When Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson went on their first date in 1989, they went to see “Do the Right Thing.”
In the eyes of Richard Tanne, however, there was enough material from interviews and anecdotes to make for a feature film, “Southside with You,” which opens on Friday.
“We know they went to ‘Do the Right Thing’ [in its] opening weekend and they ran into a partner at the law firm, and they had their kiss outside the Baskin-Robbins,” he says. “And so I was able to take the lynchpins of the date that were factual, and then imagine what they talked about, and use creative license to get the two characters connecting and clashing and falling in love.”
The movie’s “conflict,” Tanne adds, is that Michelle “was not interested in Barack. But she gave him one day to prove himself, and by her own admission,” he did just that. “So to me that had the makings of a romantic drama, the sort of classic boy-chases-girl story.”
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