Spike Lee has been called a legend, icon and visionary in the film world, a trailblazer, a man who stands up and does the right thing for his beliefs, unafraid of the consequences or controversy he may create. Named Spike by his mother, a teacher of art and black literature, he grew up in Brooklyn, New York with his father, a jazz musician, who composed and taught. He was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia.
After an absence of 24 years, he recently returned to the Quick Center at Fairfield University to give a talk “Creating Social Change Through Film: Do the Right Thing” on Thursday, September 19. Speaking frankly, he explained the history of his family, why he values education so highly, and the disgrace of teachers being underpaid and underappreciated. He feels everyone can point to one teacher who encouraged them to succeed. He also feels education should be free as tuition is “crazy” and, even worse, kids are being taught lies, about native Americans and about our Founding Fathers. He doesn’t believe school texts are telling our youth that George Washington owed 123 slaves as did the “first 11 or 12 Presidents of this country.”
He is proud to come from educated people and to being the first grandchild of a grandmother who saved her social security money to fund his learning. He went to Morehouse College and then Clark Atlanta University. Giving back himself, he teaches at the New York Tisch School of Arts, and has for seventeen years, where he himself learned some of his craft. He marveled that his grandmother taught art for fifty years and never had one white student. “Whether you are born black, white or brown, the wrong zip code can defeat you.”
One of his first ventures was the comedy about sexual relationships, “She’s Gotta Have It” which he filmed in two weeks for a cost of $175,000. When it earned him over $7,000,000, he used the funds to create his company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks that has produced 35 films since 1983, including the landmark “Do the Right Thing,” “Mo’ Better Blues,” “Malcolm X,” “4 Little Girls,” and his most recent “BlacKkKlansman.”
An advocate for change, he tackles racial inequality and civil rights, calling his films Spike Lee Joints. He wants his audience to be challenged and angered by what they see on the screen.
Spike Lee doesn’t like labels as he “feels they are a lazy way to slap on a person.” He admits to being a storyteller. As a child he went to films for the candy and popcorn, with no thought of making them himself. Circumstances like one professor who encouraged him and a chance gift of a Super 8 camera and film in the summer of 1977, when he was broke without a job, turned his life in a new direction. He calls it “one of the most important days of my life.” It happened to coincide with a blackout that was like Christmas in July, plus the presence of David Berkowitz, that led him to make a documentary of that summer and to his declaring film making as his major.
Now as a teacher himself, with experience of three decades, he hopes “students listen to me. I love the interactions with young minds who are excited about cinema. I look for ‘hustle’
in young directors and I am hard on lazy students who are only taking up space.” To him, they need to put forth “effort, as this here’s no joke.” He believes “you can’t teach get up and go. They need to be motivated. The first day of class I hand out a list of the greatest film directors that students should view and expose themselves to. The Ziegfeld Theater was my theater and it had a lot of premieres there. I am old school. I don’t watch films on my phone. On the first day “The Exorcist” came out, I stood in the freezing cold for two hours to see Linda Blair’s head turn around,”
Giving vent to political issues, Spike Lee pronounced ,“we are not a colorblind society. With our 44thPresident, this might be the most important Presidential election in history. We are a divided country and there is a difference between love and hate, and good and evil. When I see infants snatched from their mother’s arms, what the f--- country says that…Is this what we’ve become? First we have to register to vote. We are better than what we are. The rest of the world is laughing at us but it’s no joke.”
He alluded to a New York Times article about the 1619 Project and the fact that in August of 1619 the first slaves came to Jamestown, Virginia, 400 years ago. He feels there is not a lot of truthfulness told about the land stolen, the slavery, the genocide this country is built upon. The land belonged to the natives who were already here who were demonized. He admits “I hated the Lone Ranger and had no use for Daniel Boone.” He felt we displaced them and didn’t tell the truth about it.
As a filmmaker, Spike Lee tries to tell a different story in a different way each time. He likes to brag that the Obamas’ first date was to see “Do the Right Thing” and that it “gave a name and a face to racial issues.” He was criticized that the film gave no answers to racism and he admits that, thirty years later, “I still have no answers.” He believes it’s not the job of artists, “we paint the picture and start the question.”
When he was making ”Malcolm X” with Denzel Washington and Warner Brothers balked at the length of the film going over three hours, he simply raised the money himself until the studio saw the errors of its ways. He states that raising money for films “is always a struggle.” Currently he is working on a film about Vietnam soldiers and the lack of recognition of black men in the fighting.
Spike Lee wants people to “look at my films and make an educated accessment of my work.” Whether they comment on his father’s acoustic bass, for he refused to play electric guitar, or mention his double dolly shots that he invented for his films, where people float on the screen that is his trademark or signature motif, Spike Lee wants to be acknowledged for the voice he shares on film for the world.
