And now from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, the Act Spiles with your host, David Axelrod.

When Spike Lee announced that he was coming to Chicago to do a movie called Chirac, the reaction was less than enthusiastic in many parts of town.

I wasn't one of those people because we do have a problem in neighborhoods of our city that are war zones between gangs.

He produced a film that will be out in a few days that is grim in some respects and broad body satire in others, typical Spike Lee.

And I had a chance to sit down with him and talk about the film, about politics, about race, and of course about the New York Knicks.

Spike Lee, I'm going to say something that not everybody in Chicago said, which is welcome to Chicago.

Well, I mean, I get that when there was the bulls and the nicks, but no.

I've always gotten treated great in Chicago, so I have no complaints.

But you, but obviously there was a lot of anxiety among some...

And I understand it.

Yeah, because of the name of the movie.

Right, which I did not come up with. That was Chirac, what you're talking about.

Yes, there was a monocardial, there was an inventor, you might say, a thought up by local Chicago rappers who felt that the South Side Chicago is a war zone.

So they equated that with Iraq.

Yeah, not just the South Side, but the West Side as well.

Oh, but the West Side too.

Yes, so what made you decide to do this film?

Well, the co-writer Kevin Wilmot and I tried to do this six years ago.

He wrote a script where he had the adaptation of the Greek play, Lyce Estrada, which was written by Aristophanes, 411BC.

And the name of that script was called Got to Give It Up.

We had two readings for DreamWorks Studio. It didn't happen.

And a year ago, I was getting a lot of comments from people in Chicago,

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