Vile Arts Radio Hour

From 2010: I pop up halfway through to talk movies. http://www.subcity.org/shows/thevileartsradiohour/3cfa8/

Myself and Amy Taylor’s review of The Cabin In The Woods for Across the Arts.

A film I worked on and narrate.

Michelle Yeoh: The Big Adventurer

A truly international star, Michelle Yeoh has gone from fight scenes with Jackie Chan to love scenes with James Bond. She’s worked with Oscar winners Danny Boyle and Ang Lee, and turned me into the gibbering, giggling schoolboy he was when he first fell in love with her. He spoke to the sensational star about her career and her new film, Far North.

Published 03 May 2009

Nearly twelve years ago, Pierce Brosnan (long before he displayed his licence to kill Abba songs) took his second bow as that Ian Fleming character in Tomorrow Never Dies. It went up against Titanic at the box office and lost, the closing credits song was better than the opening titles, it set new lows for product placement, and it had Teri Hatcher in it. But despite all this, the film went on to break Bond box office records and featured a car chase choreographed to the Propellerheads. Most significantly, however, it introduced western audiences to the wonders of Michelle Yeoh.

After studying ballet at the Royal Academy of Dance in London, Yeoh would later be crowned Miss Malaysia. Rather than going on to create world peace, she would begin a film career in Hong Kong, working alongside the likes of Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung and Sammo Hung. Despite having almost no martial arts experience, she would quickly establish herself as the queen of kung fu cinema, performing and choreographing many of her own stunts and fight scenes. That may not be something she’d throw herself into so readily now, though. When I asked her about filming Supercop (1992), in which she can be found clinging to the roof of a speeding bus, she said that the “petrified” look on her face was completely genuine.

“I remember when we went in to dub the film for the American market and I just thought, “Is that really me? I can’t actually believe I did that!” I must have been crazy back then”. Crazy, maybe, but this kind of multi-tasking, guerrilla approach to filmmaking has proved a fertile training ground for many an actor and director, hasn’t it? “Coming from a Hong Kong background, I’m used to shooting a certain way. Things are done much faster, there’s often no script and you’re basically shooting from the hip. Those factors make it unsettling, but also a lot of fun, so filming this movie was not so unusual for me”.

The movie in question is Far North, released on DVD this month. A strange and meditative picture, it tells the story of two women, seemingly mother and daughter, alone in the Arctic tundra (Yeoh and Michelle Krusiec of Saving Face). Yeoh’s character, Saiva, “has been cursed, shamed, and abandoned in the wilderness. So when she encounters this much younger woman, their bond is pure. There is real warmth and companionship between them – not just some childish, flaky kind of friendship – but one of emotional purity. It’s not a simple mother-daughter, young and old thing. They really maintain a pure devotion, because they cannot afford to have nothing”. This warm companionship begins to thaw, however, with the arrival of Sean Bean’s wandering soldier. To reveal much more would be disservicable, but the film’s opening sequence, which the actress describes as “bitter and stark”, sets the tone for the “mixture of beauty and horror” to come.

Far North is directed by Britain’s Asif Kapadia, whose BAFTA winning The Warrior was enough to convince Miss Yeoh to freeze in the North Pole when she could have been enjoying the perks of one of the many Hollywood blockbusters she now stars in. “While it’s great to make movies with directors like Rob Cohen (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) or Rob Marshall (Memoirs of A Geisha), it’s also great when someone like Asif, with all his passion and enthusiasm, comes along. He may not have the experience of those guys, he may have made only one movie: but what a movie!”.

The shoot itself was “cold and dark!” and Yeoh had no illusions about her star status. “Mother Nature is undeniably the star of our film, and on this film she was a diva! You felt so insignificant against it; one sudden blast of energy or wind could knock you flying! But I was happy to be there, playing this fascinating character, like nobody I’ve played before. As someone who is very cosmopolitan this was incredibly daunting, but I’m a big adventurer! I really only took my knapsack and filled it with books, but I didn’t even read the whole time I was there. I just sat in awe of the place”.

When Michelle Yeoh says she’s a big adventurer, you really believe it. Having conquered Asia, the actress would go onto Bond and beyond, garnering a BAFTA nomination for Ang Lee’s Oscar winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She has since split her time between east and west: “My thing is, where is the story coming from? Why does this story need to be told?”.

There are many stories being told in Hollywood, but not many of them require Asian actresses. Geisha and The Mummy have shown that audiences have a taste for all things eastern, but the star feels there is still progress to be made for Asian actors. “There’s so much room for improvement. I was lucky to get this big international role in the Bond movie, and what was really great about the role was that Wai Lin was on equal footing with James Bond, she wasn’t just decorative. It’s something we’re trying to push in Hollywood: we’re trying to show them that we’re not just Ming vases: we’re made of silk and steel! Finding good roles is always difficult – how many Suzie Wongs or Last Emperors did we have? – but we love the challenge, and it’s getting better”.

With her reputation as a serious actress now intact, what’s next for Michelle Yeoh? “I’ve just started a production company with Terence Chang, and we’re working on a martial arts project. I can’t wait to get in and kick butt again!” And neither can we.

 

Claire Denis: Taking Her Best Shots

The latest film from one of the true film artists of our time, 35 Shots of Rum has been greeted with rapturous applause.

Published 13 July 2009

It’s difficult to define the films of Claire Denis. She has been called everything from a poetic realist to the “greatest woman filmmaker working today”. Her metaphysical, abstract body of work has covered much of what it means to be human, but her cinema has always felt very, shall we say, French. Denis has explored many facets of French identity: Chocolat was drawn from her own youth in colonial Africa; Beau Travail was a nuanced and harrowing portrait of the Foreign Legion; Trouble Every Day (the closest she has ever come to making a genre movie) arrived during the period of “New French Extremism”; while Vendredi Soir and The Intruder have taken philosophical approaches to themes of sexuality and relationships. “I could make films in many places, but I only have my life and one language and my culture is French”, she told me. “The language is the key: it’s the soundtrack, even if you don’t have a lot of dialogue. I need that, it’s my nourishment”.

35 Shots of Rum is the director’s latest film, but while it retains her usual lyricism, and subtlety, it is also an accessible and thoroughly satisfying piece of human (and humane) drama. “This is my grandfather’s story, with my mother”, she says. “(Yasujiro) Ozu, the Japanese director, made one (film) called Late Spring that is about the same story. Late Spring is about a widower who wants his daughter to go away to get married but he is afraid she might stay through pity because he is alone and he doesn’t want her to waste her life for him”. Should you be familiar with Ozu’s films (and anyone even remotely interested in cinema must see Tokyo Story) you will know that marriage and family were often central to his work, but does Denis share his preoccupation with the generational divide, something shared by both Late Spring and 35 Shots? “It’s more than a generational thing. The question is about different sorts of love. What are the love links between a father and a daughter compared to what this young woman should feel if she fell in love with a young man. For instance, the neighbour is very much in love with her. What is the nature of his love? Is it a stronger, deeper love than the father’s?”.

The father and daughter at the centre of the film are Lionel and Jospehine, Lionel a Caribbean immigrant working on Paris’ transit system. Yet the film doesn’t dwell upon racial politics or cultural identity, save for one scene in which third world debt and the effects of globalisation are discussed. “I decided she (Josephine) was studying political science, and this university in the north of Paris (Paris 8 in Saint-Denis), in many ways a ghetto university for black people, and I thought if I was black and studying political science I would be interested in those questions. Why not mention it in the film, to make it clear that it was about that frustration of never being recognised enough for slavery or debt in general”. That such issues should be mentioned so unfussily is typical of Denis. “Even though film comes from a lot of introspection, I like that the film is not trying to explain any psychological aspect of the story. The film offers pieces of life, and that’s all”.

In person, Claire Denis is small and brittle, but her demeanour is severe and thoughtful. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and when I mention that her films are in an art film tradition, she hastens to object. “Art films? This phrase is narrow. It’s non-existent for me. It’s interesting because sometimes I think if I was able to be George Lucas I would want to be George Lucas, but I don’t think we have much of a choice: Kiarostami had no other choice but to be Kiarostami and I think Spielberg had no choice between being Kiarostami or being Spielberg. I don’t remember once, in my entire life, thinking I’m going to be an art filmmaker. I just wanted to be a filmmaker, and somehow in the realisation of the film it is labelled an art film. But it’s not a decision I made. When I buy my ticket and go and see a film, I don’t decide “oh today I am going to see an art film”, or “oh no maybe a mainstream film”, I see a film! For me this distinction is… rotten!”. To hear the director speak so passionately about her work and her philosophies is extraordinary, for it is this strength and fearsome intellect that pours from her films. Her new movie may be lighter and less experimental than her previous works, but it could only come from someone with the experience, vibrancy and wisdom of Claire Denis. In a cynical age for cinema, 35 Shots of Rum is well worth raising a glass to.

Duncan Jones: Total Eclipse of the Art

Duncan Jones has gone from directing commercials to being the toast of Sundance. Moon, which received its British premiere at this year’s EIFF, is an ambitious and assured take on the “hard” science fiction genre. I met the director to discuss his film, his career and his somewhat famous father.

Published 06 July 2009

Some of you may recall a minor scandal some years back caused by an FCUK commercial entitled “Fashion vs. Style”. The film featured two female models in aggressive kung fu combat, tearing at each other’s clothes before engaging in a passionate kiss. Its notoriety brought to attention its director, Duncan Jones. Not only was he a genuine talent unafraid of controversy, but he was also the son of some singer who sold a few records in the seventies called David Bowie.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the artist formerly known as Zowie Bowie, now making his feature film debut with Moon, a mystery (and the less you know going in the better) set, coincidentally, in the outer reaches of space. “It’s been predictable but also fascinating to see how different elements of the press would talk about the film and that aspect of my family life. The number of pun headlines is astounding!”. This refreshing lack of pretension and arrogance is typical of the director, frequently joking and laughing, and giving detailed and thoughtful answers to even the most banal of questions. In other words, he’s a top bloke. It’s no wonder Sam Rockwell wanted to work with him. “I’d actually sent him a script for a completely different film. He loved it but I wanted him to play one of the villains and he wanted to play the lead. It didn’t work out but we got on incredibly well and he started telling me about the kind of roles that interested him as an actor, and this started a conversation about this period of science fiction films in the late 70s and early 80s where you had these blue collar people working in space and how that was so different to the kind of lantern-jawed, heroic archetypes you get in science fiction films today”. Jones then began writing a script for Rockwell, their discussions about character, genre and budget becoming “a cascade of ideas which came from how one thing was going to affect another”.

The central conceit, however, came from somewhere more specific: “I’d read this book quite a few years ago called Entering Space by Robert Zubrin, and that book was all about how you’d go about colonising the solar system, doing it in a financially viable way because you don’t have the Cold War anymore to spur the costs of space exploration on. One of the early chapters in his book was about setting up a mining base on the moon in order to mine Helium 3, which he was theorizing would become incredibly valuable once we got fusion power working back here on earth”.

Many directors with a commercials background move directly into big budget features, but the appealingly humble Jones recognised his limits and lack of experience. “On a technical level they prepare you, but with a commercial, you only have to shoot thirty seconds! With feature films you shoot just about what you need and then you move. I could live with it but there were times when I had to stop Sam after the third take because, even though I loved what he was doing, we just had to move on. On commercials you don’t really work with actors, as cruel as that sounds. That’s the biggest difference”. Shot over 33 days (with 8 days of model miniature photography), Moon was made for £2.5 million on just two sound stages (“I wanted a controlled shooting environment, I didn’t want problems with weather, travelling between locations, all those kinds of things”) at the world-renowned Shepperton Studios. “The catalyst for me going to film school was working with Tony Scott briefly. He and Ridley once ran Shepperton, so he gave me some great contacts there, so from that point onwards I’d always had this great relationship with the place. Once I was getting bigger commercials, I took them to Shepperton, so they told me I’d be more than welcome once I decided to do a feature”.

Moon has received the kind of reception many veteran directors would die for, but is there an increasing pressure on first time filmmakers to deliver the goods or risk being discarded? “I only began to feel that pressure as we were making the film, when the budget rose to being expensive for a first time British independent film. But I think if you make a film for under a million you can still work your way up from that. The most important thing is always a good script”.

GFF 2010: Things That Go Bump in the Night

Parisian electro duo Zombie Zombie talk about their love for the great horror filmmaker John Carpenter.

Published 18 February 2010

John Carpenter once summarised his reputation internationally thus: “In France, I’m an auteur; in Germany, a filmmaker; in Britain; a genre film director; and, in the USA, a bum”. He’s hardly in a minority there: it would take the writers of Cahiers du Cinema (who would become the auteurs of the Nouvelle Vague) to recognise the artistry and craftsmanship of the golden age directors that Carpenter cites as influences. In fact, Carpenter is one of very few American directors who can truly lay claim to auteurship, being that he writes, directs, produces, appears in and of course, scores his films. In keeping with the French tradition of appreciating American authorship, Parisian electro duo Zombie Zombie will be paying homage to the works of the great auteur/bum at Mono on 18 February, with a spectacular set devoted to the best music from Carpenter’s best movies.

Zombie Zombie debuted in 2006 and consists of Etienne Jaumet and Cosmic Neman. Neman seemed relaxed and sanguine when I spoke to him in anticipation of the event. He even has a few good things to say about Glasgow: “I love Glasgow very much! I always try and visit Mono Records. I love the places, the people, I love certain parts of the city, the dark side of the city; the weather’s always interesting! And I wish we were there on Sunday so I could go to Optimo at the Sub Club!”

As their name suggests, Zombie Zombie have a passion for horror movies and the music that has made many of them so memorable (and so terrifying). “I just remember growing up watching all these horror movies late at night”, Cosmic says. “We first heard these songs and music late at night, so they really got to us”. Influenced by the music of Carpenter and Dario Argento/George A. Romero regulars Goblin (who sadly disbanded last year), the twosome share a profound enthusiasm for old-school arrangements and instruments. As Neman puts it, “Carpenter and Goblin were using the same instruments we were using – we wanted to know what they were doing there, how they got all these emotions from these instruments, and how that works when you put it to images and put it on the big screen”.

It’s set to be a unique and original evening of music, but how did the project begin? “The idea came from GFF, from the people who run the Music and Film festival. We loved the idea, we love all the old horror movies, and we’d thought about doing something like this, but when the festival asked us, we started working on it with real intensity”.

Cosmic was still working on the project when I spoke to him, which may explain his reticence when I ask what audiences can expect from the show. “We’re not ready yet! We’re still deciding exactly what we’ll be doing. But we chose our favourite movies of John Carpenter: Halloween, The Fog, The Thing (a rare electro work by Ennio Morricone), Assault On Precinct 13 – the four major ones, of course, so you should be hearing something of those. It would be good to do some of the other stuff, like the stuff he did with Anthrax, but we’ll just be using keyboards and drum machines. But I’m sure we’ll pick things up as we go along”.

While Giorgio Moroder and Tangerine Dream would become the most famous of electronic film composers throughout the seventies and eighties, Neman, and many others, are keen to address Carpenter’s pioneering spirit and under-appreciation in the same field. “It’s worth noting that Precinct 13 was one of the first electronic soundtracks, I think he just used one synthesiser and a drum machine. These are the kinds of things we use, so we have a lot in common – though he’s so good, I don’t want to compete or compare us! The influence his film music has had is that it’s really simple but really efficient and powerful, it shows that you don’t have to do so much to have that effect”.

He’s hardly been on top form in the last few years, but Carpenter is all set for a major comeback this year with The Ward, and his early works remain as popular as ever. What is it about the man that just keeps people tuning in and freaking out? “I really like it when you’re a director – it’s like you see in his [interview with] Rodriguez – it’s best to just ignore the stupid Hollywood stuff, all the politics and money and things, because in the end it’s your own project and you have to be true to that. I guess the best compliment you could give him is that he’s an amateur – it’s the best thing you can be in making art – just do it yourself and do what feels right for you”.

Lords of The Wing

Published 05 October 2009

Nearly ten years in the making, The Crimson Wing follows the lives and deaths of the flamingos of Lake Natron, a Northern Tanzanian salt lake uninhabitable for humankind, and one under threat from proposed soda ash mining. The film features some of the most astonishing cinematography you will see this year, thanks to the hardy and blistering work of its three filmmakers: co-directors Matthew Aeberhard and Leander Ward; and screenwriter Melanie Finn. “The crew was the three of us, so we were always multi-tasking” Melanie told me. “I wasn’t doing much writing, I was running the entire camp, which is incredibly brutal work!”. Matthew concurs: “It was a nightmare”! Ward elaborates on the harsh shooting conditions: “I knew there was an active volcano there, I knew it was overdue: I had dreams of this volcano erupting. We had a month of earthquakes, we had about twenty of them a day. And the heat there can kill you if you’re not prepared for it”. Surely a worthwhile experience, though? “Absolutely”, Matthew says.

Aeberhard is a seasoned wildlife cinematographer, his chiselled appearance and sturdy demeanour a testament to his hardworking attitude and passion for the natural world. “I worked for a guy called Hugo van Lawick who mentored me as a cinematographer. Hugo was married to Jane Goodall (legendary primatologist), and they lived in the Serengeti for many years, and he always said to me if you don’t do a film on the Serengeti you should do a film on Lake Natron, which neighbours Serengeti. So I used to make occasional forays out there, climb the mountain and explore the location, so I knew it, and as a location I felt it had everything: it has a great river valley, it has an active volcano, it has this lake which is like a mirror of the sky, with the spectacular sight of these flamingos, like the ornithological equivalent of the wildebeest migration. But no one knows about it, which is crazy, so we felt we had everything there to tell a story that would suit the big screen, with wonderful backdrops and a simple story that we could layer with a number of different meanings”. This approach to the material is one Kenyan raised Finn, an author and journalist new to wildlife filmmaking (her first date with now partner Aeberhard was a trip to Lake Natron) describes as “poetic, not prosaic”. “I felt there was a real fairytale when I looked at this. We’re all familiar with fairy tales, it’s a way of having a story move forward and you can follow it instinctively, so when things happen you don’t have to explain them. The idea of life and death and death feeding back into life, it’s a grown up fairytale but it’s something we can relate to. And so that really allowed us to pull back on the narration and just let people follow the story. The origins of our storytelling have all come from nature, this is where we’ve got all our cliché characters from so why not play on that a little”.

This unconventional approach was one Aeberhard was keen to stress. “There’s a certain language that people define wildlife programmes with, a certain style and it becomes self-reinforcing. I’ve spent a lot of time in the wild and I feel that nature means more than that. It’s not something we need to objectify. If you’ve been to Africa, or even if you’ve just taken a walk in the forest, when you see the sun rise, it doesn’t need an explanation: you can just forge these emotional connections, and I feel that’s important for wildlife filmmakers, that’s what we should be doing”. The filmmakers used pioneering hovercraft technology to achieve the kind of shots never captured before, but they also recorded live sound and invited the Cinematic Orchestra’s Jason Swinscoe to breathe in Natron’s atmosphere first hand in preparation for their scoring of the film. How did this collaboration come about? “When I was living in LA” Ward explains, “someone turned me onto them, and I really liked it but it was very jazzy, I couldn’t imagine it for Natron. But their last album, La Fleur, really triggered something in me. If you just put that music to these images you just go: wow!”

Ward is an experienced wildlife cameraman with roots in drama: one of his most memorable collaborations was with Scottish director Donald Camell on his ill-fated swansong, Wild Side. “One of the things working with Donald showed me was – and this was of course during a very difficult time in his life – just do something different, always strive to find new angles for things. So with this film, it’s not about what the animals do but what that means to us, what nature means to us”. The Crimson Wing of course has a very strong ecological message.

The fate of Lake Natron and its flamingo population could be at stake, but Ward is optimistic: “We didn’t embed the conservation issues within the film because we just wanted this to be a beautiful film that people would respond to. We do feel that by making this film we’ve put some pressure on the company that was going to mine the lake into re-thinking their ways, and I understand that project’s been iced for the time being”. “Film is a great way to raise awareness. It doesn’t necessarily have to be so political in its content, anyone can learn about something they know nothing about. And that’s conservation itself; it’s conservation through appreciation of something”. Aeberhard adds “We didn’t want this to be an anthropomorphised sentimental thing or a biology study. Nature’s not something you need to measure. I feel it’s those feelings that underpin all conservation; unless people feel a connection it has no relevance”.

The film was enthusiastically received at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the filmmakers have been surprised and enlightened by the response. “The choice of making a poetic film” Finn says “meant we were aiming for an older children’s audience – teenagers upwards, almost a non traditional wildlife audience – but it’s remarkable that kids have really loved it. We just did a screening of this for 500 children and at the end it was question time and every kid was raising their hand!”. The Crimson Wing has found one famous fan in a very unexpected place, however, and with a link to Ward’s past. “It’s funny talking about Donald, because having gotten back from Africa I needed a place to live in London. I found a place in Notting Hill and went to meet my landlady to sign up for the flat. It turns out she was Nic Roeg’s wife and Nic Roeg was my neighbour, and I just showed him the film on Saturday night and he loved it! So it was a really strange sort of cycle”. Not unlike that legendary life cycle that runs through this terrific film, a true thing of wonder and humanity.

Dropping the Anvil on Glasgow

Published 17 February 2009

This hilarious and heartbreaking rockumentary charts the near success and further tribulations of the veteran Canadian headbangers. The unsung heroes of 80s metal and a major influence on Anthrax, Guns N’ Roses and Metallica, Anvil never quite hit the big time that their energetic live shows promised. But their performance at Glasgow’s Cineworld, part of their world tour of cinemas, proved their naysayers wrong and their supporters right: Anvil, quite simply, ROCK! It was Gervasi’s idea to create this “Anvil Experience”, and the band were more than enthusiastic. As Robb said, “We thought about it, experimented, tested it out, now we’ve been doing it, ten or twelve times, it’s awesome! I wish we could do this everywhere, no one’s ever done it”. It’s also good to know that Glasgow has a place in Anvil’s hearts. “I’ve always loved Scotland, we haven’t been here in 27 years, it’s been too long”. Lips was equally enthusiastic, “When we went on tour with Motorhead this was the best place of the entire tour”. The band then gave their renditions of what Gervasi deemed “some of the worst Scottish accents I’ve ever heard”.

The director made the film as a tribute to the band he toured with as a teenager (he even took them on a tour of London), and if it resembles Spinal Tap, that’s not unintentional. “We saw Spinal Tap as our trojan horse: the audience comes to see it and they laugh… but then they’re surprised that it becomes so emotional. It’s because we have the laughs that it gets so emotional”. Emotional because the band have endured serious hardships since their heyday, with work and finances running low. But unlike Metallica, subjects of seminal metal doc Some Kind of Monster, spirits remain strong: “When things are tough it creates even more of a bond. We have nothing but ourselves. Lars (Ulrich, Metallica drummer) would say we’ve been having a better time”.

The success of the film has had an immeasurable effect on the band’s lives. “We now have real representation, a real agent, and we’re entertaining some serious recording contracts”. For all those companies about to rock with Anvil, we salute you!

Carmen Ejogo: Away She Went

Her name may be unfamiliar, but chances are you will have seen or heard Carmen Ejogo. In the 90s, she seesawed between singing vocals for Tricky and presenting Saturday Disney, in between acting in Dennis Potter dramas.

Born in London to a Nigerian father and Scottish mother, Ejogo has, since leaving the UK, carved a career in American film and television, working with Jodie Foster, Edward Norton and her now husband, Jeffrey Wright. While the actress may not be following her spouse as he treads the boards, she did find director Sam Mendes’ theatrical experience beneficial on his road movie Away We Go.

“He’s great because we had a real rehearsal period, and the other thing coming from the stage background is a real reverence for the text: he’s not messing around with it in big ways. He took the project on because he liked what he saw”.

What he saw was the tale of a couple (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) on the road to what will hopefully be happiness as first time parents. Ejogo won the role of Rudolph’s sister, which proved more challenging than her short screen time suggested. “What she was doing with her character was going to inform what I was doing with my character. For example, with choosing the accent, I really had to mimic Maya”.

Did she and Mendes bond as Brits abroad? “Living in the states as he does with his family, you really see how culturally different it is, so you definitely seek out other people whose sense of humour and cultural references you’re gonna get. We’d share our love for ska music: people in New York didn’t know what we were talking about!”

Ejogo has mixed feelings about the present situation for British actors in America. “You can have a more comfortable life, but that’s a less satisfying life as an artist. I also found that as a bi-racial actress, roles tend to be very much about your race, there’s a pressure to represent your background. My background is African, not African-American, so I don’t have that baggage that many black people have. I’ve always been more nomadic in my sensibility than America’s allowed me to be in my career. But I’m hoping that in the new Obama age, things will change, because the image you see of America isn’t necessarily representative of the progress the country’s trying to make”.