It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Keith Phipps here with Scott Tobias, Genevieve Koski, and Tasha Robinson.

Here in the next picture show, we believe that no film exists in a vacuum and that all culture is more interesting in context.

So every week, we get together to talk over a classic film and consider how it relates

to a current movie. This week, we're going to look at two Spike Lee films for visiting

two chapters in 20th century history and starring two different members of the Washington family.

Tasha, what can you tell us about the pairing we'll be discussing? Well, first, we'll be taking a look

at a movie that was decades in the making and that almost didn't get finished. Released in late 1992, Spike Lee's Malcolm X brought Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm Axe to the Big Screen. Starring Denzel, Washington, it was a film many others had tried to make and when Lee had to fight to make and finish his way. Epic and length and scope, it spans the years between Malcolm X's youth as a hustler in wartime, Boston,

and Harlem, through his imprisonment, religious conversion, assent as a representative of the nation

of Islam, and assassination in 1965 at the age of 39. Spoilers, Keith. Then we'll discuss Lee's

latest, Black Klansman, starring Denzel Washington's son, John David Washington, in the fact-based story of Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department, whose phone call to the local Ku Klux Klan led to him becoming a member of the organization, sort of in the 1970s. Together they cover nearly a half century of history, but not to tip our hand too much about what they had in common, they both double as urgent calls to look to the past to understand the present. We'll dig into

Malcolm X after the break. You don't even know who you are. Who are you?

Say, Roseland. Roseland!

He was a pusher, a hustler, a thief.

You ready to tackle the streets?

Yeah, I'm ready. Let him come.

Poo! Ah! Ha ha ha ha! Ready to tackle the streets? Yeah, I'm ready. Let him come. He was loved, respected, convicted.

Stayed your number, little.

I forgot it.

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