Tag: Spike Lee
Spike Lee on what’s different about these protests
“People are tired and they take to the streets,” said Lee.
It’s not the first time that Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” has been freshly urgent, but Lee’s 1989 film has again found blistering relevance in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
On Monday, Lee released a short film titled “3 Brothers” connecting the death of Radio Raheem (played by Bill Nunn) in “Do the Right Thing” to the deaths of Floyd and Eric Garner. Floyd died last week after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee against his neck as he begged for air. Garner’s dying plea of “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry against police brutality in 2014.
“I’ve seen this before. This is not new,” Lee said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday. “I was born in ’57 so I was 11 years old when I saw the riots with Dr. King’s assassination, later on with Rodney King and the Simi Valley verdict, Trayvon Martin and Ferguson.”
“People are tired and they take to the streets,” said Lee.
“Do the Right Thing,” about rising racial tensions on a hot summer day in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, took direct inspiration from reality. In the film, Raheem is choked to death by a police officer, sparking a riot.
Lee modeled the choke hold that kills Raheem on the murder of Michael Stewart, a graffiti artist who was killed by New York City police officers in 1983. Lee dedicated the film to Stewart’s family, as well as those of several other black people killed by police officers.
“His death is not just made up. Many years later, Eric Garner, automatically I thought of Ray Raheem,” said Lee. “Then to see my brother George Floyd. I mean, he was quoting the words of Eric Garner: ‘I can’t breathe.’ He was channeling Eric Garner. I’m sure of it.”
As much as Lee sees history repeating itself, there’s one element of the current unrest that strikes the filmmaker as new.
“I’ve been very encouraged by the diversity of the protesters. I haven’t seen this diverse protests since when I was a kid,” Lee said, citing the movements of the ’60s. “I’m encouraged that my white sisters and brothers are out there.
“That is the hope of this country, this diverse, younger generation of Americans who don’t want to perpetuate the same (expletive) that their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents got caught up in. That’s my hope.”
“My young white sisters and brothers are out there in the streets. How many black folks are in Salt Lake City, Utah? And let’s take into account that the NBA is not playing,” said Lee, letting out an enormous cackle. “The Utah Jazz are not playing!”
“3 Brothers” is the second short Lee has released during the pandemic. While Lee has kept to his Upper East Side apartment with his family, he has also biked around the city to shoot. Lee’s “New York, New York,” set to Frank Sinatra, was released in early May as an ode to his outbreak-stricken city. Next week, he’ll release on Netflix “Da 5 Bloods,” a Vietnam War drama about four black veterans who return to Vietnam to find the remains of their fallen squad leader (Chadwick Boseman).
Lee has only modest hopes for justice in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. Attorney General William Barr he calls “not a friend to justice.” “He’s going to do what Agent Orange tell him to do,” said Lee, using his favored nickname for President Donald Trump.
But Lee has been buoyed by a photo of New York police officers kneeling with protesters, an image he likened to Colin Kaepernick’s NFL protests.
“They need to show the image more,” said Lee. “Colin Kaepernick is a patriot.”
Article via NBCNews
Spike Lee is making a film version of David Byrne’s American Utopia
Good news, music fans: One of Broadway’s most high-profile recent hits is getting the cinematic treatment, at last. (And no, it’s not Hamilton. Keep your pants on, Francis, it’s coming.) Variety reports this week that David Byrne’s critically acclaimed career retrospective American Utopiais set to make the move to the big screens some time in the near future, courtesy of a little help from director Spike Lee. A wide-ranging tour through Byrne’s entire career—from his Talking Heads days up through the 2018 album of the same name—American Utopia has drawn rave reviews for its energetic presentation of some of the best music of the last several decades.
Byrne, of course, is no stranger to working with legendary directors, on account of the whole “co-responsible for one of the most beloved concert films of all time” thing. (It’s not for nothing that he compared American Utopia in interviews to the same energy he and the rest of Talking Heads once brought to the sessions that formed the spine of Stop Making Sense.) The original touring show of American Utopia was marked by, among other things, its minimalist set design, combined with the occasional striking visual or silhouette. It’ll be interesting to see what Lee does with it—although he’s filmed numerous comedy specials, music videos, and music documentaries over the years, including a whole series of docs and short films on Michael Jackson—it’s rare for him to go for a pure concert film. On the one hand, he’s got some pretty big shoes (suits?) to fill; on the other hand, he’s Spike Lee; this feels like something of a natural fit.
Article via AVClub
Trump Calls Spike Lee’s Oscar Speech a ‘Racist Hit on Your President’
Article via NYTimes
On Sunday night, Spike Lee won his first competitive Oscar, then made an acceptance speech that gained a standing ovation. But the events did not please at least one person apparently watching: President Trump. On Monday, he called Lee’s speech a “racist hit on your President.”
Lee opened his speech, after winning best adapted screenplay for “BlacKkKlansman,” by discussing slavery and his family’s experiences of it. “I give praise to our ancestors, who have built this country into what it is today along with the genocide of the native people,” he said.
“The 2020 presidential election is around the corner,” Lee said. “Let’s all mobilize. Let’s all be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love versus hate.”
[Read our analysis of the ceremony.]
Lee did not mention the president in his speech, but that call to action seems to have angered him. “Be nice if Spike Lee could read his notes, or better yet not have to use notes at all, when doing his racist hit on your President,” Trump said in a tweet in the early hours of Monday morning.
The president’s policies had “done more for African Americans (Criminal Justice Reform, Lowest Unemployment numbers in History, Tax Cuts, etc.) than almost any other Pres!” the president added.
Trump did not dwell on the issue for long. Shortly afterward he tweeted about “oil prices getting too high,” and a forthcoming meeting with Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea (“With complete Denuclearization, North Korea will rapidly become an Economic Powerhouse,” he wrote).
[Read Lee’s speech here.]
Theo Dumont, Lee’s publicist, said the director would not be commenting on Trump’s tweet.
“BlacKkKlansman” is based on the story of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. In interviews around its release, Lee said he wanted to draw a link between the Klan and events today. “We had to connect David Duke to Agent Orange,” he told The New York Times, using his own term for the president.
At the end of “BlacKkKlansman,” Lee included footage of the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that descended into violence when protesters clashed with counterprotesters. He then showed footage of Trump saying there was blame on “both sides” for those events.
When “Green Book” won best picture at the ceremony on Sunday, Lee made a disgusted gesture and started walking out of the theater as “Green Book” producers gave their speeches. Backstage, when asked by reporters about the coronation of “Green Book,” which detractors complain has a retrograde view of race, Lee replied, “No comment.”
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Spike Lee Unveils Previously Unreleased Prince Song, ‘Mary Don’t You Weep’ for BlacKkKlansman
It begins with piano riffs and drum. Prince’s dulcet falsetto pours out the first verse, then drops a register for verse two. It is, in a word, sublime. It is Prince at his most soulful, with the growls and runs that mark his genius.
The song: “Mary Don’t You Weep,” a gospel standard, a Negro spiritual, or a “slave song” that has rocked the ages, one that encapsulates our pain, but still rings out with hope.
Though it’s been covered by many, Prince’s version was heretofore unheard by the masses by Prince because it was unreleased.
But that all changed on Wednesday, when filmmaker Spike Lee released a video of the soaring song for the BlacKkKlansman movie, a film based on the real-life story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department, who courageously takes on the Ku Klux Klan.
Coincidentally, I had been listening to Aretha’s version of the song since her death, but this one is just as haunting.
Let the church say Amen.
Prince remake Mary don’t you weep
Aretha Franklin Mary Don’t you weep
Spike Lee’s BlacKkKansman gets standing Ovation at Cannes
Filmmaker Spike Lee’s latest offering, BlacKkKlansman, is set to be released on Aug. 10, the one-year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville, Va., white nationalist rally. At its world premiere in Cannes, the film received 10 minutes of applause and standing ovation.
As the Hollywood Reporter notes, Lee was previously overlooked for the Palme d’Or in 1989 for Do the Right Thing. During the Cannes screening of BlacKkKlansman, the audience broke into applause a half-dozen times. At the end of the film, they clapped for four minutes during the credits and gave the film a six-minute standing ovation.
John David Washington (yes, son of Denzel and Pauletta) stars in the film as a black police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. Adam Driver, Topher Grace and Laura Harrier also star in it.
The film’s trailer was released Monday
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