Spike Lee on His “Dream Project”

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Lizza, Wnyc, Wickenden, News, President, Washington, Obama, Barack, Politics

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

The director Spike Lee looked back at the length and breadth of his career so far during a sit-down with David Remnick at the New Yorker Festival. Although Lee’s storied filmography may be familiar to movie buffs, few are likely to know as much about his humble beginnings as the scion of a celebrated, but often unemployed, musician—the late Bill Lee. The young Spike Lee bore some resentment toward his father, an upright-bass player who eschewed countless gigs because he refused to play an electric bass guitar. “[I]t wasn’t until later that I saw that, yo, this is his life. He was not going to play music that he didn’t want to play.” As an artist in his own right, Lee has taken a similar approach to filmmaking. He has tackled a myriad of genres and difficult subject matter, without sacrificing his unique voice and social consciousness to satisfy Hollywood. “Some things you just can’t compromise,” he told Remnick. Now in his fourth decade as a filmmaker, Lee hopes to one day make a long-gestating bio-pic about Joe Louis and have his career last as long as that of one of his idols. “Kurosawa was eighty-six!” the sixty-six-year-old Lee said, of the Japanese filmmaker’s retirement age. “I got to at least get to Kurosawa.” In this interview, Lee mentions the influence of Kurosawa and several other notable filmmakers. For further reading, here is a list of ninety-five films he has deemed essential for any cinephile.

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0:44.0	Things people love.
0:49.3	This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick.
1:06.0	If you came of age watching Spike Lee movies as I did, or joints as he likes to call him, you quickly became familiar with his public persona.
1:09.0	He was ambitious, uncompromising, and outspoken, and as far as his critics were concerned, maybe a little too outspoken.
1:14.6	But Spike Lee was a groundbreaking voice, especially for black audiences.
1:19.6	Some of us, we got to see the richness and complexity of our lives portrayed on screen for the very first time watching his films.
1:26.6	His 40 years of filmmaking include classics like Malcolm X and do the right thing. portrayed on screen for the very first time watching his films.
1:31.5	His 40 years of filmmaking include classics like Malcolm X and do the right thing.
1:36.1	Several documentaries, including a couple about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans,
1:39.8	and recent favorites like Black Klansman and Defive Bloods.
1:42.9	And he's still making movies destined to stir the pot.
1:45.0	The subject of his latest project? Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
1:48.0	Classic Spike Lee.
	...

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