Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee
(born March 20, 1957) is an American
film director, producer, writer,
and actor. His production company,
40 Acres & A Mule
Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since .
Lee's movies have examined
race
relations, the role of
media in
contemporary life,
urban crime and
poverty, and other
political issues. Lee has won an
Emmy
Award and was nominated for an
Academy
Award.
Early and personal life
Lee was
born in Atlanta
, Georgia
, the son of Jacqueline Shelton, a teacher of arts
and black literature, and William
James Edward Lee III, a jazz musician and composer.
Lee moved
with his family to Brooklyn
, New York
when he was
a small child. (The
Fort Greene
neighborhood is home to Lee's production company,
40 Acres & A Mule
Filmworks, and other Lee-owned or related businesses.) As a
child, his mother nicknamed him "Spike."
In Brooklyn, he
attended John Dewey
High School
. Lee enrolled in Morehouse College
where he made his first student film, Last
Hustle in Brooklyn. He took film courses at Clark Atlanta University and
graduated with a B.A. in Mass Communication from Morehouse
College
. He then enrolled in New York
University
's Tisch School
of the Arts. He graduated in 1978 with a
Master of Fine Arts in Film &
Television.
Lee and his wife,
attorney Tonya Lewis, had
their first child, daughter Satchel, in December 1994.
Film career

Lee in 2007.
Lee's
thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy
Barbershop: We Cut Heads, was the first student film to be
showcased in Lincoln
Center
's New Directors New Films Festival.
In 1985, Lee began work on his first
feature film,
She's Gotta Have It. With a budget
of $175,000, the film was shot in two weeks. When the film was
released in 1986, it grossed over $7,000,000 at the U.S.
box office.
The reception of
She's Gotta Have It led Lee down a second
career avenue.
Marketing executives from Nike
offered Lee a job directing commercials for the
company. They wanted to pair Lee's character from
She's
Gotta Have It, the Michael Jordan-loving
Mars Blackmon, and Jordan himself in their
marketing campaign for the
Air Jordan
line. Later, Lee would be a central figure in the controversy
surrounding the inner-city rash of violence involving Air Jordans.
Lee countered that instead of blaming manufacturers of apparel,
"deal with the conditions that make a kid put so much importance on
a pair of sneakers, a jacket and gold". Through the marketing wing
of 40 Acres and a Mule, Lee has also directed commercials for
Converse,
Jaguar,
Taco Bell and
Ben & Jerry's.
Awards, honors and nominations
Lee's film
Do the Right
Thing was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in
1989. Many people, including some in Hollywood, such as
Kim Basinger, believed that
Do the Right Thing also deserved a
Best Picture nomination.
Driving
Miss Daisy won Best Picture that year and according to Lee
in an April 7, 2006 interview with
New York magazine, this hurt him
more than his film not receiving the nomination.
His
documentary 4 Little Girls was nominated for the
Best Feature Documentary
Academy
Award in 1997.
On May 2, 2007, the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival
honored Spike Lee with the San Francisco Film Society's Directing
Award. He was most recently named the recipient of the next Wexner
Prize.
Themes and style
Many of
Lee's films are set in Brooklyn
. Lee often has a role in his films ranging
from small
cameo (
Clockers) to leading role (
Do the Right Thing). His films are
referred to in their credits as "A Spike Lee Joint", except
When the Levees
Broke, which is referred to as "A Spike Lee Film".
There is commonly a sequence using a "floating" effect, when a
character seems to glide in the air like a ghost instead of walking
to make it look like they are in a world of their own. Usually the
actor is on a
camera dolly, framed in a
way that the viewer cannot see their feet.
Denzel Washington has been the focus of
this shot in
Mo' Better
Blues,
Malcolm X,
and
Inside Man.
Mekhi Phifer is given the same treatment in
Clockers, as well as
Laurence Fishburne in the film
School Daze.
Philip Seymour Hoffman and
Anna Paquin have similar shots in
25th Hour.
Lee incorporates something related to baseball in every one of his
movies. Examples include the
New York
Mets in
Mo' Better
Blues and
Jungle
Fever,
Dwight Gooden and
Roger Clemens in
Do The Right Thing,
Willie Mays and
Roberto Clemente in
Clockers,
Reggie
Jackson and the
New York
Yankees in
Summer of Sam,
and
Jackie Robinson in
Malcolm X, amongst other recurring
themes in his movies such as
She Hate
Me.
Recurring actors
A number of actors have appeared in multiple Spike Lee productions.
Joie Lee (Spike's sister) and
John Turturro lead the list, each having
appeared in nine Spike Lee films. They are followed closely by
Roger Guenveur Smith and the
late
Ossie Davis, who each participated
in seven of Lee's projects.
Public figures as actors
Several well-known
public figures have
appeared in Spike Lee films portraying characters other than
themselves, particularly in
Malcolm X. They include
Controversy
Lee has never shied away from controversial statements and actions
involving
race relations.
In 2002,
after headline-grabbing remarks made by Mississippi
Senator Trent Lott
regarding Senator Strom Thurmond's
failed presidential bid, Lee charged that Lott was a "card-carrying
member of the Ku Klux Klan" on ABC's Good Morning America.
After the 1990 release of
Mo'
Better Blues, Lee was accused of
antisemitism by the
Anti-Defamation League and several
film critics, who pointed to the characters of club owners Josh and
Moe Flatbush in the film, which have been described as "
Shylocks". Lee denied the charge, explaining that he
wrote those characters in order to depict how black artists
struggled against exploitation. Lee further expressed skepticism
that
Lew Wasserman,
Sidney Sheinberg or Tom Pollock, the Jewish
heads of MCA and
Universal
Studios, would have allowed antisemitic content in a film they
produced. He also said he could not make an antisemitic film
because Jews run Hollywood, and "that's a fact."
Lee was
the executive producer of the 1995 film New Jersey Drive, which depicted young
African-American auto thieves in northern New Jersey
. At the time, the city of Newark
had the highest automobile theft rate in the country,
and Newark mayor Sharpe James refused
to allow filming of New Jersey Drive within the city
limits. Years later in the hotly-contested
2002 Newark mayoral campaign, Lee
endorsed James's opponent,
Cory
Booker.
In May
1999 The New York Post
reported that Lee said of National Rifle Association
President Charlton
Heston, "Shoot him with a .44 Bulldog." Lee contended,
"I intended it as ironic, as a joke to show how violence begets
more violence," Lee said Thursday. "I told everyone there it was a
joke. I said I did not want to read in the papers, 'Shoot Charlton
Heston.'" Insisting that he has no reason to apologize, Lee further
explained that the remark was in response to a question about
whether Hollywood was responsible for the then-recent rash of
school shootings, saying, "The problem is guns," he said.
Republican House Majority Leader Dick
Armey issued a statement condemning Lee as having "nothing to
offer the debate on school violence except more violence and more
hate."
In 2003, Lee filed suit against the
Spike
TV television network
claiming that they were capitalizing on his fame by using his name
for their network. The injunction order filed by Spike Lee was
eventually lifted.
In October 2005, Lee commented on the
federal government's
response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. Responding
to a
CNN anchor's question as to whether the
government intentionally ignored the plight of black Americans
during the disaster, Lee replied, "It's not too far-fetched. I
don't put anything past the United States government.
I don't find it too
far-fetched that they tried to displace all the black people out of
New
Orleans
." On
Real Time with Bill Maher,
Lee cited the government's past atrocities including the
Tuskegee
Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.
Spike Lee is well-known for his devotion to the
New York Knicks professional basketball
team. Much of the blame for the Knicks' loss (93-86 to the
Indiana Pacers) in Game 5 of the 1994
Eastern Conference Finals, in
which "Knick-killer"
Reggie Miller
scored 25 points in the 4th quarter, was given to Lee. Lee was
apparently taunting Miller throughout the 4th quarter, and Miller
responded by making shot after shot. Miller also gave the choke
sign to Lee. The headline of the
New York Daily News the next day
sarcastically said, "Thanks A Lot Spike".
Lee sparked controversy on a March 28, 2004 segment on
ABC when he said that
basketball player
Larry Bird was
overrated because of his race, saying, “The most overrated player
of all time, I would say it'd be
Larry
Bird. Now, Larry Bird is one of the greatest players of all
time, but listen to the white media, it's like this guy was like
nobody ever played basketball before him--Larry Bird, Larry Bird,
Larry Bird, Larry Bird, Larry Bird.”
At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Lee, who was then making
Miracle at St. Anna,
about an all-black U.S. division fighting in Italy during
World War II, criticized director
Clint Eastwood for not depicting black
Marines in his own WWII film,
Flags of Our Fathers.
Citing
historical accuracy, Eastwood responded that his film was
specifically about the soldiers who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima
, pointing out that while black soldiers did fight
at Iwo Jima, the U.S. military was segregated during WWII, and none
of the men who raised the flag were black. Eastwood also
pointed out that his 1988 film
Bird, about the Jazz musician
Charlie Parker featured 90% black actors, and
sarcastically said that his upcoming movie about post-apartheid
South Africa will not feature a white
actor in the role of
Nelson Mandela.
He angrily said that Lee should "shut his face". Lee responded that
Eastwood was acting like an "angry old man", and argued that
despite making two Iwo Jima films back to back,
Letters from Iwo Jima and
Flags of Our Fathers, "there was not one black soldier in
both of those films". He added that he and Eastwood were "not on a
plantation." In fact, black Marines are seen in scenes during which
the mission is outlined, as well as during the initial landings,
when a wounded black Marine is carried away. During the end
credits, historical photographs taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima
show black Marines. Although black Marines fought in the battle,
they were restricted to auxiliary roles such as ammunition supply,
and were not involved in the battle's major assaults, but took part
in defensive actions. Lee later claimed that the event was
exaggerated by the media and that he and Eastwood had reconciled
through mutual friend
Steven
Spielberg, culminating in his sending Eastwood a print of
Miracle At St. Anna.
During a
lecture at Concordia
University
in Montreal, Canada
on February 11, 2009, Lee criticized how some in
the black community wrongfully associate "intelligence with acting
white, and ignorance with acting black", admonishing students and
parents to maintain more positive attitudes in order to follow
their dreams and achieving their goals.
References
External links