Spike Lee InterviewsHBO Documentary Films
Interview With Spike Lee
WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS
HBO: Can you talk a little about the title, and its significance?
Spike Lee: Well, titles are always important for all my films. That's the first thing the audience hears. Even before I had written the script for Do the Right Thing I had the title. I can't remember exactly when we came up with the title for When the Levees Broke but it was early on.
HBO: It's very open-ended, and almost leaves the viewer to finish the sentence themselves.
Spike Lee: I've tried to progress past the point with my films where I'm giving a five-word description. One of the significant things about the title is that most people think that it was Katrina that brought about the devastation to New Orleans. But it was a breaching of the levees that put 80 percent of the city under water. It was not the hurricane. And last week the United States Army Corps of Generals went on record and finally 'fessed up, and said that we fucked up.
HBO: What was the thing that devastated you more than anything, about what happened in New Orleans?
Spike Lee: The thing that's very hard for me, and I think'll be hard for any filmmaker who has to ask difficult questions, especially when you're asking people who've lost loved ones, is that, as a filmmaker and as a storyteller, it was my job, it was my duty to ask some difficult questions that I knew would stir up feelings...that would make people break down. Now, that was not my intention. But we have people talk about how their whole life has been changed.
So it's very important that the audience, not just here in the United States but all over the world, hear these stories from these individuals, these witnesses, who saw the horror of what happened in New Orleans.
HBO: There were so many stories, and I'm sure even today you still hear stories that you haven't heard that just horrify you. How did you decide which you were gonna go with?
Spike Lee: Well, when you choose the stories a lot of it depends who's telling the story and who can convey that story. Everything you shoot cannot make it into the final film. So, myself along with my editor and producing partner Sam Pollock, we thought long and hard about what goes, and what stays.
HBO: When did you know you had to do a film about this?
Spike Lee: When Hurricane Katrina went through New Orleans or around it, I was in Venice, Italy at a film festival. It was a very painful experience to see my fellow American citizens, the majority of them African- Americans, in the dire situation they were in. And I was outraged with the slow response of the federal government. And every time I'm in Europe, any time something happens in the world involving African-Americans, journalists jump on me, like I'm the spokesperson for 45 million African-Americans, which I'm not. But many of them expressed their outrage too. And one interesting thing is that these European journalists were saying the images they were seeing looked like they were from a third world country, not the almighty United States of America.
It was around that time that I decided that I would like to do this. And as soon as I got back to New York, I called up (HBO's) Sheila Nevins, and we met, and she agreed to go forward. What many people say in this film is that what happened in New Orleans is unprecedented. Never before in the history of the United States has the federal government turned its back on its own citizens in the manner that they did, with the slow response to people who needed help.
Recently, there was another horrific earthquake, a national disaster in Indonesia. And, once again, the United States government was there within two days. Now it's great that we were in Indonesia in two days. But...let's get a globe [LAUGHS], and see what the distance between the United States and Indonesia, and to New Orleans, and the people in the whole Gulf region.
HBO: When you first set foot on the ground, was it what you expected? Were you prepared for what you saw?
Spike Lee: Anyone who has been to New Orleans will automatically tell you that what you saw on television, the pictures, they can't really describe the scale of the devastation. When you go to the Lower Ninth Ward, it looks- Hiroshima must have look like that. Nagasaki. Beirut. Berlin after it was bombed in World War II. That's the way the Lower Ninth Ward looks like, and a lotta other places in New Orleans.
People in New Orleans are up in arms about progress. People wanna move back. New Orleans was a predominantly African- American city, and its black citizens were dispersed to 46 other states. People wanna come home, but there's nowhere for them to live. They wanna work. The thing is just all messed up. I would not wanna be Mayor Ray Nagin. That has the next hardest job in this country besides the President of the United States, being the mayor of New Orleans.
HBO: Why do you think the response was what it was?
Spike Lee: Well, I would just say, what Kanye West expressed, that George Bush doesn't care about black people. Many people think it had nothing to do with race, it had more to do with class. You have a large population who happened to be poor, and if they did vote they didn't vote Republican anyway. Everybody was on vacation. Ms. Rice was buying Ferrigamo shoes on Madison Avenue while people were drowning, then went to see Spamalot. Cheney was on vacation. Bush was on vacation, and even when the President cut short his vacation, he did not fly directly to New Orleans. He did not fly directly to the Gulf region. He had the pilot of Air Force One do a fly-over.
Politicians do many things that are symbolic. And people might say well, what's the good if it's just symbolic? Sometimes there's a lotta good in symbolism. In 1965 with Hurricane Betsy, then President Lyndon B. Johnson flew to New Orleans, and went to the Lower Ninth Ward. He shined a flashlight in his face in the dark and said, I'm Lyndon B. Johnson, I'm the President of the United States and we care about you. George Bush did not feel he had to do that. He showed up late, and the damage had been done already.
One of the things I hope this documentary does is remind Americans that New Orleans is not over with, it's not done. Americans responded in record numbers to help the people of the Gulf Coast, but let's be honest. Americans have very, very short attention spans. And, I'll admit there was eventually a thing called Katrina fatigue. But if you go to New Orleans, only one-fourth of the population is there. People are still not home. So hopefully, this documentary will bring this fiasco, this travesty, back to the attention of the American people. And maybe the public can get some politicians' ass in the government to move quicker, and be more efficient in helping our fellow American citizens in the Gulf region.
HBO: Has this forever changed the way people think about New Orleans?
Spike Lee: I think when we look back on this many years from now, I'm confident that people are gonna see what happened in New Orleans as a defining moment in American history. Whether that's pro or con is yet to be determined. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this film.
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SeeingBlack.com
Spike Lee to Black
Audiences: Grow Up
He talks about his latest film, "25th Hour" And the state of Black film.
February 3, 2003
By Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Editor
What do you think about Spike Lee's comments? Tell us here!
Iverem—"25th Hour" felt to me as much a meditation on New York as a story surrounding one man. Was it that for you? And if so, how much of that comes from Berlioff's novel and script? How much of it is your vision as a director?
Lee—The script came from David Berlioff's fine novel, which was written before 9/11. I added the references to 9/11. So we're basically taking on Monty's last hours of freedom in a post-9/11 city.
Iverem—How did you get involved in this project?
Lee—I was sent the script. Berlioff has an agent and he sent me the script and I was drawn by the writing and by the characters. You don't see a script like that very often. I don't read lot of scripts. You know, I mostly write my own stuff. What I do get sent is usually terrible. … I'm not going to direct a script if I can't be comfortable with it. It has to be something within my own sensibilities, and that I can personalize.
Iverem—Did it feel odd to approach New York City from outside the African American culture for a story like this? I see this as being different from "Son of Sam," which was particular to an historical event, person, crime spree.
Lee—No. I'm a New Yorker and New York is diverse city and that diversity has been in my films since way back in "Do the Right Thing". "Son of Sam" focused a lot on Italians living in the Bronx.
Iverem—How do your projects happen now?
Lee—It really happened the same way they always happen. You have a script and you try to get money for it.
Iverem—Following up on that, is that process harder or easier for you now? People know who you are.
Lee—It depends on how much money I am trying to get. "Bamboozled" was a very difficult film to try to get made because of the subject matter. We wound up at New Line because no one else was interested. Mike Deluca was very instrumental in getting that film made. "25th Hour" was a lot easier to make. It cost $15 million but, remember, the average Hollywood film is costing $50 million so there is a definite difference there.…
Iverem—I've always thought of you as a maverick Black independent filmmaker who didn't care about big budgets, who wore as a sort of breastplate of honor that you do not need a big budget. But is Hollywood's budget disparity beginning to bother you?
Lee—It depends on what you're trying to do. This film should not have cost more than $15 million but there are two epics I want to make that I have not been able to get funding for—at least $75 million—one on Jackie Robinson and one on Joe Louis. One, they think baseball films don't make a lot of money and that Black baseball films definitely do not make a lot of money. But Jackie Robinson marked a seminal moment in American history. Hollywood still has a limited viewpoint on the type of Black films they'll make. Gangster, hip hop, shoot-em-up or low-brow comedy. Recently there have been two films that have broken that mold-"Drumline" and "Antwone Fisher" but, for the most part, these are exceptions. It's hard to get the studios to think outside of those ghettos. And the African American audience has to support films that are outside of those boxes.
Iverem—But the African American audience is no different from the larger one. It goes to the movies for entertainment. We want to laugh.
Lee—Yeah. We want to laugh but if that's all we want to do then we can't be complaining all the time—look at these movies Hollywood is putting out—when films are made outside of the of these ghettos and we don't support them. Look at "Antwone Fisher." It did okay but it should have done much better. Black people should have come out and supported that film.
Iverem—But Antwone Fisher did not open initially in very many theaters. Here in the Washington, DC area, a women told me that she and her husband went to see the film at a theater where it shared a screen with "Lord of the Rings," which also had three other screens in the same theater. So "Antwone Fisher" had only three screenings the whole day. At the show she attended, there was a line of Black people that stretched around the corner and most of them could not get in because that show was sold out. So the audience isn't always to blame.
Lee—I think that's an isolated case. …When a film gets a limited release you gotta drive the extra two miles to see it. We're trying to do films outside the regular thing and the audience doesn't come…. I was on Tom Joyner yesterday and a friend called me from Atlanta. He said, I heard you on the radio and it made to think, Why did I go to see "Chicago" before I went to see "Antwone Fisher." So I said to him, yeah, you have to answer that question for yourself…
Iverem—Okay. But I still say you can't fault the audience if the film isn't playing where they are. The same thing happened with "Bamboozled."
Lee—These are totally different situations. "Bamboozled" was marketed very badly. There is a world a difference between how "Antwone Fisher" is being marketed and how "Bamboozled" was marketed…Do you think "Antwone Fisher" is going to make as much money as "Barbershop?"
Iverem—I think it could.
Lee—You really think so? How much money you got?
Iverem—Not very much. Well. Maybe it won't make that much but it could. I don't see how you can compare the two movies. "Barbershop" opened on so many more screens and it was marketed to pique the interest and voyeurism of Whites…
Lee—Well, "Antwone Fisher" is going wide this weekend. We'll see.
Iverem—Are you able to do the things you want to do? Do you have to trade off between projects you want to do and those you have to do that are more commercially viable, meaning palatable to White folks?
Lee—No. I've done everything I've wanted to do. I've been able to 16 feature films in the last 17 years.
Iverem—Is Hollywood more comfortable with statements about race made in movies that are not Black?
Lee—Of course. It makes White people uncomfortable—some—when race is rears its ugly head.
Iverem—At the time when "Bamboozled" was released, you spoke a lot about minstrelsy on television and film. Do you see Black independent film as a way to still change that, to make a difference?
Lee—It's not going to be a one-prong approach. The one way to change everything is to get Black people into those gate keeper positions (where they have the power to green light films). That's how you change things, not with Academy Awards.
Iverem—Well maybe you're more optimistic about this strategy than I am. I think that if studios put a Black person into that kind of position it will be a Black person who they know thinks like they do and who will do things just as they have always done them—kind of like the Hollywood version of Colin Powell.
Lee—That's a valid point but there's also the chance that it is going to be someone visionary and the studios will think, hey, that guy can make us some money. As long as you appeal to their bottom line you can do some work. But I agree that just because someone is African American doesn't mean that they're going to be—you know what. The example you gave of Colin Powell is apropos…
Iverem—What is most important to you right now?
Lee—To just continue to master my craft. Good directors are good story tellers.
Iverem—You're a father right? Do you ever think about doing something for children?
Lee—This past November, my book came out, a children's book titled "Please, Baby, Please, Please, Baby, Please" that my wife Tonya and I co-wrote, so maybe that's the first step in doing something for children…
Iverem—When "Bamboozled" was released, you said you were working on a TV program. Whatever came of that?
Lee—I'm still working on it.
Iverem—Can you say anything about it?
Lee—No. It's a jinx to talk about it before it happens. [On that night's "Charlie Rose" show, Lee offers that he is working on a drama maybe for ESPN based on his film, "He Got Game"]
Iverem—It's a drama?
Lee—Oh yeah. I'm not doing any sitcoms. No, no, no….
Iverem—What is the most important development for black filmmakers now?
Lee—I think there are more Black films being made now. The last time they were making this number of films was during the Black exploitation era. The challenge is how do you navigate this world where we're still relegated to those three ghettos. You don't see movies about Sojourner Truth or Matthew Henson or Black science fiction or a Black thriller. The studios say, We're not buying that. They say, do you have something with drugs or a rapper, something we can put Nelly in?
Iverem—So you believe it's all about the studios? Can't we make our own films?
Lee—There's not one way to do it. It's not an either-or situation. You can make the film yourself. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was not made by a studio and it was one of most profitable films last year…
Iverem—What's next?
Lee—Don't know yet. Hopefully we'll be shooting something in the spring.
Iverem-— had no idea you were so superstitious.
Lee—Oh yeah. Don't put a hat on a bed, and don't split the pole.
Iverem—Where do you spend most of your time now?
Lee—Still in New York, in Manhattan….
Iverem—Anything else?
Lee—Just the fickleness of the African American movie-going audience….I have nothing against entertainment but there are different kinds of entertainment. We're still in that buffoonery thing. I'm not against those types of films but we have to have more than that. It's not about the budget, it's the vision and calling Martin Luther King a ho and saying all Rosa Parks did was sit her fat, black ass down is not visionary. But this year, when the studios consider what movies to fund, they will see what "Barbershop" made and what "Antwone Fisher" made and that's why you'll see "Barbershop II" and "Barbershop III."
Iverem—So those two films, with entirely different screen situations, will compared like that?
Lee—I'm telling you. I'm telling you. I talk to these studio people and that's how they think.
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Slate Magazine
Spike Lee The director talks about movies, race, and Will Smith
By Lee Siegel Posted Thursday, Dec. 1, 2005, at 1:05 PM ET
Ever since the romantic comedy-drama She's Gotta Have It antagonized black women and black men in 1986, Spike Lee's films have enjoyed the outrage of various groups. Between Do the Right Thing's racial and ethnic provocations, however, and last year's She Hate Me—a sexual farce that offended lesbians and feminists—the social context for Lee's films has changed. In Hollywood, the bar for racial provocation has been raised to wearying heights. At the same time, nakedly commercial entertainments—blackbusters?—from Barbershop to Get Rich or Die Tryin' appeal to a black audience that barely existed 20 years ago. Lee's recently published autobiography, Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It, offered an occasion to talk with the sometimes inflammatory director about movies, money, race, and the gentle art of making enemies.
Slate: I wanted to talk to you about your book, which I've been reading. Why do you call it That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It? I mean, do people think that you're making stuff up?
Lee: No, I just thought it was a good title. It's not really to rebel or anything. I just liked the title.
Slate: Of course, I was particularly interested in what you have to say about the situation of blacks in Hollywood. But also in your statements about the Holocaust. You pretty much said that any movie about the Holocaust is going to carry all the prizes.
Lee: Whoa, whoa! What I was speaking of specifically was the feature-length documentary branch of the academy. I mean, there was a time—you could do the research, I don't have the chart in front of me—but for a period of over 10 years, almost every film that won best feature-length documentary was about the Holocaust.
Slate: That is an issue, right? It's followed you throughout your career, the relationship between blacks and Jews.
Lee: It's not an issue for me.
Slate: No, it's an issue for everyone else.
Lee: I have nothing to do with that. But I remember thinking when we were nominated for 4 Little Girls and then finding out that a rabbi was a producer for the other one: We're not gonna win.
Slate: Next time you have to get a minister.
Lee: I don't think we'll need it.
Slate: You know, I go to a Clint Eastwood movie, and I see that time after time, Morgan Freeman is playing Clint Eastwood's sidekick. Everyone loves these movies; they always win awards. But nobody complains about that. There's no black group that complains and asks, "Why can't Clint Eastwood be Morgan Freeman's sidekick?" Would you like to see a black uproar over that?
Lee: Oh, man. We have more things to have an uproar about than Morgan Freeman. But the point that you make is true, that we just don't have the lobbying power that other groups have, and it has to do with political and financial clout. So, that's that.
Slate: You've said that things will change when there are more black producers.
Lee: I used the word gatekeepers. I said that I really want to see a wider, more sweeping change in the breadth of subject matter and stuff, which is only going to come when we get those locked positions of the gatekeepers.
Slate: But then you look at a lot of these movies that make so much money: Barbershop, Beauty Shop, and Marci X, which I know is not a big favorite of yours.
Lee: Marci X didn't make any money.
Slate: OK. But can you be so sure that if the gatekeepers were African-American they would promote films that are in the social or aesthetic interests of black audiences?
Lee: Look, you get into that position and you know that first of all your films have to make money no matter who you are. But I can confidently say that if there had been a gatekeeper at MGM, I don't think Soul Plane could have gotten made. I'm confident in saying that.
Slate: So, if you were the head of one of these studios for example—
Lee: No, that's not something I want to be or aspire to be.
Slate: But if you were, you wouldn't give a green light to projects like that.
Lee: Well, all I'm saying is that there would be more variety and diversity as far as subject matter. And I would hopefully see a greater picture of African-Americans' experience vs. one that's limited to comedies and hip-hop, drug, gangsta, shoot 'em up films.
Slate: You say in this book that you were really surprised that Damon Wayans could go from Bamboozled to Marci X.
Lee: That was a surprise to me. Look, I'm not in Damon's shoes. Everybody does what they want to do for their own specific reasons, but nonetheless it was still a surprise. Because Bamboozled [Lee's film about how blacks are represented—and how they represent themselves—in American entertainment] is really an indictment of that type of film.
Slate: Do you think there's a difference between a black acting style and a white acting style?
Lee: No, I'm not gonna—no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not. Nope.
Slate: Because I look at a great actor like Jeffrey Wright—do you like his stuff?
Lee: Yeah, I love Jeffrey.
Slate: And I see that he's not an actor in the mold of, say, Brando, or Sean Penn. Wright disappears into his characters like a British actor, and I see a lot of African-American actors doing that—Cuba Gooding, I think, does that also.
Lee: You're putting Cuba Gooding in the same league with Jeffrey Wright?
Slate: No.
Lee: Oh, thank you.
Slate: What are you working on now?
Lee: We're doing the score for my new film. The film is called Inside Man. It's about a bank robbery that becomes a hostage situation. Denzel Washington is a New York City detective; he runs a hostage-negotiation team. He has to match wits with the mastermind behind the bank robbery, who is played by Clive Owen.
Slate: I remember you got very angry when you were talking to Will Smith about directing Ali, and Smith said to you, "Well, I want someone with a broader vision." You said you knew right away it wasn't going to be you.
Lee: The reason I was so mad at that statement was that it seemed to me that Will was just saying something the studio told him. You know, "So, what about Spike?" And they go, "Well, he's not that broad," and then he comes back to me and says the same thing they said. That's why I was mad.
Slate: Did you sense that "broader vision" was code for not being so African-American?
Lee: Well, that's what it means. Appeal to the widest margin and, you know, you all saw how Ali turned out, so there you go.
Look, my films have to make some money. But I still think that it was unfortunate. I wanted to do Ali, Will and the studio didn't want me, and that's that. I moved on a long, long, long, long time ago.
Slate: A friend of mine has started using the word "business" as a verb, and I think that's right. Everything's "businessed" these days. Do you think a movie like Do the Right Thing could be made now?
Lee: It would be really hard.
Slate: Would audiences even respond?
Lee: Oh, I think they would. I don't think it's the audience's fault. I'm putting that on the studio.
Slate: But people don't seem to like discord.
Lee: There is that part of the moviegoing segment, but I'm still convinced that a larger segment wants to be stimulated. People are getting tired of seeing TV shows remade, or movies from the 1950s, and comic books, and sequels. People say, well, it can't be the films; it's the video games, it's the 900 channels, it's this and that. All those things are a factor, but I think the biggest factor is that films aren't connecting with the audience. I mean, look. March of the Penguins. How much did that movie make?
Slate: A fortune.
Lee: I'm telling you, it's my belief that people went to see that film because there was nothing else to see. If there were good movies in the theater, they're not going to see a documentary about penguins.
Slate: I think you've remarked on the fact that black filmmakers like the Hughes brothers, and John Singleton, and Matty Rich all end up being pushed into the crime-action genre.
Lee: I wouldn't put Matty Rich in that category.
Slate: Well, the other guys.
Lee: Yeah, but it doesn't make me angry, because all these guys get the money to do films that aren't necessarily African-American based, which is good. They're seeing them as just filmmakers. And there's nothing wrong with doing genre films. The film I'm doing now is a genre film, you know, heist films is a genre. So you know you just try when you get those opportunities, and just hopefully you make the best films you can.
Slate: Would you like to make another film like Bamboozled, something that really just takes an issue and explodes it?
Lee: Yeah, I'm going to make films like that again, but that's not the only thing. There are many different things I want to say, I want to do, so it's not just going to be one type of film. It'd be hard to get a film like Bamboozled made, though. That film barely got made.
Slate: To come back to this, I have to say, I really don't like these movies like Barbershop and Beauty Shop. I just don't. I think of what you were doing—yet you made these films possible, right?
Lee: Don't put that on me.
Slate: No, but you created an open field for black filmmakers.
Lee: Yeah, but it morphed into something else. But no, you can't put Barbershop on me.
Slate: Still, don't you find it ironic that you created the atmosphere that made these films possible, and now they're more popular than more serious movies?
Lee: I never said that those films should not be made. I just think that they shouldn't be the only type of films that are made. But I'd take Barbershop over Get Rich or Die Tryin'. In Barbershop, you're not trying to kill anybody.
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DVD Talk
Cinema Gotham
Finest Hour
The Spike Lee Interview
January 16, 2003
Spike Lee has been making some of the most New York-centric films around since emerging from Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood. Starting with his well-known NYU short Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, Lee has almost always taken the volatile mix of social, political and personal turmoil that New York fosters in its citizens as a cinematic jump-off point.
Among his best films are Jungle Fever, Clockers and his feature debut, She's Gotta Have It, all of which investigate the way people in the five boroughs deal with their differences. His finest film, the endlessly complex Do the Right Thing, threw nearly every -ism and -phobia on the screen and left the bewildered audience to sort the mess out. Lee is often pigeon-holed as a director of "black" movies but its really the movies that he's made outside of his hometown (School Daze, Get on the Bus, 4 Little Girls, all excellent) that are most singularly about the black experience. His NYC movies are more about being a New Yorker, thrown in with every other ethnic group, all packed together, and forced to work out all the world's problems on a tiny stage.
His latest, 25th Hour, joins the list of his best with its depiction of the last free hours of Monty Brogan (Ed Norton) as he prepares for a seven year prison sentence under New York's harsh Rockefeller drug laws. Aside from Norton, Lee packs 25th Hour with a tremendously talented cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin and the newly-ubiquitous Brian Cox all do excellent work as real, flawed, damaged people.
The thing that really makes 25th Hour (based on a novel and screenplay by David Benioff) stand out is that it is set in post-9/11 New York, with all that comes with it. Characters somberly refer to the devastation of the World Trade Center and the loss of so many firefighters. One key conversation about the loss Monty faces takes place overlooking the ghostly Ground Zero recovery effort. Even the opening credit sequence, a moving, provocative montage of images from the Tribute in Light, has the sorrowful feel befitting such an austere monument.
But the film isn't a tribute to September 11th. Rather, its a celebration of the persistence of the New York (and American) spirit; tested, bruised but not broken. Monty goes through a crisis over his impending imprisonment that parallels the trauma felt by many New Yorkers following 9/11. Granted, Monty's getting what he deserves but he knows it and the sense of dread and sorrow is there all the same. Characters don't always talk about the attack in explicit detail but they do reference it in the way that everyone in New York does, everyday. Lee's film is the first narrative feature to take place in a world where 9/11 is a fact, a given, an intrinsic part of life. His film isn't about 9/11; It's about a world that's about 9/11.
Cinema Gotham recently had the chance to chat with Lee about his film, working in the city, and even tell him something about Brooklyn that he never knew.
Cinema Gotham: I wanted to talk to you a little about the way your movies work with the city. Monty has a complicated relationship with the city. You really bring that out in the scene where he basically tells every ethnic and economic group in the city to fuck off. I know that scene was in the book but I was wondering if that's a sense you brought to the project.
Spike Lee: Well, I think that anyone who lives in New York, who's lived here, who's spent any time here, knows that it's basically a love-hate relationship, you might say. Even though I still think it's the greatest city in the world and I wouldn't live anywhere else there're still things about it one doesn't like. The love far outweighs the negative.
CG: How have your feelings changed over the years?
SL: I love New York. I'm just... It's getting very expensive for people to live here. And also, I mean, if I was mayor I really would look out for affordable housing. And also the public education here is terrible. So I mean, you can't afford a place to live and education is terrible. Those are two key things. And I'm just very fortunate that I'm able to pay for my kids to go to private school but everybody doesn't have that. I'm a product of New York City public school education from kindergarten to John Dewey High School in Coney Island. But the public education's gone down since then.
CG: There's a lot of reform going on.
SL: I saw in the paper today where [former CEO] Jack Welsch from GE, they brought him in. I mean, I don't want to be a hater but I don't know what... I'll be interested to see what effect that has.
CG: It's surreal.
SL: If he brings some of those billions with him and they put them into the school system that'll be good. That's not really the way business works.
CG: How do you find working in the city?
SL: 25th Hour, like a lot of my films, takes place in New York City. I've been very fortunate to make films in the city that I live. I mean it's great going home at night instead of being on location. I think the best actors in the world are here in New York City. And this city is just so vibrant the energy is just phenomenal. Great crews here. All the technicians, all the artists that work in this industry. I've just been very happy with the body that we've been able to do, especially those films we shot here in New York City.
CG: You've done some innovative things over the years, too. I remember reading that you created mentoring programs with the unions.
SL: Oh, yeah, we've always been proactive in having mentoring programs, having internships, trying to work with the unions so they can encourage more people of color getting into them. Unions which historically have been closed off to those people. So it's been a process. A long, long, long process.
CG: How do you think the process of making films in city has changed over your career?
SL: I just think that the unions realize they have to be more flexible. The people that live here want to work here but if it's cost prohibitive people go elsewhere. And right now a lot of people are still choosing to go to Toronto instead of shooting in New York City, something I haven't done and something I hope I'll never have to do.
CG: Is that built in to your contract?
SL: Oh, I just tell people I'm not doing it in Toronto. You know? Just very plain.
CG: Also, they probably know if they want to make a New York movie in Toronto you're not their guy.
SL: Oh, they know that. First of all, I'll be vilified if I shoot a film in Toronto for New York. And rightfully so!
CG: Yeah, no one would ever get over it. You seem to have a lot of interaction with the city behind the scenes but you also bring in very real incidents and events from the city's history like the "son of Sam" killing spree and Howard Beach...
SL: Howard Beach, and Bensonhurst with Joey Fama and Yusuf Hawkins, you know, from Jungle Fever. [Fama, as part of a gang of white youths, attacked four black teens in 1989, killing Hawkins and adding to the city's building racial tensions.] I mean, a lot of rich stories here. It's ironic you brought up Summer of Sam but that's why we began Summer of Sam with Jimmy Breslin saying "there's eight million stories in the naked city. And this is several of them." It's true.
CG: At what point did you decide to bring the story of September 11th into 25th hour? It's not in the book.
SL: Yeah, it's not in the book and it wasn't in David Benioff's script. I mean, the script I read was done before September 11th. I just knew that we were going to do this film, that we were going to be shooting after September 11th. I just thought it would be criminal on my part to not include it. So, I didn't think of it as such a big decision. For me the big decision was how to implement September 11th into the film. We did not want to appear like it was appended or anything like that. It had to feel organic, like it was there from the beginning. And I think that we were successful in doing that.
CG: I think so too. I think is was brave because I'm sure there were people who would accuse you of this, that, or the other thing.
SL: We're very happy with the reviews we got but the head critic for the Washington Post, I read her review Friday and she really had, I think, the most astute comment I've read on the film. She compared it to Rome, Open City, how Rossellini shot that film in Rome months after the Nazis were driven out and World War II was over. And I really think that was kind of a nice correlation of how we shot New York City.
CG: It struck me nowadays when you watch movies shot right before or after September 11th that the filmmakers have often bent over backwards to substitute shots of other buildings for the World Trade Center.
SL: And other people made the choice and it's their choice to digitally remove the World Trade Center and stuff like that.
CG: You also briefly mention the Rockefeller laws. Governor Pataki's been paying some lip service to reforming them lately.
SL: Well, we really didn't want to get too deep into it but we felt we had to mention it so that's why we have in the interrogation scene one of the DA's brings up the Rockefeller laws. It's something that definitely needs to be reformed. I remember reading like a month ago where Nelson Rockefeller's daughter got herself arrested in protest against these laws. At the time they were made it was thought that it would be a deterrent to drugs. It's been anything but. And for someone to be locked up for "x" number of years for having a piece of crack on them but to have a kilo of coke, whatever, you do less time.
CG: Although Monty's not necessarily the poster boy for the Rockefeller laws because he's not being victimized. He knows exactly what he's doing.
SL: Oh, he's not being victimized but we still were able to implement them into the script.
CG: He's not some abused girlfriend that's being forced to mule stuff around town.
SL: No.
CG: And another element you brought in was the Russian mafia.
SL: Oh yeah, big time!
CG: You get in any trouble over that?
SL: Trouble with them? Not yet! [LAUGHS]
CG: Fingers crossed.
SL: Well, I don't hang out in Brighton Beach that much, so I'll be alright.
CG: It's incredible that every 80 year old Gotti that gets arrested is front-page news but these guys are flying totally under the radar.
SL: They're ruthless. They'll kill people in a second and not even think about it. But you're right. That's something that's yet to be seen, really. The Godfather-type thing on them.
CG: Any stories that you're hoping to tell? Still looking to make the Jackie Robinson story?
SL: Yeah, that's one. And also the Joe Louis - Max Schmeling thing. And both of those films, a lot of it takes place here in New York City.
CG: Ed Norton's character in 25th Hour is named after Montgomery Clift.
SL: That's in the book.
CG: Yeah, but did you know he's buried in Prospect Park [in Brooklyn]?
SL: Montgomery Clift is buried in Prospect Park?
CG: Yup.
SL: I didn't know that!
CG: There's a Quaker cemetery in the middle of Prospect Park. And he's buried in there.
SL: You should have told me that before! I would have put that in the movie! He wasn't born in Brooklyn, was he?
CG: I don't know. I'm not even sure if he was a Quaker, but that's where he's buried.
SL: Well, that's something I'm going to mention on the DVD but that should have been put in the movie, though.
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New York Magazine
40th Anniversary
How I Made It: Spike Lee on 'Do the Right Thing'
By Logan Hill Apr 7, 2008
Several people have surprised me by saying that one of the movie’s biggest legacies is the impact you had on diversifying New York film crews.
SL Do the Right Thing was my first union film. I looked at the rosters, and for the most part, it was white males. Especially the Teamsters. So we had some conversations.
This was your third film. What was different?
SL That’s when I became a director. She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, I really didn’t know what I was doing. And the biggest indicator of that was the acting. Do the Right Thing was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.
Your cast was nearly very different.
SL Originally, I wanted Robert De Niro. He wouldn’t do it. And it turned out to be a blessing, no disrespect. For it to work, it had to be an ensemble piece, and a star of that magnitude would have changed everything. So Danny Aiello was great. Then we had Sam Jackson—before he was Samuel L. It was Martin Lawrence’s first film. The great Robin Harris. Ossie and Ruby, Frank Vincent, John Savage, Bill Nunn, my sister Joie Lee, John Turturro. Richard Edson, who I knew through Jim Jarmusch, two years ahead of me at NYU … It was a hella fine cast, hella fine.
You met a few actors by accident.
SL March 20, 1988: School Daze had just come out. “Da Butt,” by EU, was a huge hit—I did the video. So we had my birthday party in L.A. at this club called Funky Reggae. There was this girl dancing like mad on a speaker. I said, “Will you please get down before you break your neck and I get sued?” She cursed me out. I never heard a voice like that. I said, “What’s your name?” She said, “Rosie Perez.” That’s where I got the idea that Mookie should have a Puerto Rican girlfriend.
How did the script come together?
SL I had the title of it before I had anything else. Then it was bits and pieces—it was going to take place on the hottest day of the summer on one block in Bed-Stuy. Then I added the whole Italian-American–African-American conflict, which I’ve touched on in three films, Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Summer of Sam, and now my new film, Miracle at St. Anna, which is about the black soldiers who fought in Italy during World War II.
Why do you keep coming back to that?
SL The reason for this is very simple: My family, we were the first black family to move into Cobble Hill. At that time, it was predominantly Italian-American. The first day they called us niggers. But after that, it was cool.
One of the people you dedicate the film to is Eleanor Bumpurs.
SL Eleanor Bumpurs—[the police] had already shot her finger off. Then they killed her with a shotgun. Sixty-six years old. Mayor Koch, he was the one responsible, I feel, because he was giving the signals, the wink-wink, like it’s open season.
You specifically wanted the film to hurt Koch, right?
SL We have one scene where our man spray-painted dump koch. And also we had this plan because the film came out in August and that fall was the Democratic primary. So throughout the film, you hear Mister Señor Love Daddy, played by Samuel Jackson, telling people to vote, vote, vote. And Dinkins won.
Do the Right Thing never won an Oscar.
SL Remember what Kim Basinger did? Onstage she said, “The best film of the year is not even nominated, and it’s Do the Right Thing.” I didn’t even know her. But when Driving Miss Motherfucking Daisy won Best Picture, that hurt … No one’s talking about Driving Miss Daisy now.
Was the studio prepared for the controversy when the film came out?
SL At the last moment, Paramount asked me to change the ending. They wanted Mookie and Sal to hug and be friends and sing “We Are the World.” They told me this on a Friday; Monday morning we were at Universal.
New York’s former political columnist Joe Klein and its former film critic David Denby had very strong reactions.
SL One of the big criticisms was that I had not provided an answer for racism in the movie, which is insane. And what’s even more insane is people like Joe Klein and David Denby felt that this film was going to cause riots. Young black males were going to emulate Mookie and throw garbage cans through windows. Like, “How dare you release this film in summertime: You know how they get in the summertime, this is like playing with fire.” I hold no grudges against them. But that was twenty years ago and it speaks for itself.
Around the tenth anniversary of the film, you said that not much had changed—Diallo and Louima were in the news. How does it look to you now?
SL The way Bloomberg is handling stuff is a world away from Giuliani and Koch—and how Dinkins handled Crown Heights, too. I’m optimistic, but we’re going to hell in a handbasket. Fuck recession, we’re in a depression. I’m blessed, I can afford to send my children to private school. But where’s the affordable housing? You can’t afford Bed-Stuy!
What do you think of Obama?
SL I’m riding my man Obama. I think he’s a visionary. Actually, Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was Do the Right Thing. I said, “Thank God I made it. Otherwise you would have taken her to Soul Man. Michelle would have been like, ‘What’s wrong with this brother?’?”
Does this mean you’re down on the Clintons?
SL The Clintons, man, they would lie on a stack of Bibles. Snipers? That’s not misspeaking; that’s some pure bullshit. I voted for Clinton twice, but that’s over with. These old black politicians say, “Ooh, Massuh Clinton was good to us, massuh hired a lot of us, massuh was good!” Hoo! Charlie Rangel, David Dinkins—they have to understand this is a new day. People ain’t feelin’ that stuff. It’s like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean.
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Spike Lee Discusses "She Hate Me"
Anthony Mackie stars In Spike Lee's "She Hate Me" as John Henry Armstrong, a biotech executive who loses his job when he's labeled a whistleblower. Unable to find work in his chosen field, Armstrong does something drastic: he takes up his ex-girlfriend's offer of cash to impregnate her and her girlfriend. Word quickly spreads within the lesbian community, and Armstrong soon finds himself making $10,000 per 'service.' And while he might be raking in the dough from this unusual business arrangement, all's not well in Armstrong's life. Armstrong finds his world growing ever more complicated as his old boss contrives to frame him for securities fraud.
Why this movie and why now? Filmmaker Spike Lee addresses those questions and more in this interview to promote his latest movie, "She Hate Me."
INTERVIEW WITH FILMMAKER SPIKE LEE:
Could you talk broadly about what inspired you to make this movie and the things that were important for you to touch on?
SL The inspiration for this movie came from the New York Times and reading The Wall Street Journal when they broke the whole story on Enron. …And then when it broadened to Bernie Evers at WorldCom and [Kozlowski] at Tyco and Imclone, the Waskal Brothers, Martha Stewart, the Regis' at Adelphia, and just greed. Look, human beings are always going to be greedy, but this is, like, just bold-faced. They're not ever trying to be shy about it. Stealing money for the golf courses and paintings and all kinds of stuff. And then you see people being hurt. You know, I really felt sympathetic to the hard workers, the good hard-working Americans who worked at a company like Enron and put their life savings in Enron stock. And [it just] evaporated, it just disappeared.
When did the plot about impregnating lesbians come in?
SL That came at the same time. Because we wanted to tell more than one story, we wanted this film to have two spines and the thinking went like this: Progea is the company in this film, that scandal being, like, an overall view. But I think the audience would be able to identify more with one man's dilemma or journey and his own moral struggle. And that would be the thing with John Henry Armstrong and what he does.
Did you have any discussions with the gay community about the way that the lesbians were going to be portrayed in this movie?
SL Well, we hired a technical consultant. Her name is Tristan Taormino. Tristan is well-respected within the lesbian community so, we hired her, she worked with me on the script. You know, the script was written, but she looked at the script and pointed things out. She also worked with the actresses.
Was there any thought about the male aspect of bisexuality?
SL His character mentions that, but that's a whole other movie. We wanted to mention it, though. Is it odd that these women are so impressed with his body? Why? I don't think it's odd. Why is it odd?
Because they're acting like they are attracted to him.
SL Because they want to have nice-looking kids. No, no, no, though, it's not just his penis, they want to see his full physique. You want to see what you're buying. If you go to a sperm bank and you fill out a form, you write what height, weight, what color eyes, what color hair. If you want your sperm donor to have a post-graduate degree, that's an extra $5,000 dollars. So, to me, maybe not for you, but for me, I find it believable. If this guy's gonna be, if my egg's gonna meet his sperm, I want to see what his physique is. They know he went to Harvard, they know he got his MBA, they looked at his file, they see that his medical health, he's clean here. They questioned Fatima 10 million times, "What's he like?" you know, they want to know everything about him, because they're taking it serious. This guy is gonna help bring my child into the world, so for me, I find it believable that they want to see what the goods [are].
That scene plays like he's up on the auction block.
SL Exactly. I'm glad you brought that up because that scene for me, it works on double levels. The two levels are this: You have level of sexual objectification, which meant another story forever, which meant that now the tables were turned. But a more subtle level, which most people haven't gotten, the level of the auction block is a direct reference to African Americans being sold as slaves. When you stood up on that little thing and you were buck-naked and [the] master or potential master opened your mouth, felt your teeth like you were a horse and felt your genitals and felt your muscles. And if it looked like you were a big buck and you could sire a whole bunch of pickaninnies, than you got more money. So that was another reference to that.
Themes of race definitely play a part in this film.
SL But in the background. I don't think race is really overt in this. That's my opinion.
Why do you think the character ultimately condemns himself for helping these women?
SL That's a good question. There are some people in the world that have a problem with bringing 19 kids into the world and being paid for it. And also, I'd like to state, I'd like to make the point, it's not the fact that women are lesbians, it's just the fact that he feels like a prostitute. He brought 19 kids into this world.
A lot of those were complete families.
SL I understand that. But, John Henry Armstong still cannot get around the fact that even though he signed a donor waver agreement, even though these children are wanted and loved, he still is the father of 19 kids, and he got paid for it. And some people, some men…I would have a hard time with that on my conscience.
Are you saying it's important to have a male and female influence on a child?
SL No, I'm not saying that. I mean, there's been no scientific studies saying that children of same sex parents grow up to be any worse than any children with a mommy and a daddy at home.
You are a very political filmmaker. What are your thoughts on the upcoming election?
SL Oh, I'm very nervous about this election because we're all going to go to hell if George Bush wins. Well, we have to mobilize so that doesn't happen. People have to register to vote. Despite what we feel about John Kerry, we have to rally behind him.
Do you think this movie will help that?
SL No, I think the work's going to be done by "Fahrenheit 9/11." Yes, it's a great movie.
Can that movie help the change?
SL Yes, it has already. Let me answer it this way. Michael Moore would not need armed guards around him 24 hours a day if that film had no impact. The man has armed bodyguards around him 24-7. That is the biggest testament to the impact of the film.
There are a lot of themes in this about family. Can you talk about your stance and the things that were important to you?
SL Well, I think if you look at the end of the film, I think we present a new configuration of family, what people thought of family. Even 10 years ago, what people thought of family is much different than it is today. I found it very amusing that our new president tried to ram home this new amendment to the constitution that was quickly shot down, banning gay marriage. But, to answer your question in a broader sense, we wanted this film to reflect the crazy world we live in. And that was really the blueprint of this film, to jam pack as much as we could into this film within the allotted time, all the issues, and it would be like an assault. The same way individuals assault in the world we live in today with subject matter, images, and all types of stuff.
When you first started making movies, it was a revolution to show black professionals. Do you think that those kinds of straight forward movies can still be made, because this is high concept?
SL Well, I don't know how to really answer that question. I think that, again, this movie does not come from a Hollywood studio, the studio system. We went to everybody, they didn't want to make it, and I can understand so. But if you look at the films that they make for African American audiences, I think that their vision of African Americans is very limiting.
You made comments against "Soul Plane." Do you think those types of movies will continue to be made?
SL Oh, they'll continue to make them, and I know for sure if "Soul Plane" had been a hit, there would have been "Soul Plane 2." I don't have this on a…I was just told if that film had done well on opening weekend, Monday morning they would have put things in motion for the sequel.
Does a movie like that make you really concerned about African American portrayal in mainstream Hollywood?
SL Oh yes. I was disturbed before "Soul Plane." Let's not put everything on "Soul Plane," it's not like the first. That wasn't the first one.
Do you think that it's still a minstrel show or is it getting better?
SL I'm not that stupid. Will Smith, "I, Robot," made $52 million. But Will, Denzel [Washington], they're operating outside of what we're talking about. And also [there's] another advancement, I'll give you examples of three films that were directed by African Americans that had nothing to do with African American culture: Clark Johnson directed "SWAT," Antoine Fuqua, "King Arthur," F. Gary Grey with "The Italian Job" and "Be Cool," the new thing. So those are advancements. But, at the same time, I still am sad that there's not one African American who's in the gatekeeper position at a network or studio that can greenlight a picture. As far as the VP that creates things, several studios don't have an African American at all, this late in the game.
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The A.V. Club
Interview Stew and Spike Lee
by Sam Adams September 3, 2009
A heady mixture of stage musical and rock show, Passing Strange chronicles the efforts of a young, middle-class black man whom the credits identify simply as Youth (Daniel Breaker) to break away from his straitlaced upbringing and discover what he calls “the Real.” Scraping by as a struggling songwriter in Amsterdam and Berlin, he falls in with a succession of bohemians and art-world hangers-on, trying to reconcile the romantic vision of African-American expatriates like James Baldwin and Josephine Baker with the reality of being the sole black face in an all-white world full of self-styled revolutionaries who still obediently go home for Christmas.
Although it doesn’t precisely mimic the events of the play, capably captured on film by Spike Lee (and now available via Sundance on Demand), Mark Stewart’s life is close enough to his protagonist’s to provide a solid sense of his origins, artistic and otherwise. As Stew, the leader of a like-titled band as well as the chamber-pop outfit The Negro Problem, he has been releasing records for more than a decade, woozy narratives informed by XTC and Harry Nilsson. But it wasn’t until he and his longtime musical partner (and former girlfriend) Heidi Rodewald were invited to develop a stage musical for New York’s Public Theater that he finally had anything like the popular success to match his years of critical acclaim.
Fiercely intelligent and ferociously funny, Passing Strange mingles meditations on race, class, and the artistic temperament with a set of irrepressibly kick-ass rock songs. The singer and his director took a break from a day of interviews at a Dean & Deluca in midtown Manhattan, with Lee pausing occasionally to return the enthusiastic thumbs-up of passers-by.
The A.V. Club: Stew, the title of Passing Strange refers in part to the practice of light-skinned African-Americans passing for white, and a lot of the language in the play is drawn from the pre-civil-rights era, as when Youth refers to the congregation of his church as a “middle-class coon show.” You’ve drawn on that language frequently in your songs, going back as far as The Negro Problem’s first album, Post Minstrel Syndrome. What interests you in the vocabulary of those times?
Stew: As a culture, black culture, we have this history that we’re constantly grappling with, of people representing us and people misrepresenting us. But the real reason I use the language often is because I’m also pointing to how we have misrepresented ourselves, and how we have bought into some of that misrepresentation. I did a seminar a long time ago with this black nationalist named Maulana Karenga. He invented Kwanzaa. The reason why I did it wasn’t because I was a black nationalist, but I wanted to learn from what this cat had to say, because he had some interesting thoughts. He told me something I’ll never forget. He said, “Most cultures represent themselves based on the best of what they have to offer…”
Spike Lee: Ooh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh!
S: And he said, “Black American folks often, because of their mythology, because of the history, tend to represent themselves from the worst.” Spike and I have this obsession with black culture being looked at as a monolith. Spike can speak as well as I can on the fact that we get told that all we are is gang-bangers, and that’s how we realize our greatest potential, as those kind of people, right? Other cultures don’t do that. They represent themselves with their best.
SL: [Italian accent.] Leonardo da Vinci.
S: Exactly, exactly, exactly. And they tend to take their art seriously, too. So I’m just saying, when I use that language, I’m just as interested—I’m even more interested—in how black folks misrepresent themselves, and how they are sometimes tommin’ and coonin’ in situations where they don’t need to be. We don’t need to do that anymore. We really don’t. But we’re still doing it.
SL: You don’t have to put on a blackface anymore either, to be part of the coon show.
S: And, hey, Bamboozled. He’s been there already. He’s been there.
AVC: Bamboozled takes a more confrontational approach than Passing Strange.
S: But the same spirit. He’s interested in the subject.
AVC: Spike, so much of the play is about the Youth trying to find himself as an artist coming out of a culture that is only interested in financial success and stability. But you were raised in an artistic environment; your father, Bill Lee, was a well-known jazz musician. Where did you find yourself in this play? How did it speak to you?
S: It spoke to me in great volumes. Stew and I, I’m a little older than him, but we’re the same era. We’re two young black boys, growing up on each side of the coast, trying to find out who we are and where we fit in this world, and we’ve been very fortunate that we turned out to be the people we turned out to be, as artists and commenting on the world.
AVC: One of the things that the play, and the movie, deals with is that the Youth is, to put it crudely, forced to choose between being an artist and being black. There’s no way to be bohemian in the middle-class neighborhood where he grows up, but in the largely white environments he escapes to, he’s equally an outsider. When white teenagers rebel, there’s a script laid out for them, but the Youth doesn’t have that option.
S: What I’ve said before about Passing Strange is that black teen angst isn’t really documented enough. We’ve got a lot of white teen angst—been doing it since the James Dean movies.
SL: Rebel Without A Cause.
S: Exactly, right? But it’s like black teenagers, if I may say, we’re not just rebelling against what our parents are dealing with. We’re rebelling against our very place in society. See, James Dean was white. You know what I mean? He might have not liked Thurston Howell, or his dad, whoever, but James Dean was still white. When he wanted to leave home, he could go get a job. Right? A black teenager who wants to be punk-rock, he’s in a double bind. Because he’s pissed off his family, but now I’m black and punk-rock? You know what I mean? Where you gonna go? So it’s like this double bind.
Black teenagers have it a little bit rougher. I’m sorry to say, but they just do. I’m hoping there’s a world at some point where it’ll be a little bit easier, but right now… Imagine how crazy people must have thought [Spike] was when he said, “I’m going to be a filmmaker.” If he’d said, “I want to be a baller,” they would have been like, “Well, at least we know 8 million ballers.” They must have said, “What are you talking about, man?” And they looked at me the same crazy way. Being a musician was like saying you wanted to be a bum, you want to be a drug addict, you want to die like Jimi Hendrix. Because that’s what musicians do, don’t they? Or, “Ooh, you’re a jazz musician? That means you want to be on heroin.” You know what I mean?
AVC: Spike, did you ever think you were going to follow your father into music instead of film?
SL: Never. That still did not negate my love for music and my respect for musicians. It’s because of my father, his musicality, that I’m able to use that love of music in my films.
AVC: The score plays a very active role in your films, especially when you’re working with Terence Blanchard. It’s not just mood setting or wallpaper.
SL: Right.
S: Oh, big time. I remember seeing his movies and thinking, “Man, the music is so loud.” Which I loved. Because I’m like, “Wow, he’s not trying to fool you.” Some guys try to lay it down in the mix, like they can fool you into feeling a certain way about the scene. His movies, it’s more like somebody put a record on. That to me adds to the whole sensual experience, visual, sonic. It’s like, “This shit is all happening at the same time,” not like, “I’m trying to use this music to fool you.” “I’m letting you know that this music is happening right now, in this scene,” you know? That’s why we knew that the film would be good, because he has this musical sensibility. He’s put his stamp on film. He changed the way music and film relate. That’s a fact. You can see it everywhere. You see it in videos, all this stuff. I don’t mean just like, Do the Right Thing, “Oh, you know, Public Enemy, hip-hop, da da da,” but jazz, man. Nobody really was dealing with jazz.
SL: Public Enemy, I used them in the movie a lot. That’s the only rap that’s in the film.
S: I know, I know, which is great and beautiful. But I’m just saying, the jazz that’s in his movies—you weren’t hearing any jazz at that time in film and stuff. So when people go, “Oh, were you worried about how the movie was going to da da da?”, it’s like, “No, I wasn’t worried at all.” He was the right guy. There was no question. We didn’t even have a second person on the list. They were like, “Who would you want to film this?” And we said, “Spike.” And they were like, “Who else if there’s no time?” And we were like, “We don’t know anybody else.” We literally didn’t know anybody else.
AVC: Spike, you have a pretty good collection of these performance movies that you’ve done, with John Leguizamo and Roger Guenveur Smith. Are these just things you see, and you think, “Somebody has to get this down on film”? What motivates you to take on that role?
SL: Gotta make great cinema. I love Leguizamo’s piece, his one-man Broadway show, Freak. I love what Roger G. Smith did with Huey P. Newton. And I was blown away by what I saw with Passing Strange. And it also is a challenge to bring something from the stage and make it cinematic. Now of course, the other two examples I named were one-man shows, they weren’t musicals either. So this was a much bigger challenge.
S: I’ve been trying to figure out a way to say this, and I haven’t said it in any interviews, but I think there’s something to be said for the choices Spike has made in these, as you call them, “performance films.” If you look at Kings Of Comedy, Leguizamo, Guenveur Smith, and us, it’s an interesting collection, you know what I’m saying? In a way, it’s like a marginal—I don’t think there’s anything marginal about the art—but Kings Of Comedy was like, I think people needed to see those guys in that context to realize what geniuses they were. The same thing with Leguizamo. A lot of people, they knew he existed, but I think there’s an urge on [Spike’s] part to say, “Hold on a minute. You guys gotta see this shit.” [Laughs.] You know what I mean?
AVC: Bernie Mac in the movies and on TV is one thing, but he was something very different onstage.
S: Exactly. I consider Passing Strange in the same category as A Huey P. Newton Story. These are things that could have closed and fallen out of the cultural view. All those great comedians that were in that film could have just done their TV shows, and that’s all you would have known of them. But I feel like there’s kind of an interesting set of choices, and I think all those films have something in common. You know about that art because of him. And it’s a choice. It’s really a choice that he’s made. I’m extremely proud to be in that company. And I think we have something in common with that company.
AVC: Spike, the classic bad advice about putting a stage piece on film is to open it up. But you follow the play’s lead in emphasizing the theatrical artifice—the members of the band interacting with the characters in the play, the way Stew is talking with the audience rather than narrating at them.
SL: Yeah, I think that’s a very important point. We’re not going to pretend like it’s not a stage play. That’s ludicrous, as Mike Tyson would say. [Mike Tyson voice.] “It’s ludicous.” [Both laugh.] So it’s a stage play, but we’re going to add some cinematic elements to it, so it almost becomes a hybrid, and you’ve got to take people along for the ride.
AVC: You filmed the last two performances at the Belasco Theater in New York, and then you went back and did the show again, without an audience, after it had closed.
SL: Right. The next day.
AVC: That must have been a bittersweet moment for you.
S: All sweet, no bitter. There wasn’t a paid audience, but the 40 Acres crew had friends and family there, my daughter was there, his sister Joie was there, his brother was there. Both families were there. So there were people. I did feel like I was still performing for people. But no, there was no bitter, man, because I was ready for the play to close. And I was even more ready for the play to close, because I knew it was being documented. And so that last day was fun. I didn’t want it to end, you know?
AVC: Having been in rock bands for so long, was it tough for you to play the same set every night? You’re not like one of those stadium bands where the set list gets laminated at the start of the tour.
S: It was rough, it was rough. [Director] Annie Dorsen luckily built in a lot of moments where we could do whatever we wanted, so we had time to improvise. I stumbled into this theater bag, you know? And it was rough doing eight shows a week of the same show, basically.
SL: I don’t know how they do it.
S: I don’t know how they do it either. But it was a great experience that I think made me a better performer ultimately, and I learned a lot. I learned some disciplines that I didn’t know before, like remembering lines and things like that. So, no, it was helpful. It was very helpful. And I would like to direct films someday, so it helped me to understand acting a little bit better. So that was all good, but next year me and Heidi are going to go back out on the road and play shows.
SL: Let me ask you this. Is remembering lyrics to a song the same as remembering lines, or are they different?
S: When I wrote lines that were more lyrical and rhythmic, I can remember them like lyrics. When I wrote that straight dialogue-sounding stuff, that was the stuff that was hard to remember. That’s why rhyming exists. The history of rhyming is to remember shit easier. That’s why rhyming exists.
AVC: Given where the play ends up in regard to “the Real,” there’s a certain irony in how people ask you how much is autobiographical and how much is invented. But you do foster a certain identification between the narrator and the Youth, especially at the end of the play. And you reuse portions of the Stew song “Drug Suite,” which is clearly autobiography, but you change it from first person to third.
S: That was something we played around with a lot, all through both runs, what exact language. I just kept fooling around with it until I found something that felt good. I also wanted to keep him on his toes, because Daniel’s the kind of actor where he’s so good, you can spring stuff on him. So sometimes I would change lines. In front of audiences, I would say something different, and then you could see a real reaction, you know?
We did play with that line between real and unreal, but I can’t emphasize enough that these characters are creations, in that they are composites. They’re composites of a lot of people. They’re composites of a lot of the great black expatriates, they’re composites of people I know personally. Every single one of them. There’s not a pure case of autobiography in any one of them, but they all come from real-life situations.
AVC: What you were talking about before, about black teen angst being undocumented—is that why you settled on this particular story in the first place?
S: I settled on the story because of George Bush. Because when I lied to the Public Theater and said I had a musical that I was writing—every songwriter says he’s got a musical he’s writing, we tell people that all the time, and we never think anyone’s going to take us up on it. So when Bill Bragin from Joe’s Pub, which is connected to the Public Theater, said, “Okay, let’s see some pages,” I started thinking about what to write about. I think that week was when Bush was going to Europe as president, for the first time in his life, and I just thought, “Now, there’s some brothers that can’t afford to go to Europe, there’s some white folks that can’t afford to go to Europe, there’s all kinds of folks that can’t afford to go to Europe. But this dude owned planes. He owned his own plane. He should have been everywhere, right?” I’m thinking, “Wow, that’s just so interesting, that I was 15 years old, wanting to go to New York and Paris.” I was dreaming of something beyond my world. And this cat hadn’t been nowhere, right? And it just tripped me out, and I wanted to write a play about—
SL: The most powerful man in the world had never left the northern continent.
S: Yeah. So really, it started about me writing about travel and about curiosity. And then it got into more of this expatriate thing that I had experienced. Even before this play, what Spike and I share is this obsession with showing that black culture isn’t a monolith. It’s always something that’s a part of me in whatever I’m doing. Records I make, the kind of music I choose, whatever, is to spread that point—not like I’m some kind of preacher trying to preach a message, but because we want to be represented. That’s all. We just want to be, “Hey, we’re humans too,” you know?
AVC: You use an all-black cast, but they frequently play white characters, which is something you let dawn on the audience gradually. It’s up to us to check our assumptions and realize, “Wait a minute, they’re white.”
S: Yeah. That’s our Wizard Of Oz thing. We struggled about the casting of this play, and we did interracial casting before, with whites and blacks.
SL: For this?
S: In workshops. And it didn’t work. It somehow didn’t work. Then one day, we were sitting around, saying, “Well, okay, if white and black people don’t work, then what do we do?” Me and Annie and Heidi, we’d just finished a workshop for it, and it just didn’t work interracially, so finally, we said, “What if it’s just all black people? What if it’s like The Wizard of Oz?” For me, the little subtext of this film, of the casting, is that you never really leave home. These people are always kind of there with you, and that was an important part of this whole casting issue. Then when we got into that, we developed a whole subtext where, like, Mr. Venus is just the realization of what Mr. Franklin would have been if he could have waved his freak flag, you know what I mean?
SL: [Laughs.] Waved his freak flag?
S: As George Clinton used to say. Or no, Hendrix said that. That’s Hendrix’s line, “Wave your freak flag high.” So Edwina Williams, who was wanting him to be a middle-class good boy with a corporation job, she ends up being a freaky Dutch girl who’s not materialistic, you know what I mean? I really like the fact that it’s still the same black folks. And I think it also gives them a chance to do something as actors. Oh, man, they loved it. When are they going to get a chance to play Germans? Never. Never again. It’s not going to happen.
AVC: One of the things that makes traditional rock music work is the underlying assumption that singers are speaking from the depths of themselves. Unless they’re explicitly playing a character, or telling a story, it’s assumed that what they’re saying is what they personally believe, which is something a lot of singers have gotten in trouble for.
S: Perfect example.
SL: Michael Jackson. “They Don’t Care About Us.” “Jew me, sue me, kick me, kike me.” They had to pull the record out of the stores.
S: Really? Wow.
SL: B’nai B’rith, JDL, The Simon Wiesenthal Center. They were on Michael’s ass.
S: Wow, wow. Deep. I didn’t know that.
SL: But Michael wasn’t anti-Semitic. It’s funny. If you’ve seen Taxi Driver, Scorsese can play a character and say, “See that window up there? My wife’s up there. She’s with a nigger. You ever seen what a .44 can do to a pussy?” He can say that, and be the character—and that’s my man, too—but nothing. And then Michael. That wasn’t his thing. Every song you sing has to be your own? You can’t let the character speak for you? “Psycho Killer,” David Byrne? Come on.
S: Right.
AVC: And that feeds into hip-hop, and the equation of street cred and authenticity, the way the rappers that are most successful are perceived and often misrepresent themselves as being from this ghetto background.
S: Lot of middle-class, yeah. Yeah.
SL: Because you’re not deemed authentic. If you’re not from the projects, you’re not a real G. A gangster.
AVC: Stew, your character in Passing Strange seems to bridge the gulf between theater and live rock music. You’re taking the direct connection with an audience that rock provides, then mixing it into a more traditional narrative thing where it’s more about identification of character and not speaking in the first person. Is that something you played with?
S: It was the key conversation we had, what you’re talking about right now. That’s exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to combine what happens in a rock performance with what happens in a play. It gets down to this whole Aristotelian drama thing about the protagonist has to change, all those theater rules.
SL: Hate that shit.
S: See, what I explained to our director is that in rock ’n’ roll, the protagonist is the lead singer, but the protagonist doesn’t change in rock ’n’ roll. His job is to change you when you come to the show. Prince doesn’t change when he has a show. You are supposed to be changed by that experience. Stevie Wonder doesn’t change, right? You go to a Stevie Wonder concert to be changed, to come out with a different experience. I said, “The character in this show doesn’t really change. He is about to change later on in life, maybe, but right now, in this little window, he’s the same dude when it ends.” So we were taking that rock thing, singing from yourself as opposed to singing from character. We talked about that a lot, and that was a big part of how we set the show up.
AVC: Has that been done in theater, where the band is integrated into the show to such an extent?
S: Not the way we did it. The theater geeks told me we had a lot of firsts. They told us—literally, I had somebody research this—we never had a black cast play all these white folks. I know that. They told us that. Spring Awakening had a band onstage, but they stick along the back wall, and they’re not a band, they’re a bunch of hired musicians. This band plays shows together. This band toured together.
AVC: In the credits it says, “Music by The Negro Problem.”
S: Yeah, it’s a band. We make records. This is a real band, so there’s that too. But I think what’s really unique is the blend between rock ’n’ roll representation with character, where the lead singer really gets to sing from himself, and blending that with character creation. But the new thing that’s really going to stick is the structure of this film. The approach to this film. His shit gets bitten all the time, in terms of its innovations. And I think people now are going to be looking at this, and going, “Hmm, what can I do to make a film of my musical to make it rock like this shit?”
AVC: One of the actors, De’Adre Aziza, is also credited as a camera operator. Does that mean the Super 8 camera she’s holding in one scene actually had film in it?
S: Yeah.
SL: She shot it.
AVC: So was the camera already in the scene?
SL: It’d been in the show, right?
S: She was never shooting.
SL: But what would have been the purpose of the shooting, though?
S: I’m just saying that’s the beauty, that’s something that’s so cool about the way this crew met with our crew. That little fact, to me, is such a great example of that collaboration between Spike’s crew and our crew, just for Spike to make that call. Because you know they could have shot it, but to have her actually onstage shooting it, that’s an example of how we worked this thing together. And I have to say, for me and Heidi on our end, Spike came in with such a supportive attitude. There was no star-power vibe. He could have easily pulled that, and we would have accepted it. [Laughs.] We would have been fine. “Roll however you want.”
SL: Pull an Otto Preminger. [Laughs.]
S: Right, right. Exactly. [Both laugh.] “You gotta do it this way!” So there was a lot of respect, and it just made us even more excited.
AVC: The Youth’s formulates the concept of the Real in response to a church service, although that may have more to do with the music they’re playing than the substance of the sermon.
S: The church is the music. I mean, the music is the church. That’s what this kid learns. My kid just got back from Ghana, my 17-year-old, and she was talking about the way dance and music were so integrated in the village that she was living in. That’s what this kid knows, and maybe some of those other people in church don’t know, is that that’s where the spirit actually lives. That’s what gets you going. The Bible says “Make a joyful noise.” The Bible doesn’t say “Put down your instruments.” The Bible doesn’t say “Sit in a room, all quiet.” It’s right there in the Bible, so it’s like the real story is the music is what makes the spirit.
I have this problem with a lot of people, because I come from this world, and I might not be one of these cats that go to church every Sunday, but I don’t hate on religion. I don’t hate on it, because I feel like I have a fundamental understanding of it, that you can’t hate on it just to be hating on it. It serves a purpose. This world is not perfect. There’s a reason why people go to church. Same reason why people go to concerts, same reason why people go to films. People want to know something else in this world. So when people go to church, it’s not just all Jerry Falwell hypocritical crap, you know? A lot of it is people requiring a spiritual experience that they also get from art. I wish more Americans knew that they could get it from art as well.
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Film.com
Spike Lee Interview - Passing Strange
The luminary director of 25th Hour, Inside Man, and Do the Right Thing opens up about his new documentary.
Laremy Legel, Jan 17, 2009
My interview with Spike Lee was far too rushed. I could have spent a few hours with the man behind 25th Hour, Inside Man, and Do The Right Thing. Sadly, a few moments in the hectic Vitamin Water House here at Sundance were all the Oscar-nominated director had free. So that's what we rolled with.
I should mention that our chat got off on the wrong foot, as the documentary he's brought to Sundance, Passing Strange, deals with huge concepts ... which led to me starting off with a question about Spike's personal view of faith. I received a withering look on that front, but the interview got much better as I slowly dug myself out of the hole I'd created. Here's what transpired:
Laremy Legel: There are a lot of big themes in Passing Strange that deal with faith. One of the things I think came up was the question of which is more important: believing in God or God actually existing. Do you have a take on that?
Spike Lee: I think God exists. So what are you saying?
LL: I'm just asking if the faith in something is more important than the actuality.
SL: Look, that's an individual question. Just like religion is an individual question. For me, I believe in God, God is real. I think Stew and Heidi (the writers and performers in the musical) feel that way too but you'd have to ask them.
It should be noted that the main character in the musical at one point says, point blank, that he doesn't believe in God. So the question wasn't completely out of left field... nevertheless, it gets better starting now!
LL: How did you get involved with the production?
SL: I was a big fan of the show. Not when it started, but when it got to New York. It started here in the Sundance lab. I saw it downtown at the Joseph Papp Public Theater and then on the move up to Broadway. And then Steve Klein, one of the producers on the show, asked me to film it.
LL: How difficult was it to film? Because I noticed so many different shots and angles.
SL: Well, we had to figure it out. It couldn't just be recording actors on the stage. We had to really think about what myself and the great cinematographer Matty Libatique (could do). He shot for me Inside Man and Miracle at St. Anna, and also Iron Man this past summer. We had to figure out how we were going to bring cinema to a staged musical.
LL: Was it all one show?
SL: No, it was three different shows. It was the last two shows and then we came back the day after it closed and ran through the whole show again without the audience.
LL: How many times have you seen the show?
SL: Twice for the public, four times on Broadway, and after I knew I was going to do it probably another ten times.
LL: I swear in one of your crowd shots I saw Darren Aronofsky.
SL: I don't think he was there. Well now wait, Matty (Libatique) might have invited him. He shot Pi, Requiem, and The Fountain.
LL: So it could have been him there in the front.
SL: Yeah, it could have been him. Matty might have invited him.
LL: When you were choosing which angle to go with, what factored into that decision? How many cameras were there to choose from?
SL: Trying to tell the story. What angles best conveyed what we needed in that moment. We had a lot of choices. We had over ten cameras ... well let me find out for sure. It was shot in high definition (at this point Spike calls for confirmation). Okay, it was fourteen cameras.
LL: Wow. All at once?
SL: (nods) At once.
LL: Was editing it a huge undertaking?
SL: Oh yeah, but I have a great editor, Barry Brown, who has done my films since School Daze.
LL: Have you seen Synecdoche, NY yet? Because Passing Strange sort of reminds me of it in terms of scope.
SL: Not yet. I'm a member of The Academy so I have the screener. I haven't had a chance yet, but I want to.
LL: I appreciated that this film showed the musical's intermission. Was that a conversation you had in the process of making it?
SL: No, I've always wanted to do that. I've been going to Broadway plays since I was six years old -- my mother dragged me -- and I've always wondered, "What do they do during intermission?"
LL: It gives the audience a little break too, and it helped me connect with the performers too.
SL: Yeah, I wanted to break it up into the two acts of the play.
LL: Okay, I know I'm going to pronounce this wrong, but De'Adre Aziza was amazing in this film.
SL: Oh, hold on. (At this point Spike leaves ... to go get her. Since I didn't know she was in area this was quite a shock.) You gotta tell her what you said.
LL: Ah, okay. I was just saying how much you jump off the screen. I was sitting there thinking, "How is this person not up for huge Academy Award-winning type roles?"
SL: Yeah, why is that?
De'Adre Aziza: (laughing) Yeah, that is a good question!
LL: Were you stage trained then?
DA: I was. I studied at Tisch School of the Arts. This was my major segue into film. First I had a part in Miracle at St. Anna and now this. It's like a crash course. It's like film school in a weekend.
LL: Was it hard to deal with all the cameras flying around you?
DA: You get used to it, but you just can't think about it because then you're not thinking about your character.
LL: Everyone in the play also switches modes so much (all the leads play multiple parts), that's got to be tough.
DA: Yeah, but the great thing was we had done the show so much you didn't have to worry about that stuff. Just the camera placement, because you've got the audience in one eye and the camera in the other.
LL: I seem to recollect you actually having a camera at one point ... was that camera live?
SL: Yep, that was her footage.
And with that our time was up. Look for Passing Strange, coming to a small screen near you.
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PopMatters
SPIKE LEE: INTERVIEWS
by Cynthia Fuchs (editor)
A Glimpse at Greatness
Spike Lee has always been an interesting film personality. Controversy follows him wherever he goes, whether he intends it or not. He's opinionated, outspoken and loud to boot. But he's also smart, well read, and honest; admits to his faults and when he makes mistakes. He also tends to contradict himself -- he's only human, after all. But most of all, he genuinely loves to make people think (twice), to keep them on their toes, to educate as well as entertain.
And still critics tend to focus on the fact that he's not Caucasian. Some day critics will stop calling Lee the "black Woody Allen" or an "African-American filmmaker" (or even a "controversial" one) but simply acknowledge him as one of the most intelligent, articulate, and able filmmakers of our generation. But people tend to go for the obvious (we're only human after all) and of course Lee himself tends to bring up the matter of race in interviews quite often.
But there's more to Lee than just that. Much more.
Lee's films are all well written, beautifully photographed, professionally acted, and always thought provoking and especially memorable. Some, such as Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X were instant classics the day they debuted.
Lee's films are not just about the struggle of black Americans to become accepted and comfortable in today's America. They are documents of a time, of a people, of all peoples. Anyone can relate to any of Lee's films. You just have to peel back the layers to get to the truth of what his films are really about.
And in this collection of interviews, edited by Cynthia Fuchs, an Associate Professor at George Mason University, we get a chance to see Lee for the gifted, expressive person he is. In interview after interview -- taken from magazines, Internet sources, and even television talk shows -- Lee continues to surprise and throw one off balance with his comments and observations on human nature.
For instance, a question of music: who would have thought that some of Lee's favorites included classical music composer Aaron Copland's sweeping compositions, the Beatles, Patsy Cline, and even white bread popsters such as Steely Dan?
About films: You might have guessed that he would count Akira Kurosawa and Martin Scorsese as major influences. But Billy Wilder and David Lean?
But wait, there's more. (Have I said that already?) One of the most fascinating chapters in the book is an excerpt from American Cinematographer magazine, written by Stephen Pizzello, "Between "Rock" and a Hard Place." Pizzello gets the facts from both Lee himself and Malik Sayeed who, at 26 years of age, became the Director of Photography for Lee's film Clockers. It was Sayeed's first time handling a major motion picture and he went all out in order to give the film a unique look and feel. He talked Lee into using Kodak 5239 film stock, a high-speed color reversal film intended for photography under low-level daylight illumination, which was previously used primarily by the Air Force and by NASA for their onboard cameras on the space shuttle. Since 5239 film stock had never been mass-produced for the general public, Kodak had to make up a special run with edge numbers on it just for the movie. Even the development of the film was tricky, requiring negative processing before transferring it to 35 mm, and special care was given to the set lighting because of the danger of over-exposing the film. Is something as seemingly trivial as what sort of film stock is used in a film all that important? Lee thinks so. He considers all of this extra work worth it to make the film right. The look, texture, and feel of film are important to the mood. Lee knows that often one must go to great lengths in order to make a great film instead of a mediocre one.
In editing this excellent book of interviews Cynthia Fuchs has smartly put them in chronological order. This way we get added insight into how Lee evolved over the years, his opinions changing as did his outlook on the world. Rarely do we get to witness something so intrinsic in all of us -- one's growth as an individual -- laid out so plainly for all the world to see in black and white. Witnessing Lee's slow and gradual development from a smart and gifted personality to an intelligent, caring (he's a father, now) individual concerned with the well-being, treatment and education of all people is intriguing and fascinating.
I hope that of all people, Lee himself reads this book cover to cover. He might be pleasantly surprised as to how he turned out.
— 19 June 2002
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Cinematical
Interview: 'Miracle at St. Anna' Director Spike Lee
by James Rocchi Sep 26th 2008
In Miracle at St. Anna, four African-American soldiers are trapped behind enemy lines in Italy near the end of World War II; caught between indifferent leadership and hostile troops, the four fight to survive -- and protect the Italian villagers they've come to know during their exile. Director Spike Lee spoke with Cinematical from New York about the challenges of film financing in modern Hollywood ("it's hard to get stuff made today that's not superhero, comic-book, TV show, sequel stuff. ..."), shooting in an 800-year-old Italian town (" ... all we had to do was take down the satellite dishes ...") and the challenges his new film faces (" ... historically, women do not run to see, or even walk to see, or even crawl to see World War II films ..."), The Wire ("'Omar's Coming!'"), sequel possibilities for Inside Man and more.
Lee even touched on politics and race in the here-and-now: "I'm optimistic. We're going to have a Black president. The 44th President of the United States is going to be a Black man ... I think this is a definite indication of how far America has moved in how it views race. ..."
Cinematical: I was very curious if you could talk a little bit about the genesis of what brought you specifically to Miracle at St. Anna as a film?
Spike Lee: I needed something to read; I went into my wife's office; looked up on her shelf upon shelf of books (laughs) and the spirit told me to go to this one book -- all the time my head is twisted to the side, trying to read the titles -- read this title, Miracle at St. Anna; that sounds interesting; take the book off the shelf, see the cover of a Black soldier with a young Italian kid, World War II, said "Let me read this. ..." After the first chapter, I said "I want to make this into a film, called up James McBride, we met ... and here we are. That's the abbreviated version. ...
Cinematical: And from that sideways tilt of the head to putting the film together, how difficult was it to assemble the international financing for this picture?
SL: Very difficult, but again, this is the climate that we live in as far as working in-house through the system; I don't think 'They're picking on Spike Lee ... ' or anything like that. Everybody goes through it, unless you're Spielberg, Lucas, on that level; it's hard to get stuff made today that's not superhero, comic-book, TV show, sequel stuff. ...
Cinematical: And that's changed substantially since you started out.
SL: Oh, yeah. My first film (She's Gotta Have It) was in '86; 22 years later, stuff evolves, changes, shifts.
Cinematical: Do you find it annoying that, as you move forward in your career and you feel like you can tackle bigger and bigger films, it's getting harder to get bigger and bigger films made?
SL: Well, it's annoying, but ... it's just the way it is. It's not going to change anytime soon; I just gotta be more creative in circumventing the obstacles that stop me, hinder me from getting the projects I want to get done.
Cinematical: This is also the biggest film you'd shot overseas in several years ...
SL: Biggest film period, no matter where it was shot.
Cinematical: I want to ask you a little about that; the cliché is that 'War is hell, but war films are awesome." At any point, were you able to just go "This is great, because I'm shooting a World War II film?"
SL: No, because no matter what genre it is, you still want it to be good, so we never had a ... state of delusion that said just because we're making a war film, automatically, that's going to be great. It doesn't work like that. In the end, still, with everything we've done in the past, we try to do the best that we can with the preparation, the research, all of that stuff ... and directors can't do it alone, so we had a top-rate Italian crew, and everybody worked together.
Cinematical: When you have that many resources, is it easy to feel like there's a danger of losing sight of what individual scenes are about, that you worry about keeping the emotional line when you're marshaling Jeeps and guns and explosions?
SL: No, no, no, that's the job of the director: Don't let the big, big stuff hinder the smaller things because my movie are not made up of set pieces. You gotta have stuff -- especially in war movies -- you can't have two-and-a-half hours of explosions and battles. That's one of the great things about David Lean, he had that balance. If you look at his epics -- the three I'm talking about, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago -- he knew how to balance those epic set pieces with small, intimate scenes where people just talk in another room. And they're both equally important.
Cinematical: When you prepare to do a film like this, are there movies you watch to get a sense of feel, or things you want to draw inspiration from? Not emulating specific shots, but "I love these war films, and I'd like to have them in my mind while I'm working on this ..."
SL: Well, we looked at The Bridge on the River Kwai, we looked at The Train, starring Burt Lancaster, we looked at Is Paris Burning? ... We looked at a whole bunch of stuff; we looked at the Italian neo-realist films -- Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica .. we looked at a lot of stuff; we looked at Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, Das Boot by Wolfgang Petersen, The Tin Drum by Volker Schlondorff, Black Book by Paul Verhoven. ...
Cinematical: What was it like shooting in the town, that Italian city ...
SL: Well, it's called Colognora, that town; it's 800 years old, and it's perfect for what we wanted. We had to do an extensive location scout, but we finally found what we all envisioned. And we didn't have to do a thing ... all we had to do was take down the satellite dishes; people were inconvenienced, but they had to come down.
Cinematical: I want to ask you about specifically your four lead cast members, because they all do terrific and very different work; Michael Ealy, who plays Sgt. Cummings, I was watching the film and thinking "That's kind of the Frank Sinatra part. ..."
SL: (Laughs) I'd have to think about that. What, like From Here to Eternity?
Cinematical: Yes, but even in terms of his demeanor -- the charming casual womanizer who is not necessarily great with authority.
SL: I'm going to see him today; I'm going to ask him about that. I don't know what the answer's going to be. (Laughs) That's something interesting; I'd never thought of that before.
Cinematical: And Laz Alonzo, playing Corporal Negron; did you talk with Alonzo about the fact that his character, from Puerto Rico, was representing a very different experience? Was that something you talked about, or was that all in the script for him?
SL: It was talked about, and he did his own research and sat down with many elderly Puerto Rican men -- he's Cuban -- and he understood that the Hispanic community is not monolithic, and he wanted to be specific about being Puerto Rican man and not Cuban or Mexican; in the book, he's written as Hector Negron from Spanish Harlem, a Black Puerto Rican.
Cinematical: Derek Luke -- He really has that movie-star vibe; was that an element in casting him as the leader of the group, Sgt. Stamps? The fact that he has that charisma?
SL: The studios like that. I'm going for the best actor possible, so -- there's nobody in this film where the biggest concern is if they can open a picture; I was looking it as an ensemble piece.
Cinematical: The last member of the group, Omar Benson Miller, who plays Pvt. Train, and I was thinking about this during the film; I think it's often hard for audiences to wrap their heads around something from the "recent past," because it's so very different. Pvt. Train has a big heart, but he's not a terribly bright man ...
SL: He has mother's wit; he has mother's wit, as they would say. ...
Cinematical: Right, but I found myself wondering would somebody like Pvt. Train be considered qaulified to serve in war? Was that something that was real, but because I have no experience of 1940's ...
SL: Everybody ... soon as the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States took that war to Germany and Japan, everybody signed up. Everybody.
Cinematical: Do you find, making a war film, it's tough to get audiences to buy into aspects of American history that we now want to pretend didn't happen?
SL: No, because we do the research; we give people many resources, the materials, films -- not just movies, but documentaries and news, we have magazine articles and newspaper articles -- we have a great researcher, her name is Judy Aley, who gives me stuff and we make it available to everybody. It's an actor's job to know stuff about the time this film was taking place and their character, and how that character fits into this world.
Cinematical: And speaking of the modern world, there's a couple of nods to that in Miracle at St. Anna; the one thing that stood out for me was that the film looked at World War II as not just something between democracies and dictatorships but as something between rulers and ruled, and there's a scene showing sympathies between the American soldiers and some of the Italians and even some of the German soldiers; was looking at that power dynamic something you wanted to do as a different way of looking at the war film?
SL: Yes, and that's why I asked James (McBride, novelist and screenwriter) to do that scene with the prayer. I asked James to write a prayer, and he wrote it in English; I had that prayer translated into German, and it was translated into Italian, and the Buffalo Soldiers said it in English, and the Italians said it in Italian, and the Hans character, the Nazi, he said it in German, and we cut back and forth between all three parties.
Cinematical: To me, that sort of brought point the idea that all these people are only following orders. ..
SL: Also, they're praying to God: "Please, God, let me see the next day." With different Gods, different religions, on opposite sides.
Cinematical: I also couldn't help but notice one scene where the topic came up that the Italian partisans are considered terrorist by the German Officers and therefore not considered eligible for the protections of the Geneva Convention. Was that a nod to current events?
SL: Well, to be honest, I never thought of the thing in Cuba, torturing so-called terrorists, until the Germans (in the film) brought it up; we were just stating what was fact. The Nazis considered the Italian partisans terrorists, therefore that meant that what they did to them did not (have to) adhere to the rules conveyed by the Geneva Convention.
Cinematical: It's very telling that people can find things like that in Miracle at St. Anna, even if they're not there deliberately -- and, just as a brief digression, that's some of the best stuff in Inside Man.
SL: I'll give you another example. Inside Man? I never knew that George W. Bush's grandfather was considered to be dealing with the Nazis and there were questions about him -- and that didn't come up until people were saying "Is that character Christopher Plummer's playing, is this related to the President's grandfather? Then I did my research and I said "Oh, Shit!"
Cinematical: And you're working on a sequel to Inside Man ...
SL: Well, if we get a script everybody likes, and everybody's fine, no problem, we will do it.
Cinematical: And while part of me is enthused by that idea, you can't just do Inside Man 2: Even More Inside; you have to have a great idea; is that the big challenge?
SL: Well, that's the only reason why Denzel, Jodie Foster, Clive, myself, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Donna Langley at Universal would do it.
Cinematical: Getting back to Miracle at St. Anna, you don't strike me as a film maker who has any interest in end-of-year awards season hoo-ha...
SL: Not at all.
Cinematical: Not even in the slightest -- you just want to make the best possible movie?
SL: That's all I can do. That awards stuff, you have no control over.
Cinematical: Do you find that the degree of mania it creates when you have an end-of-year film gets in the way of making and releasing and doing a proper job of supporting an end-of-year film when you have idiots like me asking about if (awards season) matters?
SL: Well, I don't think you guys are innocent -- excuse me, idiots -- for asking about it; I understand that stuff is a big part of the business. End-of-year awards, "Best 10" lists, and whatnot. But that does not really drive me, that's not why I make films, so I don't get annoyed when people ask about that.
Cinematical: It's always very easy to get a sense from your films that you're someone who enjoys the pure art of moviemaking, who enjoys, you know, a great Vincente Minnelli film; what's the last really great film that you saw?
SL: Hmmm. That's a good question -- a new film, or an old film?
Cinematical: Anything that just really sticks out in your mind as something you saw recently and you really enjoyed. ...
SL: I would say, even though I've seen it before ... I had to go to Singapore; that's a long flight. So I watched the fifth and final season of The Wire back to back to back; that's the best way, I feel, to watch shows like that; sometimes, I don't even want to watch them on television, just wait for the DVDs to release so you can watch it all at once.
Cinematical: I think it speaks to the level that The Wire has in our culture that at one point, early in Miracle at St. Anna, I actually cried out, in my head, "It's Omar!" (as actor Michael K. Williams appeared on-screen).
SL: (Laughs, quoting The Wire) "Omar's coming! Omar's coming! Omar's coming!"
Cinematical: I think every fan of The Wire will say that when they see him; did you cast based on that? Did you find a part for Michael K. Williams based on ...
SL: Yeah, yeah; he's a great actor, and I love his part ... I love the role he created. It's a small part, but he had not been abroad; he had not been to Italy, and I'm glad he's came.
Cinematical: In a perfect world, as people are walking out of Miracle at St. Anna after seeing it on the big screen with a proper sound system, because it's a great, big, well-made movie ...
SL: Thank you ...
Cinematical:... In a perfect world, what would you like them to be talking about.
SL: You know what? They're going to say "That's a good film; I'm gonna tell my friends."
Cinematical: And hopefully they enjoy it as an experience.
SL: Yeah, word of mouth; it's all about word of mouth. Especially with the women, because, historically, women do not run to see, or even walk to see, or even crawl to see World War II films; but this is much more than a World War II film, and hopefully word will spread, and we'll get the ladies in the house, too.
Cinematical: And yet you do have this great romantic sequence with Valentina Cervi which is very movie but also as messy and complicated as real life.
SL: We're very happy with her performance, and it's kind of tragic what happens to her -- I don't want to give it away.
Cinematical: The sequence with the "Ice Slop" counter in Louisiana ... it's in the deep South, it's the 1940's, and again, I don't want to give anything away, but I did find myself saying maybe I can't wrap my head around the denouement to that scene, where the four Black soldiers came back ... that felt a little strained. ...
SL: It's not ... well ... Do your research. There are numerous accounts where towns had gun battles, Black soldiers stationed in the South ...
Cinematical: So it would actually make the leap to armed conflict?
SL: Do the research. Do the research.
Cinematical: I certainly will at this point. At the same time, I was more than willing to say "Well, maybe I just can't wrap my head around the reality of it. ..."
SL: I understand that. And a lot of people may not be able to wrap their head around the fact that there were German POW's in the United States of America, the fact remains thousands upon thousands of German POW's were shipped from Europe to America; most of the time, they ended up being in the South sharing the bases with the Black soldiers ...
Cinematical: And often probably getting better ...
SL: Not "often." Not "often." It's clear they got better food, better housing and better health care.
Cinematical: As a final question, obviously the issue of race in modern America is immensely complicated, immensely difficult; when you do a film like this and you have the chance to do research and talk to people, is it heartening to think of how far things have come, or depressing to think of how far they have to go?
SL: No. I'm optimistic. We're going to have a Black president. The 44th President of the United States is going to be a Black man. Like I said, I'm very optimistic; I think this is a definite indication of how far America has moved in how it views race. It's not completely gone ....
Cinematical: But it's getting there?
SL: It's getting there. Obama would not be in this position if only Black people voted for him; how many Black people were in Iowa? This country is changing for the better. A lot of young Americans do not have the views, the prejudice, do not look at things the same way their parents, grandparents and great-grandparent's have when it comes to race. That's a fact.
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Ain't It Cool News
Moriarty Interviews Spike Lee!
Published on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - 6:16am
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
And y’know what? That exclamation point on the headline feels more appropriate than ever.
I made a very specific and concentrated effort to get as much time as possible with Spike Lee this time around. I’ve been a fan of his since SHE’S GOT TO HAVE IT. I remember reading about that film for almost three months before I got a chance to see it at one theater on the far side of Tampa from where I lived, and it was totally worth the drive. Since then, I’ve loved some of his films, hated some of them, and always looked forward to them because he’s continued to evolve and expand and exercise as a filmmaker.
About a week and a half ago, just before I left town for Fantastic Fest, arrangements were made for Spike Lee to call me at home one afternoon. The last time I spoke to Lee prior to this was in 1990, at a booksigning for MO’ BETTER BLUES. I waited in line at the Samuel French in Hollywood for almost six hours in order to be the first person to talk to him, and when I was finally ushered inside, he looked up at me, puzzled.
SPIKE LEE: They said you were here all day.
ME: Yeah. Pretty much.
SPIKE LEE: So what did you have to say that was so important?
I didn’t. That’s the thing. I just really dug his work and I was brand new to Los Angeles, so the idea I could go to the bookstore and just see Spike DO THE RIGHT THING Lee and actually talk to him... that seemed crazy to me. I was jazzed just to see him. I didn’t really think about what to ask. So I was as surprised by the question that popped out as he was.
ME: In DO THE RIGHT THING, when Radio Raheem does the Love/Hate rap, is that Radio Raheem paying tribute to NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, or is that Spike Lee paying tribute to NIGHT OF THE HUNTER?
He smiled at the question, and as he thought about it, he took my book and signed it and wrote a short message, and then handed it back, his smile growing bigger before he finally answered.
SPIKE LEE: Radio Raheem ain’t never heard of Robert Mitchum.
That familiar laugh of his followed me out of the bookstore as the next person stepped up.
So I was excited to get a chance to finally get a chance, all these years later, to ask Lee some questions with a little forethought this time.
Spike Lee: Hello?
Moriarty: Hi Spike, how are you?
Spike Lee: How are you doing?
Moriarty: I’m very good. Thank you for taking the time today. I have to say I really enjoyed MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA.
Spike Lee: Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Moriarty: Yeah, I think in a lot of ways it is the most… “movie” of your movies. It really feels like you are paying tribute to films of various eras, that in a lot of ways you made a real World War II movie. I love the cocktail of influences that seemed to be apparent the film. Can you tell me which films you sort of used as touchstones, no pun intended, as you were working on the picture?
Spike Lee: Well, the film was shot in Tuscany. But our base during pre-production was Rome, and we were on Cinecittà. Ironically, I’d never known that Mussolini built Cinecittà. [Laughs] And we screened many of the great Italian post-war, neo-realism films. A lot of those films I’d never seen projected; I’d only seen on DVD and VHS. So going to Cinecittà vault, we screened for the cast and crew BICYCLE THIEF, ROME OPEN CITY, PAISAN, GERMANY YEAR ZERO, SHOESHINE, and these are films that again, I’d never seen screened before. So those films of Roberto Rossellini’s were a great influence. But also growing up as a kid, my brothers and I used to love to watch World War II films. Some of my favorite films as a young kid in Brooklyn were THE TRAIN starring Burt Lancaster, Frankenheimer’s film. I remember seeing Jim Brown in THE DIRTY DOZEN; that was a revelation to me. Later on in film school, THE CONFORMIST, a Bertolucci film; SEVEN BEAUTIES, a Lina Wertmüller film; TIN DRUM, the Volker Schlöndorff film; DAS BOOT, a Wolfgang Petersen film. Also another one of my favorites is PARIS BURNING. And then of the contemporary stuff, when it came time to look at battle sequences, I don’t think anyone’s gonna top what Spielberg did in the first 45 minutes of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, with the onslaught, the invasion of Normandy, D-Day. So I guess that can be a start. Also, we showed Leni Riefenstahl’s TRIUMPH OF THE WILL too; there’s a documentary that was done by the war department called, I think Frank Capra was the director, called THE NEGRO SOLDIER.
Moriarty: Oh wow. That was always interesting, how those guys were pushed during World War II into a sort of service as filmmakers.
Spike Lee: Yeah, John Huston did several films too.
Moriarty: And you’ve been equally praised and vilified, depending on who’s doing it, for having very strong political and social views, and you’re certainly not afraid to share them. I’ve heard certain people say that filmmakers or celebrities should keep their opinions to themselves, but when you’re making films about sort of who we are and how we live now, is that even possible? Can you separate yourself from your work?
Spike Lee: Well I can’t, but here’s the thing: for the same people to say that politics should be left out of their work or entertainment, I think that, when you make that decision, that’s a political act in itself.
I mean if you say I’m not gonna have any politics in my songs, I’m not gonna have any politics in my movies, that’s a political act in and of itself. Everything is political.
Moriarty: That’s interesting, because you’ve sort of embraced documentary in the second half of your career. And it’s become a major part, now, of your film vocabulary. I was devastated by WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE, it was a stunning movie, and an important film not just about that incident, but I think in general the shift in what responsibility the government is willing to accept. We’re in the middle, obviously, of another aggressive storm season. Do you think we can learn anything from Katrina?
Spike Lee: Oh I think so. I think that if you look at how the federal, state and local governments reacted to Gustav, versus Katrina, it’s the difference between night and day. Unfortunately, people had to die for this lesson to be learned.
Moriarty: Yeah, it feels like they had to be shamed into be stepping up, you know?
Spike Lee: I feel that Mike Brown was made a scapegoat. I find it amazing that Michael Chertoff still has a job. How does that guy still have a job?
Moriarty: It’s a self-sustaining system that’s shocking at times.
Spike Lee: But I will say many, many lessons were learned, and that’s great. On the other hand, they dodged a bullet, because the levees are still not up to snuff. Ike missed, Gustav barely missed, and the next one might not miss. I don’t know if New Orleans can recover from another Katrina this soon. I don’t know. A lot of work needs to be done.
Moriarty: I love the fact that you work with so many of your collaborators repeatedly, guys where you can almost look at your career in stages of “Okay, this is when you were working with this DP, or this is when you were working with Terence Blanchard,” you know. There are people who really stay with you. And I think that speaks well to you as a filmmaker, obviously, but you really then seem to be freed up. Right now Matthew Libatique is…
Spike Lee: Yeah, that’s my man!
Moriarty: I got to tell you, I’m a big DP geek, like that’s my big thing. I love cinematographers. I love the work you guys did on this picture, and I’m happy to see that you’re continuing to work with him on INSIDE MAN 2, so it looks like down the road you’re gonna keep collaborating.
Spike Lee: Yeah, we are. We hope to.
Moriarty: Can you tell me about when you find somebody like Matthew, and what that process is as a director when you bring somebody in for the first time, and then what it does when you get to work with them repeatedly?
Spike Lee: Well here’s his situation: one of the most delicate and important relationships is between the director, and the director of photography; the director and the cameraperson. And I was very blessed to have the great Ernest Dickerson shooting my early films. Ernest and I were classmates at NYU. He then went on to shoot for me SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, SCHOOL DAZE, DO THE RIGHT THING, MO’ BETTER BLUES, JUNGLE FEVER, and MALCOM X, then he went on to direct his first film, being JUICE, the Tupac film. So I know what it means to have a great collaborator as a DP. And with Matty, I’ve found that again; what’s ironic is that Matty said that it was Ernest Dickerson’s work while he was at AFI that inspired him to be a cameraperson. So with Matty, we’ve done numerous commercials, right now we have INSIDE MAN, MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA. We also have a documentary coming out on Kobe Bryant that we did for HBO. Also, we filmed the last performance of this great Broadway musical called PASSING STRANGE.
So Matty and I really have a good vibe going. We get along great, we both love sports. You know every time we do a movie, we have a softball team, so he’s a great shortstop. [Laughs] He has an arm, he has range. And also he, like me, does not like to lose. And that, whether it’s on a softball field or on the set, you know, he is gonna do what it takes to get it right. And he’s a great artist. I love to work with people who are intelligent, who are creative, and also do not try to impose a style on a subject matter. We don’t do that. We let the films dictate to us what the style should be. So that’s why SHE HATE ME doesn’t look like INSIDE MAN, INSIDE MAN doesn’t look like MIRACLE. It was Matty’s wisdom to say “Spike, you know what? Let’s shoot the bookends – the stuff dealing with the murder mystery at the beginning and end of the film – let’s shoot that in 35. All that stuff that’s 1944, World War II Italy, we’re gonna shoot that with Super 16. It’ll give us much more grain, and it’ll also give us flexibility, we’ll be able to maneuver lighter cameras quicker, more time without changing the rolls.” Great, great, great artist. And then he also shot IRON MAN this summer! So look at his range.
Moriarty: He’s had a hell of a run, and even this year, like you said, between IRON MAN and MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, to see one guy do that kind of work, you realize how versatile his touch is, and how remarkably different everything he shoots looks. He doesn’t have just one style.
Spike Lee: And then look at his early work, the films he did with Darren Aronofsky. PI, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, and FOUNTAIN. So he’s definitely, I feel, one of the top DPs working today, and I’m happy that we have the partnership that we have, cause he’s like the core. Like a sports team, you’ve got different positions, but you’ve always got your core. The core is editors Barry Brown, Sam Pollard; composer Terence Blanchard; cinematographers like Matty Libatique; casting director Kim Coleman; Mike Ellis, my first AD, so it’s been over 15 years; David Lee, my brother, he’s the unit photographer; my brother Cinqué was archivist, he was behind-the-scenes stuff. And, you know, you go out there and supplement them with the various positions it takes to make a film.
Moriarty: One of the things that I was drawn to very early on with your work, and I’ve been a fan since SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT…
Spike Lee: That’s going *way* back, 1986.
Moriarty: Yeah, I was in high school when that hit. And you were part of a movement of filmmakers to kind of open my eyes to what American film could be, and it was you, and it was Jarmusch, and it was the Coens, and it was a group of guys that sort of emerged at the same time who I thought it felt like were raised on movies in the best possible way, where you had just internalized them so much, and now they were coming out in the craziest, newest ways. And when I see people talk about various movements in film, I feel like you were more a part of that New York independent film than when people have tried to talk about you as a sort of pioneer of what became sort of “black film” in the early ‘90s. Because I think so much of that was not really the kind of work that you were doing.
Spike Lee: Well, I will say that you’re right in both parts. As far as the black New Wave, I was part of it somewhat because it was SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT and Robert Townsend’s film HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE that brought about this movement. But you’re right in the other part of your statement in that my films weren’t MENACE II SOCIETY, BOYZ N THE HOOD, and that type of genre.
Moriarty: Well I’ve always felt like your films were very inclusive. Like DO THE RIGHT THING, to me, is a neighborhood picture. Everybody in that neighborhood is what’s so great about it, and it’s the friction that I find fascinating. It’s not that any one group is the center of the film, it’s how we all live together that makes that movie so powerful. And it’s one of the most quotable movies ever, by the way.
Spike Lee: Thank you, and I would agree. And here’s the thing, because I’ve been thinking about this since it’s been coming up in some of the interviews. Someone should, when they have some time, take four films and look at them in relation to each other: DO THE RIGHT THING, JUNGLE FEVER, and SUMMER OF SAM. I’m talking about the relationship between African-Americans and Italian-Americans here. And then go to MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, which is totally different, you know, with the relationship between the two.
Moriarty: The other part of what made your early movies so fascinating for somebody who wanted to be in film was the books that you published. And you don’t really do that anymore, but those first few films—
Spike Lee: Oh, we got a book coming out for this one though.
Moriarty: Do you really? Cause I gotta say, SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, SCHOOL DAZE and DO THE RIGHT THING in particular were so confessional about everything you went through behind the scenes as you were trying to work towards getting these films onscreen. And it was the downs as well as actually getting the films made that I thought made the books so valuable, because you really talked about how hard that can be.
Spike Lee: We really wanted the books to be instructional, that – first of all, there’s no one way to do anything, but – here’s how I did it, from A to Z. It might not work for you, but it might too, so here’s what I went through. From the very beginning I’ve always tried to be about the de-mystification of film. Film is a craft; it can be learned. It’s not one of those things, like they try to tell you, where, you know, you gotta get hit by lightning and God has to touch you, and then you can be a filmmaker.
Moriarty: That’s what I heard growing up, that you can’t make films. Only people in Hollywood can make movies.
Spike Lee: Yeah, well that’s why. [Laughs] They want to keep it under wraps. But we were about the de-mystification of that and trying to be more inclusive, and it wasn’t even really based on race either. If you really want to be a filmmaker, here’s how we did it, and we always said that you don’t *have* to go to film school either.
Moriarty: I just loved that, right from the beginning, it felt like you were giving back. Like you were putting the hand out to other filmmakers and saying alright, look, here’s what I had to go through. And DO THE RIGHT THING especially, with the turnarounds, and with how that film almost didn’t happen, and sort of the struggles, it really, to me, crystallized that if it’s worth doing, and if you believe in a project, then keep butting your head against the wall.
Spike Lee: Well that’s part of… I’ve been teaching as a professor at NYU for the last eleven years, the last four or five, I can’t remember exactly, I’m also the artistic director of the non-grata film school, this is where I went to school, where I finished back in 1982, and I try to instill into my students that they have to get up and go, they have to have gumption. They cannot just sit around and think that it’s gonna happen if they don’t make it happen. You have to get off your ass, roll up your sleeves, and make it happen. When I went to Morehouse they always had this speech the first day. [Laughs] They said “Look to your left, and look to your right. There’s a good chance one of those two people will not be there next year when you come back.” Well it’s the same thing in film school, and you have to feel passionate about what you are doing. And you also have to have a thick skin. If you’re a person who can’t take criticism, or is gonna slit your wrists when you get a bad review, then you should try something else. And not everyone is always gonna like what you’re gonna do, but you just gotta strap it up and get out there for the next one. Just try and get the next one. You did one. Alright, you’ve got that under your belt. Now try to do another one. And then the trick is, if you can, try not to repeat yourself, and keep learning and exploring as you go on this journey. Just try to get better as a filmmaker.
That was one of the most important things I learned when I was in film school. I read an interview about Akira Kurosawa. At the time he’d just done RAN, so he was probably 85, something like that. And the person interviewing him said “Mister Kurosawa, a master such as yourself, is there anything that you don’t know about cinema?” And Kurosawa – I’m paraphrasing here, but he said “There is still a universe which I do not know about cinema.” So when someone like Kurosawa says that after making many masterpieces, being one of the master filmmakers of all-time, if he says when he’s 85 years old that there’s still a universe he’s yet to learn, then… me reading that in film school, that was like an atomic bomb went off. It was like “Oh shit… if HE says that, then what do I gotta learn?!” So I mean, just understand that you’ve got to keep learning, got to keep growing.
Moriarty: I love the fact that you have shot for television with things like SUCKER FREE CITY, or you know, some of the documentary work that you’ve done, and I love that you’ve embraced hi-def at times, like you said you used Super 16 and 35 on this film, you shot documentary, you’ve shot narrative, you’ve shot giant films, you’ve shot small films… it really seems to me if you’re not flexible like that, you’re not going to survive the next 15 years of filmmaking, because things are changing so dramatically. I read an interview where Spielberg allegedly said, “I can’t make a film for less than $50 million anymore.” I just don’t believe that. I think he could if he wanted to.
Spike Lee: [Laughs] Well, if he doesn’t have to, why should he?
Moriarty: “Oh, I wish I could just go shoot something for $100,000 with three friends, and just do it.” I think that’s a mindset where you COULD do that if you really felt like it. And film is so... you know, with SUCKER FREE CITY, for example: yes it was a TV project, but these days, does that matter? Doesn’t it all just end up as cable and DVD fodder anyway? Does the first distribution point really define what your film is anymore?
Spike Lee: Well, I did SUCKER FREE CITY because we really wanted that to be a pilot for a show. You know, they didn’t want to do it and that’s their choice, so it was just released as a film. But I think you were right about that first statement: if you don’t adapt, no matter where you are, no matter what you’re doing, you’re gonna perish, especially in the volatile times we live in. You know I woke up this morning, I turn on the news, and 25,000 people are out of work at Lehman. Just like that. People are coming out of there with all the stuff from their office in a paper box, many people had their life savings wrapped up in 401s and Lehman’s stock… wiped out entirely. It is volatile. If I had been rigid… I mean from the very beginning, we shot SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT in 12 days, two six-day weeks, for $175,000. Now I could have said ‘You know what? I’m gonna need a million dollars to shoot this.’ I think the original budget was half a million, but then I got religion [Laughs], and it became apparent to me that if I was gonna do this, it was gonna be for that amount. And we had to make do; we adapted. So that budget became $175,000. That’s just the way it’s been since the beginning, and you’ve got to adapt.
Moriarty: Well I think that flexibility has always been something that’s defined you, and it’s something that I’ve always liked about the way you’ve worked.
Spike Lee: And I’d like to say also that a lot of it’s not just about adaptability. In my mind, I don’t have a rigid territory about “Yes, now I’m Spike Lee the documentary filmmaker, now I’m Spike Lee the narrative filmmaker.” To me it’s all telling a story, so therefore I don’t have to press a special button, put on a special pair of Nikes, because I’m going from INSIDE MAN to WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE. It’s still just telling a story.
Moriarty: Well I gotta say sir, thank you for taking the time for me this morning. It’s hard to express how much your work has meant to me over the years.
Spike Lee: Thank you. And I want to say I’m glad you liked the film, now let’s get the word on Ain’t It Cool News.
Moriarty: I look forward to INSIDE MAN 2. I’m fascinated that you’re doing a sequel. This is the first time you’ve gone back to a piece of material.
Spike Lee: Well let me tell you, I wanted to do a sequel – not a sequel, but to pick up 25 years later on SCHOOL DAZE, but Sony didn’t like my take. But I still would like to do that one day, because that film has become a cult classic.
Moriarty: I think a lot of your characters have lives that seem to spill off the frame.
Spike Lee: Especially Mars Blackmon?
Moriarty: Mars Blackmon, I am dying to know some of what’s happened with the characters from DO THE RIGHT THING, to see where that neighborhood would be now.
Spike Lee: [Laughs]
Moriarty: I mean seriously, how can you not wonder? I hope that neighborhood re-grew the right way.
Spike Lee: That neighborhood would probably be a victim of gentrification.
Moriarty: It would probably be totally different, yeah.
Spike Lee: Bed-Stuy? Forget it.
TriBeCa Interview: Spike Lee
Doin' Work
April 29, 2009
by Matthew-Lee Erlbach
and Carmelo Larose
Spike Lee is a prolific writer, director, producer, and actor known for challenging the socio-political norms in American society. In 1986, his debut film, the independently produced comedy, She's Gotta Have It, earned him the Prix de Jeunesse Award at the Cannes Film festival and set him at the forefront of the Black New Wave in American Cinema. His work also includes Do the Right Thing, which garnered an Academy award for best screenplay, Jungle Fever, Mo' Better Blues, Crooklyn, Malcom X, Bamboozled, and many other successful films. He recently completed the Emmy and Oscar nominated documentary, 4 Little Girls, for HBO, and received an Emmy Award for his piece on Georgetown's John Thompson for HBO/Real Sports. Additionally, Spike has authored six books on the making of his films; the fifth book, Five For Five, served as a pictorial reflection of his first five features. Most recently he has authored a new book entitled Best Seat In The House with Ralph Wiley. His latest films, Kobe Doin' Work and Passing Strange are premiering this week at the 2009 TriBeCa Film Festival: www.TribecaFilm.com for more info.
What was it about Kobe Bryant that makes him a compelling figure for a documentary?
SL: He was having a great season. It looked like the Lakers would make it to the finals. It looked like they would be the champions, but they messed up against the Celtics. And he's arguably one of the two best players in the league. People are gonna get many things out of it...I want to have them engaged on that level though. You know as a filmmaker you have to pick great subjects.
How did your understanding of Kobe as a player change?
SL: It didn't change. I just gained more admiration for him and learned how rare of a player he was, how dedicated he was. He's very dedicated to the game. The film isn't a PR move. It's a documentary.
Was there anything about the content that was surprising or shocking?
SL: We didn't know what we were going to get, but that's one of the best things about sports documentaries, is that they are in no way scripted. You roll with it.
Is documentary film making for you much different than your work in fiction?
SL: They're different, but the goal is the same, which is to tell a story. I never try to lose sight of that, the telling of the story.
Do you see a resurgence or an increase in independent black film in the near future?
SL: I saw a film at Sundance which I'm a big fan of, Black Dynamite, which will be here at TriBeCa. Scott Sanders it the Director, he co-wrote it with Michael Jai White, which I thought was very good. I'm also really happy with Passing Strange. Make sure to see that. It's funny as hell. It's hilarious. I wouldn't say that the films I make are stories told just to Black America. I think they're stories being told to everyone, like When the Levees Broke. Hip hop culture will still be relevant. It always has and there will be stories told from the rest of the world as well, the Caribbean, Africa. Etc. I'm looking forward to that.
Arts Publications
Son of Sam spiked! - filmmaker Spike Lee - Interview
July, 1999 by Oren Moverman
In the boiling summer of 1977, a serial killer who called himself the Son of Sam terrorized New York, resulting in the biggest police manhunt the city had ever known. Unfolding against the backdrop of that scary time, Spike Lee's latest film bears out what all historians know - that a shocked and frightened populace will rapidly latch onto all kinds of intolerance.
After thirteen years in the public eye, thirteen innovative films, scores of clever commercials and music videos, media controversies ranging from alleged racial stereotyping to taunting the New York Knicks' playoff opponents, Spike Lee is one of a handful of celebrities on the planet who need little introduction. He's a household name and a trademark, and it seems everyone on the street has a question for the Brooklyn provocateur. His new film, Summer of Sam, takes him to an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx to capture a community spiraling out of control in the summer of 1977, when ex-postal worker David Berkowitz, a.k.a. Son of Sam, shot and killeel six people and wounded seven others before he was caught and convicted. It stars John Leguizamo, Mira Sorvino, Adden Brody, and Jennifer Esposlto; for the first time in a Spike Lee movie, there are no black actors in lead roles. Whether onscreen or off, however, Lee is the star of all his creations, this one included.
OREN MOVERMAN: What's your personal recollection of New York in the summer of 1977?
SPIKE LEE: Son of Sam, the blackout and the looting, disco, punk, Studio 54 opening. Everybody was doing the Hustle, everything was happening at the same time. I think it was a pivotal summer. For several families that was the summer they wish never happened, because they lost dear ones to Son of Sam. It was Reggie Jackson's first year with the Yankees, who went to the World Series and won for the first time since '62. Elvis Presley died that August. Plato's Retreat [sex club] was in full swing; there was no way I was getting in back then, though. I was twenty years old in 1977, so I was probably old enough to get in, but you had to go with a partner - a willing partner. [laughs]
OM: IS Summer of Sam about a historical moment in the life of a city, or about the hysterical psyche of a city?
SL: I think it's both. You know, it's stuff I've demonstrated before in Do the Right Thing [1989]. New York City gets crazy sometimes because of the heat. The summer of '77 was one of the hottest summers ever! That's why they had the blackout: Everybody had their air conditioners on. Combine that with the Son of Sam hysteria that was being fueled by the New York Post and the Daily News, and you have complete madness.
OM: Don't you think the panic would have been as strong even without the media feeding frenzy?
SL: No, I think the media definitely had a hand in creating that level of hysteria. I don't know what the figures are, but newspaper circulation jumped dramatically with those scary headlines - NO ONE IS SAFE FROM SON OF SAM and that kind of thing. People were afraid to go out, women were dying their hair, cutting it, too [Berkowitz primarily attacked women with long brown hair]. Everybody was looking over their shoulder, everyone was suspect. Consequently, these days the media has [sensationalism] down to a science, and it's even more competitive: You have to be first, you got to write the story. And what comes to mind is that guy [Richard Jewell] in Atlanta during the [1996] Olympics who was alleged [by some media outlets] to be the one who planted the bomb. It wasn't true, but the media found him guilty and his life was ruined. Of course, it's never the media alone. There was genuine fear in '77. People feared for their safety. But the press didn't need to heighten it, especially with Berkowitz's letters to [then Daily News columnist] Jimmy Breslin; I think Berkowitz liked seeing those headlines and his letters printed in the paper. And one thing fed off another.
OM: What do you attribute to the great feeling of anarchy that was going on at the time?
SL: Everything was just wide open. You had the whole disco thing, drugs were still happening, the wild pre-AIDS days were at their height. Today there's nothing close to that sense of freedom. Shoot, we live in a police state with [Mayor Rudolph[Giuliani's clampdown style. We've got scenes in the movie, after the Yankees win the World Series, where you see fans storming the field, having a great time. These days, in the play-offs and the World Series, it's like the gestapo; you have the NYPD coming out there in full riot gear. You don't need mounted policemen at a baseball game! Let the fans rejoice. We don't need that police-state shit.
OM: Your films have always been about the clash of different cultures and the discrimination that follows. How does Summer of Sam fit in with that?
SL: The vigilante group we show in the movie used Son of Sam as an excuse: He gave them license to just fuck up the people they didn't like. They had a very narrow vision of what is normal - anything that's to the left or fight of that very, very straight-down-the-middle American line is suspect. If you're gay or a punk rocker or you've got long hair, you're potentially Son of Sam material. So the film is also about intolerance.
OM: It's also new territory for you - your first non-black cast. Is that significant?
SL: I think so. People always come up to me and say, "When are you going to put white actors in your films?" These people obviously have never seen my work. I think my films are very diverse. Summer of Sam is clearly a departure because it doesn't have a specific African-American theme. But being outside the culture that is in your film is not significant in itself. I think it's significant if you're successful in adding insights, or in being sympathetic to the world you are alien to. I think it's much easier for minorities to do subject matter that might be deemed mainstream than vice versa. It's very difficult for white directors to direct black subject matter. That is not to say it's never been done successfully. And I have never, ever said only white directors can direct white subject matter and only black directors can direct black subject matter. I will say, however, that it takes great sensitivity on the part of white directors to do black films because so often they just can't get over their own myopic vision of the world. And so, when they do these films, you can get situations like [white journalist] Donald Woods being the hero of Cry Freedom [1987] and Stephen Biko being pushed to the background. And that's bogus.
OM: Were you sensitive to the potential objections of Berkowitz's victims' families to you making a film about him?
SL: We made a choice that we weren't going to shoot at the exact locations of the murders out of respect for the families of the victims. And, yeah, we knew we were going to get some static from the families. But I really have no argument. I understand it, you know. Their daughters are dead, murdered by Berkowitz [one man was also killed by Berkowitz]. There's nothing that will ever make them feel any differently about this film. But in no way, shape, or form, did we exploit any of the murders. This is not the Son of Sam story. I was not interested in exploring the mind of a psychopath. He was crazy, that's a given. The film is about the effect he had on eight million human beings in New York City.
OM: Why do you choose to be a socially conscious filmmaker?
SL: I've never been one to do what everybody else is doing. I think there's a need for the films I do. It's going to be a crowded summer and there are going to be people who will see Star Wars fifteen times, or Wild Wild West, and then they'll want to see something else. The work any artist produces, at the end of the day, will be a reflection of his sensibilities. Some people might try to camouflage them, but they're going to come through if you're able able to build a body of work. I make films about the things I care about. But I don't make just one type of film.
OM: The word controversy has been mentioned In connection with every one of your films. While you were cutting this film there were rumors of an NC-17 rating. Is this a controversial film In your mind?
SL: No. I've had several films that were not deemed R the first time we submitted them. But my experience with the MPAA, even though they try to deny it and state otherwise, is that there are different criteria as far as sex and violence are concerned. I think they're much more lenient on violence than they are with sex. And that's where we come to heads. Not once in discussions with the MPAA did anybody ever say anything about the violence [in Summer of Sam]; it all had to do with the sexual content.
OM: Where do you think that comes from?
SL: Puritanical American values. It's that simple.
OM: You seem to occupy a unique space between Hollywood and Independent cinema, because you do many things on your own terms but you get to tell personal stories on a large canvas. Is that where you want to be?
SL: Yes. I think I've been very fortunate because I've been able to navigate working with the studios, using their money for finance and distribution, and at the same time make my own films. That's a hard thing to do. I also make films for a price - it's a trade-off. But I don't feel any limitations on my part in making a film for a studio. I'm an independent filmmaker; I have final cut.
OM: HOW do you define your goal as a filmmaker at this point in your career?
SL: My goal is really to be a storyteller. That's what I feel good directors are. Trying to show different aspects, when I can, of the African-American experience, which is much more diverse than you usually see. And also building a body of work.
OM: Who are you trying to reach with this film?
SL: Everybody and their mama. [laughs] With some films I know specifically who the audience is, others I find out during the process of making the film. Not everybody's gonna come to Summer of Sam. It's a mature film. It's both funny and dark at the same time. It has violence, sex, profanity - that's not for everyone.
OM: DO you worry about the next generation of filmmakers?
SL: Yes, because I think MTV probably did more to harm narrative filmmaking than anything. It cut down the attention span of the audience, and it made people think there's no need to hold down a shot anymore - it's like cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. A lot more people come to filmmaking from commercials and music videos now, and they know how to work the camera, get the look and the feel - but when it comes to telling the story and working with actors they don't think in cinematic terms.
OM: How do you address these concerns?
SL: I executive-produce various projects. And I teach third-year director students at the NYU graduate film school. This is my fourth year teaching. I love working with students. I'm very practical in my approach. I just try to tell them this pie-in-the-sky stuff is not going to work. They got to get out there and do the work, do the work, do the work.
OM: You also shoot commercials, run an ad agency, attend countless Knicks games. Is directing films still the number one pleasure for you?
SL: Yes, that's where everything comes from. If I wasn't a filmmaker none of these other opportunities would have happened. And the process is as good now as it was in the beginning. Filmmaking still makes me happy. There are different stakes - I'm established, whereas before I was scrambling. But my love of cinema hasn't gone. There's a lot of energy in this film - we went out there with it.
OM: You adapted yourself as a director to the material?
SL: Yes. A director is like a coach. Some coaches try to force their system on the players, but the way to think about a script is to adapt the system to the players. You can't just come into a project saying this is the way it's gonna be done. The script determines everything.
OM: What film haven't you done that you'd really like to do?
SL: Jackie Robinson [Lee's proposed bidpie about the first black major-league baseball player].
OM: IS that your next project?
SL: No, but I'm going to make that film one day. I made a promise to Rachel Robinson [Jackie Robinson's' widow]. I need to get the necessary money to make that film and then we're going to do it.
OM: So what Is your next project?
SL: Don't know yet.
OM: As long as I'm asking you about the future, as an artist who has New York City starting in most of his films, what do you see happening with the city?
SL: It's definitely not the same city it was. It's ridiculous. I think people got tricked by Giuliani. They bought that we'll-keep-them-in-line message. I think the man is insane. And I think all goodnatured, clear-thinking New Yorkers are seeing this. He's not good for the spirit of New York City. And he definitely won't be good for New York State as a senator, so he has to go. Big corporations have a friend in the mayor's office and it makes New York worse. Diversity is what gives New York City its flavor, not astronomical rents. I mean, I liked 42nd Street just the way it was before it was glossed over. I wasn't hanging out there, but come on! I don't think there's anything wrong for there to be sex shops in a specific area. I think people have to satisfy a need; I'd rather have that than people going out and raping each other.
OM: So isn't it kind of ironic that you made Summer of Sam for the company that symbolizes what the new, wholesome 42nd Street is all about - Wait Disney?
SL: Yeah, it is. Thank you. [laughs and leaves]
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