A post-racial world??

Given that it's still less than a week since Obama's inauguration, these wise words from Jenny Lumet, scriptwriter of Jonathan Demme's acclaimed film Rachel Getting Married, seem worth recording. She's the daughter of Sidney Lumet and the granddaughter of Lena Horne.

Note to self: don't forget that the dishwasher scene in the movie was inspired by a real-life altercation between Sidney Lumet and Bob Fosse.

Though she's proud of the fact that her screenplay never raises race [groom is black, bride white], Lumet doesn't think we are, in a phrase much bandied about recently, "post-racial." "I don't believe that race doesn't matter," she says. "I believe that it matters enormously. But I wish people would say, 'It matters enormously. Now let's get dessert.'"

Interview by Gaby Wood.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/25/1