| The Quotable Spike Lee | |||||
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| Spike Lee's Famous Lines | |||||
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| Spike Lee Quotes |
| Help construct the ultimate crib sheet of quotes about career, costars, the Hollywood fame game, and more! Add an attribution, when possible. |
| A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movies you didn't intend to be there. Spike Lee A lot of times, we censor ourselves before the censor even gets there. Spike Lee All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love. Spike Lee Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith. Spike Lee Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer. Spike Lee Don't think that because you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep. I am still here, like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest. Spike Lee Everything I do is always scrutinised. But that's all I'll say about that. Spike Lee Fight the power that be. Fight the power. Spike Lee I always give the example, if you turn on the radio today, black radio, Lenny Kravitz is not black. Bob Marley wasn't black: in the beginning, only white college stations played Bob Marley. Spike Lee I don't dictate, you don't dictate to Stevie Wonder, not successfully. Spike Lee I get offered to do stuff where the money's nice but it's not something I want to do - I get offered a lot of commercials too. Spike Lee I like to work with the same people when I can, and you want to get people with the same interests that you have, and the same aesthetic. Spike Lee I live in New York City, the stories of my films take place in New York; I'm a New York filmmaker. Spike Lee I think it is very important that films make people look at what they've forgotten. Spike Lee I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful. Spike Lee I think my work shows that I love women. I understand where these types of criticisms are coming from because black people have been so dogged out in the media, they're just extra sensitive. Spike Lee I think people who have faults are a lot more interesting than people who are perfect. Spike Lee I'd like to state that Spike Lee is not saying that African American culture is just for black people alone to enjoy and cherish. Culture is for everybody. Spike Lee I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets. Spike Lee If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they're killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We'd not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism. Spike Lee It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are. Spike Lee My cousin Malcolm Lee is also a filmmaker. Spike Lee 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. Spike Lee Since the days of slavery, if you were a good singer or dancer, it was your job to perform for the master after dinner. Spike Lee There's a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we've arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled. Spike Lee There's an unwritten law that you cannot have a Jewish character in a film who isn't 100 percent perfect, or you're labeled anti-Semitic. Spike Lee Violence is a part of America. I don't want to single out rap music. Let's be honest. America's the most violent country in the history of the world, that's just the way it is. We're all affected by it. Spike Lee We grew up in a very creative environment and were exposed to the arts at a very young age, so it's not a surprise that all of us are in some form of the arts. Spike Lee African-American NBA players... the most visible, wealthiest group of black people in the world. If these brothers get more conscious and come together, they could be a viable force --as role models, as financial institutions. Spike Lee I intended it as ironic, as a joke to show how violence begets more violence, I told everyone there it was a joke. I said I did not want to read in the papers, 'Shoot Charlton Heston. Spike Lee Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in the way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing then it will be done, but not until then. Spike Lee You just have to be on good terms with the actors and talk stuff out beforehand. A perfect example is She Hate Me - I had many different discussions with many different women, and also with [the actor] Anthony Mackie, so they knew. And this was before they even agreed to do the film. But actors want to know - `Here, it says they make love. What type of acts are we talking about? What`s going to be seen?` I have no problem with that. At the same time, I still want to allow myself some flexibility. But shooting a sex scene is very mechanical - `Will you move this way? That way? Raise your leg?` And for the most part the crew isn`t allowed to be there - I close the set, make it as comfortable as possible. Spike Lee For me, a large part of Jungle Fever (1991) is about sexual mythology: the mythology of a white woman being on a pedestal, the universal standard of beauty, and the mythology about the black man as sexual stud with a ten-foot dick. Buying into the mythology is not a strong foundation for a relationship. Spike Lee But actresses are asked to compromise themselves, not just from the director but the producer too - `Are you going to show your tits or your ass?` They say that shit all the time. It is men making decisions. And of course they would rather have heads explode on screen than show a penis. Spike Lee I think that every minority in the United States of America knows everything about the dominant culture. From the time you can think, you are bombarded with images from TV, film, magazines, newspapers. It was not an issue, I didn`t scratch my head and think, "How am I going to direct white actors?" I`ve worked with white actors before in a lot of my films, but that question has come up doing the press for this film in the States, "How was it to work with white actors, did you have a different approach? Spike Lee Too many people are being bowled over by Bush and Tony Blair in Britain. It`s ludicrous to expect the whole world to follow what they want. America doesn`t have the moral right to tell other people what to do. To say the whole world has to fall into line is you-know-what. I hope more people will rise up. Spike Lee |
| Quotes About Spike Lee |
| Quote: "He was always a very open person even when I first met him on 'Do the Right Thing'. I remember reading his scripts, there was something about that script and I thought this could be really interesting. I had problems, like with the end of the movie, and I was able to tell him. I still think my favourite parts of the movie are the humorous parts. The film scores even more points there." Who said/wrote it: John Turturro Quote: "'Do the Right Thing' still holds up today. The film was when it all came together in terms of the ideology and catching the energy of the time, with Public Enemy, Malcolm X and hip-hop culture. It was a brilliant blend of social commentary, and it looked at race politics in a way that has not been done as well or as effectively since. It showed an artist of rare confidence at the top of his game as a storyteller at what was a pretty amazing time in terms of black cinema." Who said/wrote it: Marc Boothe Producer, Bullet Boy Quote: "I felt that people were responding in exactly the opposite way to the people who were writing about 'Do the Right Thing' and saying, 'This is a dangerous film, it's going to cause violence.' I sat there thinking the exact opposite. What I realised, way down the road, is what made people uncomfortable with it was that it didn't offer any easy answers." Who said/wrote it: Ed Norton Quote: "The beautiful thing about 'Do the Right Thing' was that it was a combination of two powerful influences of the 1980s and my formative years. It was when Spike Lee met Public Enemy on a movie set. The film spoke about pain, rage and sex, it was an extraordinary collision of everything I wanted to see and hear. It just validated everything that I was feeling about the time." Who said/wrote it: Kwame Kwei-Armah Quote: "I grew up on Spike Lee, with Spike Lee, as both an audience and a fan. When there was a new Spike Lee film it was like, 'You got to go see a Spike Lee movie.' When he was making the earlier films such as 'Do the Right Thing', he was doing something so new and so refreshing, especially for what there was to see in the cinema. He was addressing things in the here and now, and he really attacked the issue." Who said/wrote it: Philip Seymour Hoffman Quote: "During that time Spike Lee was kind of a symbol for a generation of people, and he did things that totally appealed to a certain generation. He was depicting a slice of life that people wanted to see. Folk like to see themselves on screen, and he was the only person showing them young, hip black people who had a voice. People who were disenfranchised but trying to find a place. He put them out there." Who said/wrote it: Samuel L Jackson |
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