![]() ![]() That happened – it is happening – with George W Bush, who's seen very differently in Africa than he is here, because with his work on Aids/HIV and other issues, he has really made a difference. There's all these contradictions, I mean, a president might be a terrible warmonger, but redeem himself by doing great work for Africa at the same time. If they hadn't already been in positions of enormous power and influence – secretary of state, secretary of defence, you know what I mean? You can't get any higher, except to be their boss, the president. "You have to ask if the country would have been ready for Barack Obama if we hadn't been prepared by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. "You can't just direct the arrow in one way, though, or from one place politically," he insists. Nobody remembers that now, but it was another way of moving the needle."Īnd he doesn't see it a merely as party-political matter. ![]() I learned doing The Butler that the very first black person to work in the White House – not as a servant – was in one of the social departments heading up their publicity section, but President Kennedy had their kids tutored together with his own in the White House. ![]() There are always small, earlier steps being taken throughout history. We're on an accelerated schedule, though we've gotten things done in this country that have never been achieved elsewhere in a thousand years. They haven't been fully achieved yet, but they haven't been achieved in the rest of the world either. Martin Luther King spoke about the promissory note of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the very tenets this country was built on. "One of the things I noticed when we embarked on this presidency was a distinct sense that we were rejoining other nations as a citizen of the world again. Even when he's talking of the worst in human nature – racism, the suffering of child soldiers, police brutality – his voice remains even and light. The man is an optimist whenever he can be one, and figures anything good that hasn't happened yet is just something that will surely happen soon, with a little patience and pressure. But Ghost Dog reminds me just how Zen he is: this is the man who ended his speech at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington in August with the words: "May we remain connected in love. Whitaker today, sitting right in front of the poster, is much leaner than he was then, and he's dressed down in a white windbreaker and jeans. His braided hair, huge samurai sword raised aloft, and that calm fury in his sleepy, gentle eyes. Here in his office, not far from the entrance to the Universal City theme park, I can't help noticing the huge movie poster on the wall behind him, for Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. That'll cement your loyalty to a place, I guess. This is all prompted by the desire to make a visiting Briton feel welcome (and it works), but his memory-ramble through names such as Stephen Woolley of Palace Pictures, director Neil Jordan, Kevin MacDonald of The Last King of Scotland, and an array of other British and Irish friends, reminds me that the connection is indeed pretty long-lasting: by 1992, 12 years after that first visit, Whitaker was playing a cricket-loving gay squaddie in Jordan's Oscar-winning The Crying Game. I've been back many, many times since, made a lot of friends – and I've played a few Brits, too, in The Crying Game and other movies." My feeling then was, this is where I was meant to be. I tried to get a job but I had no work permit. I loved it so much I tried to find a way to stay there. I was with the choir from my college and we were touring around all these different churches. "The first time I ever went out of the country it was to London. Forest Whitaker is having himself a British moment, flashing back more than 30 years to his first visit to London. ![]()
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