we figured out this was a year earlier, so that was really the first point in the movie where we actively went after some of the mannerisms.”

Sawyers said that he practiced the speech, even buying his visiting sister a spa day to get some time alone to rehearse in his hotel room. “It was one of those things where if Barack speaks to the people the way he wants to speak to people to move them that will indeed move Michelle because she would see who he is. So I wasn’t necessarily playing for Michelle in the way I acted, it was more like, if I just do what I do then she’ll see I’m not this bad guy.” Tanne added, “We must have shot that scene from seven or eight different setups all the way through from the beginning to the end, what was that a 15-minute speech? Something like that? And he didn’t trip up once on a single word, I mean it was remarkable.”

The first stop on the date is an exhibit that features the work of artist Ernie Barnes. Tannes explained, “I couldn’t find any information about what art they saw that day so I just love Ernie Barnes’ art and I took a risk in writing the scene to his art because you never know if you’re going to get the rights. Luckily the Ernie Barnes Family Trust read the script and they really responded to the script and they’ve been incredible from the time we shot all the way through letting us use the imagery in the trailer, giving us the works for the end credits, works that aren’t even seen in the movie. I’ve always loved his artwork which I first saw in Good Times and that’s how it all came about. The exhibit they visit is an Afrocentric exhibit so there are other artists there but the bulk of the dialogue could very easily derive from just looking at the Ernie Barnes’ work because it covers the spectrum of black life. And so it led to them talking about their family members and their experiences as kids and it just prompted all this really interesting discussion from the two of them.” Sawyers agreed. “It was a perfect inspiration.”

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