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First Full Trailer For Netflix's Obama Movie Brings Us To 1980s NYC
By
Jen Carlson
Published Nov 21, 2016
Modified Nov 21, 2016
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Nov 21, 2016
Modified Nov 21, 2016
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That's Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" he's reading.
Netflix has released the first trailer for their movie Barry, which tells the story of a young Barack Obama. Perfect timing, as most of the nation is currently holding on tight to the last great President we'll have for a while.
The movie (which currently has an 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) centers around Obama, known to his friends as Barry, as he arrives in NYC. We meet up with him during his junior year at Columbia University after he transfers from Occidental College. It's 1981, and (per the film's description) New York is "a crime-ridden and racially charged environment," where we see the future President get targeted by a racist cop, punched in the face, and confronted by a number of other obstacles. "Barry is the story of a young man grappling with those same issues that his country, and arguably the world, are still coming to terms with 35 years later," the description adds.
Barry is played by excellent newcomer Devon Terrell, who really seems to get the voice down:
In his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” Obama described his East 94th Street apartment and surroundings at the time: "It was an uninviting block, treeless and barren, lined with soot-colored walk-ups that cast heavy shadows for the rest of the day. The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle."
Meanwhile, during these same years, Donald Trump was building his Dark Tower on 5th Avenue and his failed casino in Atlantic City.
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barack obama
netflix
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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