Young Barry

Unseen Obama Interview Surfaces

Rare footage from 1993 documentary.

In 1993, a 32-year-old Barack Obama was midway through writing Dreams From My Father when aspiring filmmaker Zeke Gonzalez interviewed him for a documentary on black role models. Gonzalez's film fell apart, but his 12-minute interview with then-community activist Obama has found new life in the hands of L.A. producer Stuart Goldman, who contextualized it with new interviews about Obama's early Chicago years. At the time of the 1993 interview, Obama was working to register Chicago voters, citing the candidacy of Carol Moseley Braun as his inspiration. Did he know he would some day be president? "My general view about politics and running for office is that if you end up being fortunate enough to have the opportunity to serve, it is because you got a track record of service in the community and I think right now, I am still building up that track record. ... I might think about it, but that time is certainly in the future." Politics Daily’s Lynn Sweet notes that three years later Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate and won. "It isn't as if Obama transformed the South Side of Chicago," Goldman tells Sweet. "The story is how the South Side transformed Obama."