'Southside With You' Chronicles Barack and Michelle Obama's Steamy First Date

It could be the longest -- and best -- first date ever. Just as the Obamas prepare to move out of the White House, leaving a historic presidency behind, a new film hits movie theaters this Friday that tells the story of a summer afternoon in 1989 when the future President of the United States began courting his future First Lady.

Newcomer Parker Sawyers portrays young Barack Obama, who supposedly is a dead ringer for the president at age 27. Tika Sumpter plays Michelle Robinson, then described at age 25 as a poised, bright, demanding and somewhat conflicted, second-year associate at a corporate law firm.

Southside With You follows 27-year-old Barack Obama and then, 25-year-old Michelle Robinson on their whirlwind first date around Chicago’s South Side.

Whether its premature nostalgia for the Obama Administration, the Daily Beast reported the audiences went nuts for the film at its first showing at the Sundance Film Festival and practically melted at the Obamas’ steamy first kiss when their date ends famously on the curb outside a Baskin-Robbins store (now a Subway) at 55th Street and Dorchester Avenue.

“I kissed her and it tasted like chocolate,” Obama is quoted as saying in a plaque marking the spot.

As the story goes, Michelle Robinson had just finished her first year at the downtown Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. Soon after, she was assigned to mentor a first-year law student and summer associate Barack Obama since they both attended Harvard Law School. Obama continually barraged Michelle for a date, who thought it would be tacky if the firm’s only black employees started dating.

Michelle Obama recalled her early impressions of her future president husband during an interview with the Hyde Park Herald:

"[H]e had no money; he was really broke. He wasn't ever going to try to impress me with things. His wardrobe was kind of cruddy . . . His first car had so much rust that there was a rusted hole in the passenger door. You could see the ground when you were driving. He loved that car. It would shake ferociously when it would start up. I thought, 'This brother is not interested in ever making a dime.' "

The film’s writer and director, Richard Tanne, told Architectural Digest that the script didn’t come alive until he came to Chicago and started scouting locations for the movie. If not filming in the actual places Barack and Michelle explored on their first epic date, Tanne punted, capturing hidden sides of Chicago that don’t often make celluloid.

Altgeld Gardens is the Obamas first stop in Southside With You. When Tanne and his crew found The yellow brick wall” near the garden bearing the names of residents who lost their lives to gun violence that had been around that fateful day in 1989, the wall made it into the movie. The Obamas also went to the Art Institute, but Tanne said they weren’t allowed to film there. The Chicago Cultural Center was used instead, with an exhibit created inside the space.

'Southside With You,' trailer

Other locations used in the film, places the young couple explored in Barack’s rusted out yellow Datsun that had a hole in the front seat passenger side floor through which Michelle could watch the street racing below, included Douglas Park on the West Side. There, Barack and Michelle had a picnic. Quinn Chapel was used for the scene of the community meeting, The Water Hole Lounge near Douglas Park is where the young couple stops for a drink, before seeing the Spike Lee film, Do the Right Thing.

Tanne told Architectural Digest he thinks the Obamas actually had drinks on the 95th floor of the John Hancock Building, but he wanted to keep the film dark and romantic. The Music Box Theater in Chicago’s North Side Lakeview neighborhood doubles as the Harper Theatre in Hyde Park.

A modest house similar to the one Michelle Obama grew up in the South Shore neighborhood was used as the location of her childhood home. Finally, the famous ice cream cone kiss on the curb in front of the Baskin-Robbins where Barack and Michelle ended their first date.

Like Jack and Jackie Kennedy, whose 1,000 days in the White House have been compared to Camelot, the Obamas also appear to be headed toward mythology. The movie opens in Chicago-area theaters on Friday.