Spike Lee

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Lee, Spike (b. 1957), film director, writer, and actor. Shelton Jackson “Spike” Lee grew up in Brooklyn and earned degrees at Morehouse College (1979) and New York University (1983) before embarking on a career as perhaps the most celebrated and accomplished African American filmmaker. Aside from his major films, Lee has also made music videos (for such artists as Miles Davis, Anita Baker, and Public Enemy), and television commercials; he produced, for example, campaign advertisements for Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential bid. An actor as well as a director, Lee has become a major, outspoken public and political figure. Much of his work is politically inflected, provocative, and often controversial, and treats issues of identity and community that resonate throughout African American literature.

Several of Lee's films deal with questions and dilemmas surrounding African American identity, gender, and class. His first full-length release, She's Gotta Have It (1986), about an African American woman and her three very different lovers, earned him the Prix de Jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival. The film features innovative narrative techniques and begins Lee's exploration of the possibilities of African American male identity. His second film, School Daze (1988), a musical set in an all-black college, explores questions of color and class lines, as well as sexism, within the African American community. In Mo'Better Blues (1990), a jazz musician must choose between two women, and ultimately between his music and fatherhood. Jungle Fever (1991) addresses interracial romance and drug addiction and their effects on the black communities. Clockers (1995) challenges “gangsta” stereotypes, complicating received narratives of African American poverty and violence.

Lee may be best known for his more broadly political films, Do the Right Thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992). The first, a dramatization of complex racial tensions and conflicts in Brooklyn, focuses on the efficacy (and risks) of violence as a response to racism or oppression. Lee situates the film's point of view between the proactive black nationalism of Malcolm X and the nonviolent philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., quoting from both at the film's end, choosing neither (or both). In his epic treatment of Malcolm X's life, based on Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), Lee traces Malcolm's political trajectory, including his pilgrimage to Mecca and his split with the Nation of Islam, and presents Malcolm X's legacy as a living symbol of African American struggle. The film, however, raised controversy about what some, including Amiri Baraka, considered the commercialization of Malcolm's image.

Lee often appears in his own films and commercials (though sometimes as minor characters). The resultant blurring of Lee's public persona with his fictional characters makes him appear more personally implicated in his films than many directors and recalls the similarly ambiguous positioning of the author/ narrator in many African American novels, beginning with William Wells Brown's Clotel (1853). In fact, two of his films— School Daze and 1994's Crooklyn, an episodic, nostalgic portrayal of Lee's Brooklyn childhood—have autobiographical origins. Lee's work thus evokes both the importance of autobiography as well as the tension between the personal and the political in African American literature.

Bibliography

• Spike Lee, Spike Lee's Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Film-making, 1987.
• Terry McMillan et al., Five for Five: The Films of Spike Lee, 1991.
• Gwen Sparks, “Shelton Jackson ‘Spike’ Lee,” in African American Encyclopedia, ed. Michael Williams, 1993, pp. 952–955

Gary Ashwill

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For more information on Spike Lee, visit Britannica.com.

Controversial filmmaker Spike Lee (born ca. 1957) is known for powerful films such as "She's Gotta Have It" (1986), "School Daze" (1988), "Do The Right Thing" (1989), "Mo' Better Blues" (1990), "Malcolm X" (1992), and many others.

"Fight the power," the theme song to his 1989 film Do the Right Thing, could easily be Spike Lee's personal motto. From his earliest days as a student filmmaker to his $33-million epic Malcolm X, Lee has shown a willingness to tackle prickly issues of relevance to the black community - and has savored every ounce of controversy his films invariably produce. "Spike loves to fight," the filmmaker's friend and business associate Nelson George told Vanity Fair. "There's a gleeful look he gets, a certain kind of excitement in his eyes when sh-t is being stirred up." "I guess you could call me an instigator," Lee admitted in an interview with Vogue.

Although the bane of Hollywood executives, Lee's delight in playing the provocateur has not only made his own films bankable, but has also created an industry-wide awareness of an untapped market niche. Following the unforeseen box office success of Lee's earliest films, Hollywood's gates have opened to a new generation of young African American filmmakers. "Spike put this trend in vogue," Warner Bros. executive vice president Mark Canton told Time. "His talent opened the door for others." Lee relishes his role as path-paver. "Every time there is a success," he explained to Ebony, "it makes it easier for other blacks. The industry is more receptive than it has ever been for black films and black actors. We have so many stories to tell, but we can't do them all. We just need more black filmmakers."

Shelton Jackson Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on the eve of the civil rights era. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, an area that would figure largely in his work as a mature filmmaker. Lee's awareness of his African American identity was established at an early age. His mother, Jacquelyn, infected her children with a schoolteacher's enthusiasm for black art and literature. "I was forced to read Langston Hughes, that kind of stuff," Lee told Vanity Fair. "And I'm glad my mother made me do that." His father, Bill, an accomplished jazz musician, introduced him to African American jazz and folk legends like Miles Davis and Odetta.

By the time he was old enough to attend school, the already independent Lee had earned the nickname his mother had given him as an infant, Spike - an allusion to his toughness. When he and his siblings were offered the option of attending the predominantly white private school where his mother taught, Lee opted instead to go the public route, where he would be assured of the companionship of black peers. "Spike used to point out the differences in our friends," recalled his sister Joie, who was a private school student. "By the time I was a senior," she told Mother Jones, "I was being channeled into white colleges." Lee chose to go to his father's and grandfather's all-black alma mater, Morehouse College, where he majored in mass communication.

Pursued Film Career

It was at Morehouse that Lee found his calling. Following his mother's unexpected death in 1977, Lee's friends tried to cheer him with frequent trips to the movies. He quickly became a fan of directors Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese, and Akira Kurosawa. But it wasn't until he had seen Michael Cimino's Deer Hunter that Lee knew the die was cast. His friend John Wilson recalled their conversation on the ride home from the film in an interview with Vanity Fair. "John, I know what I want to do," Lee had said. "I want to make films." But not just any films: Lee wanted to make films that would capture the black experience, and he was willing to do so by whatever means necessary. "Spike didn't just want to get in the door of the house," Wilson explained. "He wanted to get in, rearrange the furniture - then go back and publicize the password."

Lee pursued his passion at New York University, where he enrolled in the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. One of only a handful of African American students, he wasted no time incurring the wrath of his instructors with his affinity for "rearranging the furniture." As his first-year project, Lee produced a ten-minute short, The Answer, in which a black screenwriter is assigned to remake D.W. Griffith's classic film The Birth of a Nation. The Answer was panned. Although the film program's director, Eleanor Hamerow, told the New York Times, "it's hard to redo Birth of a Nation in ten minutes," Lee suspected that his critics were offended by his digs at the legendary director's stereotypical portrayals of black characters. "I was told I was whiskers away from being kicked out," he told Mother Jones. "They really didn't like me saying anything bad about D.W. Griffith, for sure."

Hardly deterred, Lee went on to produce a 45-minute film that won him the 1983 Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Student Academy Award, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. Although the honor enhanced his credibility as a director, it didn't pay the bills. Faced with the reality of survival, Lee worked for a movie distribution house cleaning and shipping film while hustling funds for a semi-auto-biographical film, The Messenger.

A coming-of-age story about a young bicycle messenger, The Messenger was aborted prematurely when sufficient funding failed to materialize. "We were in preproduction the entire summer of 1984, waiting on this money to come, and it never did," Lee told Vanity Fair. "Then, finally, I pulled the plug. I let a lot of people down, crew members and actors that turned down work. I wasn't the most popular person. We were devastated." But all was not lost; Lee had learned his lesson. "I saw I made the classic mistakes of a young filmmaker, to be overly ambitious, do something beyond my means and capabilities," he said. "Going through the fire just made me more hungry, more determined that I couldn't fail again."

Scored a Surprise Hit with She's Gotta Have It

When he filmed She's Gotta Have It a year later, Lee's determination payed off. Made on a shoestring $175,000 budget in just twelve days, the black-and-white picture was shot on one location with a limited cast and edited on a rented machine in Lee's apartment. By the time it was completed, Lee was so deeply in debt that his processing lab threatened to auction off the film's negative.

After Island Pictures agreed to distribute it, She's Gotta Have It finally opened in 1986. A light comedy centering on sex-loving artist Nola Darling and her relationships with three men, the film pokes fun at gender relations and offers an insightful spin on stereotypical macho male roles. It packed houses not only with the black audience Lee had anticipated, but also with a crossover, art-house crowd. Grossing over $7 million, the low-budget film was a surprise hit.

With the success of She's Gotta Have It, Lee became known in cinematic circles not only as a director, but also as a comic actor. Mars Blackmon - one of Nola's rival lovers, played by Lee - won an instant following with his now-famous line, "Please baby, please baby, please baby, baby, baby, please." "After She's Gotta Have It, Spike could have gone a long way with Mars Blackmon," the film's co-producer Monty Ross told Mother Jones. "He could've done Mars Blackmon the Sequel, Mars Blackmon Part 5. " Not anxious to be typecast, though, Lee "said to the studios 'Mars Blackmon is dead."'

School Daze: A Microcosm of Black Life

With a major hit under his belt and the backing of Island Pictures, Lee had more latitude with his next film, a musical called School Daze. An exposé of color discrimination within the black community, School Daze draws on Lee's years at Morehouse. "The people with the money," he told the New York Times, "most of them have light skin. They have the Porsches, the B.M.W.'s, the quote good hair unquote. The others, the kids from the rural south, have bad, kinky hair. When I was in school, we saw all this going on." This black caste system, Lee explained to Newsweek, was not a limited phenomenon. "I used the black college as a microcosm of black life."

School Daze created a brouhaha in the black community: while many applauded Lee's efforts to explore a complex social problem, others were offended by his willingness to "air dirty laundry." Everyone agreed that the film was controversial. When production costs reached $4 million, Island Pictures got hot feet and pulled out. Within two days, Lee had arranged a deal with Columbia Pictures that included an additional $2 million in production costs. But Columbia, then under the direction of David Puttnam, apparently misunderstood the film's true nature. "They saw music, they saw dancing, they saw comedy," Lee told Mother Jones. By the time School Daze was released in 1988, Puttnam had been ousted. Despite the fact that the studio's new management failed to promote it, the film grossed $15 million.

Explored Racial Tensions in Do the Right Thing

School Daze established Lee's reputation as a director ready to seize heady issues by the horns. Do the Right Thing, released in 1989, confirmed it. The story of simmering racial tension between Italian and African Americans in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, the film becomes a call to arms when violence erupts in response to the killing of a black man by white police officers. It ends on a note of seeming ambiguity with two irreconcilable quotes: Martin Luther King Jr.'s, "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind." followed by Malcolm X's, "I am not against violence in self-defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense. I call it intelligence."

The meaning of "the right thing," Lee told People, is not ambiguous. "Black America is tired of having their brothers and sisters murdered by the police for no reason other than being black." "I'm not advocating violence," he continued. "I'm saying I can understand it. If the people are frustrated and feel oppressed and feel this is the only way they can act, I understand."

Critical response to the film was both enthusiastic and wary. Media critic Roger Ebert called it "the most honest, complex and unblinking film I have ever seen about the subject of racism." Others voiced warnings of possible violence. New York magazine said, "Lee appears to be endorsing the outcome, and if some audiences go wild he's partly responsible."

Striking a Balance: Mo' Better Blues

Despite the fact that Do the Right Thing failed to inspire the predicted violence, Lee chose a lighter topic for his next film - a romance. The saga of a self-centered jazz trumpeter, Bleek Gilliam, whose personal life plays second fiddle to his music, "Mo' Better Blues is about relationships," Lee explained to Ebony. "It's not only about man-woman relationships, but about relationships in general - Bleek's relationship to his father and his manager, and his relationship with two female friends. Bleek's true love is music, and he is trying to find the right balance."

Bleek's character was inspired by Lee's jazz-musician father, Bill Lee, who wrote the film's score. "Bleek is my father's nickname," Lee told People. The character's dilemma - the need to temper the obsessive nature of the creative act - however, has universal relevance. That theme, Newsweek suggested, is one with which the director himself can readily identify.

Although recognized for its technical mastery and snappy score - partially the result of a $10 million budget - Mo' Better Blues received tepid reviews. "The movie is all notions and no shape," said the New Yorker, "hard, fierce blowing rather than real music." And more than one critic took offense at Lee's shallow treatment of female characters and ethnic stereotyping of Jewish jazz club owners Moe and Josh Flatbush.

Examined Interracial Love in Jungle Fever

In his next film, Jungle Fever, Lee explored the theme of romance further - but this time, from a more provocative slant. Inspired by the 1989 murder of black teenager Yusuf Hawkins by a mob of Italian-American youths, Jungle Fever examines the sexual mythology that surrounds interracial romance. "Yusuf was killed because they thought he was the black boyfriend of one of the girls in the neighborhood," Lee told Newsweek. "What it comes down to is that white males have problems with black men's sexuality. It's as plain and simple as that. They think we've got a hold on their women."

Jungle Fever looks at issues of race, class, and gender by focusing on community response to the office affair of a married, black architect and his Italian-American secretary. Lee concludes that interracial relationships are fueled by culturally based, stereotypical expectations. "You were curious about black … I was curious about white," the architect explains when the couple parts ways. But Lee insisted in an interview with Newsweek that the film does not advocate separatism. The characters aren't meant "to represent every interracial couple. This is just one couple that came together because of sexual mythology."

Although it received mixed reviews, Jungle Fever succeeded in whetting the appetite of Lee groupies for further controversy. Malcolm X, Lee's pièce de résistance, satisfied even the most voracious.

Malcolm X

Sparking controversy from the moment of its inception, the making of Malcolm X became a personal mission for Lee, who had long been an admirer of the legendary black leader. Vowing to cut no corners, Lee planned a biographical film of epic proportions that required months of research, numerous interviews, and even an unprecedented trip to Saudi Arabia for authentic footage of Malcolm's pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca; taken shortly before his assassination in 1965, this journey that is said to have brought on a significant transformation in Malcolm's ideology.

The final product, a three-hour-and-21-minute production, traces Malcolm X's development from his impoverished, rural roots to his final years as an ever-evolving activist. "I knew this was going to be the toughest thing I ever did," Lee told Time. "The film is huge in the canvas we had to cover and in the complexity of Malcolm X."

Lee fought tooth and nail to win the right to direct the film and to defend his vision of Malcolm X from the start. When he learned of plans by Warner Bros. to make Malcolm X, Norman Jewison had already been chosen as its director. After Lee told the New York Times that he had a "big problem" with a white man directing the film, Jewison agreed to bow out.

Lee, however, faced considerable resistance to his role as director of the film. Led by poet and activist Amiri Baraka (formerly Le Roi Jones), an ad hoc group that called itself the United Front to Preserve the Memory of Malcolm X and the Cultural Revolution voiced its opposition to Lee's direction in an open letter. "Our distress about Spike's making a film on Malcolm is based on our analysis of the [exploitative] films he has already made," Ebony quoted the group as saying.

But Lee's spat with Baraka was only a momentary setback. He still had to deal with reworking an unsatisfactory script, which had been started by African American novelist James Baldwin shortly before his death and completed by writer Arnold Perl. And when Lee first locked horns with Warner Bros. over Malcolm X's budget, he was bracing for another prolonged battle.

Initially, the director had requested $40 million for the film - an amount that was necessary, he claimed, in order to accurately portray all of the phases of his subject's life. The studio countered with a $20-million offer, prompting Lee to raise an additional $8.5 million by selling foreign rights to the film, kick in a portion of his own $3-million salary, and, to make up the difference, acquire the backing of a host of black celebrities, including Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Janet Jackson, and Prince - much to the studio's embarrassment. "It didn't look good for Warner Bros. that Spike had to go to prominent African Americans to finish the movie," noted Entertainment Weekly. When the film was completed, Barry Reardon, the studio's president of distribution, conceded, "Spike did a fabulous job. He knows theaters, he's very smart. This is Oscars all the way."

Although Malcolm X received no Oscars, the film played a significant role in the elevation of the black leader to mythic status; it also spawned a cultural phenomenon often referred to as "Malcolm-mania." By the time the movie was released, its logo, a bold "X," was pasted on everything from a ubiquitous baseball cap to posters, postcards, and T-shirts. What's more, a plethora of spin-off products was born, ranging from serious scholarly studies to a plastic Malcolm X doll, complete with podium and audio cassette. Promotional merchandise for the film was marketed by Lee himself through Spike's Joint, a chain of stores that comprise a portion of the director's growing business empire.

Lee is quick to defend himself against charges of commercialism. In fact, he says, Malcolm X's philosophy - that African Americans need to build their own economic base - is the motivation for his business investments. "I think we've done more to hold ourselves back than anybody," Lee told Esquire. "If anybody's seen all my films, I put most of the blame on our shoulders and say, 'Look, we're gonna have to do for ourselves.' … I feel we really have to address our financial base as a people."

Lee is Married

In mid-1993 Lee began shooting his seventh feature film, Crooklyn, a comic tribute to his childhood memories of life in Brooklyn in the 1970s. He managed to take a break from filming, however, in order to marry Linette Lewis. Lewis, a lawyer, had been romantically linked to Lee for a year prior to their wedding. Crooklyn was released in 1994 to mixed reviews and a tepid reception at the box office.

Lee fared far better in 1995 with his next film, Clockers, an adaptation of Richard Price's inner-city novel. Clockers tells the story of two brothers who fall under suspicion of murder. One, a drug-dealer, was ordered to kill the victim by his supplier. The other, an upstanding family man, confesses to the crime, saying that he was attacked in the parking lot. On one level the movie unravels as a whodunit, yet ultimately the "who matters less than the why." According to Richard Schickel of Time, "[Clockers] is more than a murder mystery … At its best, it is an intense and complex portrait of an urban landscape on which the movies' gaze has not often fallen. Yes, this housing project is home to a feckless delinquent population. But it is also home to middle-class black families struggling to preserve their values.…"The film won outstanding reviews, with some criticsciting it as Lee's best work. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "Clockers is a work of staggering intelligence and emotional force - a mosaic of broken dreams." Despite the positive critical reception, the film drew neither large audiences nor any Oscar nominations.

In Girl 6, released in 1996, Lee returned to the theme of female sexuality. The movie features an aspiring actress, who becomes so fed up with movie executive asking her for sexual favors, that she resorts to becoming a phone-sex worker in order to make ends meet. The screenplay was written by Suzan-Lori Parks, a respected African-American playwright. Despite her esteemed reputation, critics were disappointed with film's lack of insight into the heroine's character. Critical reception was lukewarm. Stanley Kauffmann of the New Republic wrote, "Lee directs with as close to total lack of conviction as I have seen in a director whose convictions have carried him over some rough spots in the past."

His next film, Get on the Bus, focuses on an eclectic group of African American men riding a bus on their way to the Million Man March in Washington D.C. The men include homosexuals, a mixed race policeman, a Republican, and both young and old men. They learn to overcome their differences as they unite for the march. Get on the Bus, despite its low turnout in movie theaters and criticism by some African Americans, succeeds in capturing the spirit of the Million Man March. In 1997 Lee released 4 Little Girls, a documentary about the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church in 1963. A moving work about a hideous hate crime that claimed the lives of four young girls in their Sunday school, Lee interviewed family members as well as prominent spokespeople such as Coretta Scott King and Walter Cronkite in order to place the event in a broader context of American race relations.

Lee's innate ability to "do for himself," his father suggested in an interview with Mother Jones, is the key to his success as a filmmaker. "Spike was kind of chosen," he explained. "I think there was something spiritual about it. He inherited it from his family. [The ability] to make a statement." Fellow filmmaker John Singleton, writing in Essence, said of Lee, "No other Black contemporary entertainer can claim to enlighten so many young Black people." But, as he stated in the New York Times, Lee wants even more to prove "that an all-black film directed by a black person can still be universal."

Further Reading

America, August 19, 1989; September 15, 1990; August 10, 1991.

American Film, July/August 1989; September 1989.

Ann Arbor News, October 30, 1992; November 18, 1992.

Commonweal, November 8, 1991.

Detroit News, January 26, 1992.

Ebony, November 1991.

Emerge, November 1991, pp. 28-32.

Entertainment Weekly, November 27, 1992.

Esquire, August 1991.

Essence, November 1991, p. 64.

Film Comment, July/August 1989.

Jet, June 10, 1991; October 8, 1996.

Maclean's, February 17, 1992, p. 60.

Mother Jones, September 1989.

Ms., September/October 1991.

Newsweek, February 15, 1988; August 6, 1990; June 10, 1991; February 3, 1992, p. 30; November 16, 1992, pp. 67-72.

New York, June 17, 1991.

New Yorker, August 13, 1990; June 17, 1991; October 12, 1992.

New York Times, August 9, 1987; November 15, 1992; November 29, 1992; December 6, 1992.

People, July 10, 1989; March 5, 1990; August 13, 1990; June 22, 1992.

Rolling Stone, November 26, 1992, pp. 36-40, 80-81.

Time, June 17, 1991; March 16, 1992.

Upscale, October/November 1992.

Vanity Fair, June 1991, pp. 70, 80-92.

Video, February 1990; February 1991.

Vogue, August 1990.

film director; screenwriter

Personal Information

Born Shelton Jackson Lee, March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, GA; son of William (a musician and composer) and Jacquelyn (a teacher; maiden name, Shelton) Lee.
Education: Morehouse College, B.A., 1979; New York University, M.F.A., 1982.

Career

Screenwriter, director, actor. Directed Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, 1982; launched Hollywood career with low-budget, black- and-white film She's Gotta Have It, 1986; also director of music videos and commercials for Nike, Levi-Strauss, and Diet Coke. Opened film production studio 40 Acres and a Mule, 1987, and first Spike's Joint promotional outlet, 1990.

Life's Work

"Fight the power," the theme song to his 1989 film Do the Right Thing, could easily be Spike Lee's personal motto. From his earliest days as a student filmmaker, Lee has shown a willingness to tackle prickly issues of relevance to the African American community--and has savored every ounce of controversy his films invariably produce. "Spike loves to fight," the filmmaker's friend and business associate Nelson George told Vanity Fair. "There's a gleeful look he gets, a certain kind of excitement in his eyes when sh** is being stirred up." "I guess you could call me an instigator," Lee admitted in an interview with Vogue.

Although the bane of Hollywood executives, Lee's delight in playing the provocateur has not only made his own films profitable, but has also created an industry-wide awareness of an untapped market niche. Following the unforeseen box office success of Lee's earliest films, Hollywood's gates have opened to a new generation of young African American filmmakers. "Spike put this trend in vogue," Warner Bros. executive vice president Mark Canton told Time. "His talent opened the door for others." Lee relishes his role as path-paver. "Every time there is a success," he explained to Ebony, "it makes it easier for other blacks. The industry is more receptive than it has ever been for black films and black actors. We have so many stories to tell, but we can't do them all. We just need more black filmmakers."

Shelton Jackson Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 20, 1957. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, an area that would become the setting of many of his films. Lee's awareness of his African American heritage was established at an early age. His mother, Jacquelyn, instilled within her children an appreciation for African American art and literature. "I was forced to read Langston Hughes, that kind of stuff," Lee told Vanity Fair. "And I'm glad my mother made me do that." His father, Bill, an accomplished jazz musician, introduced him to African American jazz and folk legends such as Miles Davis and Odetta.

By the time he was old enough to attend school, Lee had earned the nickname his mother had given him as an infant, Spike--an allusion to his toughness. When he and his siblings were offered the option of attending the predominantly white private school where his mother taught, Lee decided to enroll in the public schools so that he could experience companionship with African Americans. "Spike used to point out the differences in our friends," recalled his sister Joie, who was a private school student. "By the time I was a senior," she told Mother Jones, "I was being channeled into white colleges." Lee decided to major in mass communications at Morehouse College, which is an African American college and his father and grandfather's alma mater.

While at Morehouse College, Lee discovered his true calling. Following his mother's untimely death in 1977, Lee's friends tried to cheer him with frequent trips to the movies. He was greatly impressed with the work of directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese, and Akira Kurosawa. However, it was not until he viewed Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter that Lee realized that he wanted to become a filmmaker. His friend John Wilson recalled their conversation on the ride home from the film in an interview with Vanity Fair. "John, I know what I want to do," Lee had said. "I want to make films." Lee was determined to create films that captured the essence of the African American experience and was willing to produce them by any means necessary. "Spike didn't just want to get in the door of the house," Wilson explained. "He wanted to get in, rearrange the furniture--then go back and publicize the password."

Following graduation from Morehouse College, Lee enrolled in New York University's Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. Before long, Lee clashed with his instructors. As his first-year film project, Lee produced a ten-minute short, The Answer, in which an African American screenwriter is assigned to remake legendary director D.W. Griffith's classic film The Birth of a Nation. The Answer was widely criticized by his instructors. Although the film program's director, Eleanor Hamerow, told the New York Times, "it's hard to redo Birth of a Nation in ten minutes," Lee suspected that his critics were offended by his digs at Griffith's stereotypical portrayals of black characters. "I was told I was whiskers away from being kicked out," he told Mother Jones. "They really didn't like me saying anything bad about D.W. Griffith, for sure."

Lee was unfazed by the criticism The Answer received and produced a 45-minute film entitled Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. The film went on to earn Lee the 1983 Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Student Academy Award. Although the honor enhanced Lee's credibility as a director, it didn't pay the bills. Faced with the need to survive, Lee worked for a movie distribution house cleaning and shipping film while raising funds for a semi-autobiographical film, The Messenger.

A coming-of-age story about a young bicycle messenger, The Messenger was aborted prematurely when sufficient funding failed to materialize. "We were in pre-production the entire summer of 1984, waiting on this money to come, and it never did," Lee told Vanity Fair. "Then, finally, I pulled the plug. I let a lot of people down, crew members and actors that turned down work. I wasn't the most popular person. We were devastated." But all was not lost; Lee had learned his lesson. "I saw I made the classic mistakes of a young filmmaker, to be overly ambitious, do something beyond my means and capabilities," he said. "Going through the fire just made me more hungry, more determined that I couldn't fail again."

Lee's determination paid off when he filmed She's Gotta Have It in 1985. Completed in only 12 days and on a shoestring budget of $175,000, the black-and-white film was shot on one location with a limited cast and edited on a rented machine in Lee's apartment. By the time She's Gotta Have It was completed, Lee was so deeply in debt that his processing lab threatened to auction off the film's negative.

After Island Pictures agreed to distribute it, She's Gotta Have It finally opened in theaters in 1986. A light comedy centering on sex- loving artist Nola Darling and her relationships with three men, the film pokes fun at gender relations and offers an insightful spin on stereotypical male roles. It was a hit not only with African American audiences, but also with crossover, art-house patrons. Grossing over $7 million dollars, the film was a surprise hit.

With a major hit under his belt and the backing of Island Pictures, Lee released his next film, School Daze, in 1988. An expose of color discrimination within the African American community, School Daze draws on Lee's years at Morehouse. "The people with the money," he told the New York Times, "most of them have light skin. They have the Porsches, the B.M.W.'s, the quote good hair unquote. The others, the kids from the rural south, have bad, kinky hair. When I was in school, we saw all this going on." This black caste system, Lee explained to Newsweek, was not a limited phenomenon. "I used the black college as a microcosm of black life."

School Daze created controversy within the African American community. Although Lee was applauded for exploring a complex social problem, many people were offended by his willingness to "air dirty laundry." When production costs ballooned to $4 million, Island Pictures pulled out of the project. Within two days, Lee had arranged a deal with Columbia Pictures that included an allowance for an additional $2 million in production costs. Although Columbia didn't actively promote School Daze, it still grossed $15 million.

School Daze established Lee's reputation as a director who was willing to tackle controversial issues. He continued this trend with the release of Do the Right Thing in 1989. The story of simmering racial tensions between Italian and African Americans in the Bedford- Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, Do the Right Thing becomes a call to arms when violence erupts in response to the killing of an African American man by white police officers. The meaning of "the right thing," Lee told People, is not ambiguous. "Black America is tired of having their brothers and sisters murdered by the police for no reason other than being black." "I'm not advocating violence," he continued. "I'm saying I can understand it. If the people are frustrated and feel oppressed and feel this is the only way they can act, I understand."

In 1990, Lee chose a romantic theme for his next film, Mo' Better Blues. The film tells the story of a self-centered jazz trumpeter, Bleek Gilliam, whose personal life plays second fiddle to his music. "Mo' Better Blues is about relationships," Lee explained to Ebony. "It's not only about man-woman relationships, but about relationships in general--Bleek's relationship to his father and his manager, and his relationship with two female friends. Bleek's true love is music, and he is trying to find the right balance."

Although recognized for its technical mastery and snappy score, Mo' Better Blues received only tepid reviews. "The movie is all notions and no shape," said the New Yorker, "hard, fierce blowing rather than real music." More than one critic took offense at Lee's shallow treatment of female characters and the ethnic stereotyping of Jewish jazz club owners Moe and Josh Flatbush.

In his 1991 film, Jungle Fever, Lee explored the theme of romance from a more provocative slant. Inspired by the 1989 murder of black teenager Yusuf Hawkins by a mob of Italian American youths, Jungle Fever revolves around the office affair of a married, African American architect and his Italian American secretary. The film examines the sexual mythology that surrounds interracial romance. "Yusuf was killed because they thought he was the black boyfriend of one of the girls in the neighborhood," Lee told Newsweek. "What it comes down to is that white males have problems with black men's sexuality. It's as plain and simple as that. They think we've got a hold on their women." Although it received only mixed reviews, Jungle Fever set the stage for Lee's next controversial film, Malcolm X.

The filming of Malcolm X became a personal mission for Lee, who had long been an admirer of the legendary African American leader. He planned a biographical film of epic proportions that required months of research, numerous interviews, and even an unprecedented trip to Saudi Arabia for authentic footage of Malcolm's 1964 pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. The film, a three-hour-and-21-minute epic, traces Malcolm X's development from his impoverished, rural roots to his final years as an ever-evolving activist. "I knew this was going to be the toughest thing I ever did," Lee told Time. "The film is huge in the canvas we had to cover and in the complexity of Malcolm X."

Although Malcolm X received no Oscars, the film was a box office hit and played a significant role in the elevation of Malcolm X to mythic status. It also spawned a cultural phenomenon often referred to as "Malcolm-mania." By the time the movie was released in 1992, its logo, a bold "X," was pasted on everything from a ubiquitous baseball cap to posters, postcards, and T-shirts. In addition, a wide variety of spin-off products was born, ranging from serious scholarly studies to a plastic Malcolm X doll, complete with podium and audio cassette. Lee was quick to defend himself against charges of commercialism. He remarked that his merchandising of the film was in line with Malcolm X's own philosophy--that African Americans need to build their own economic base-- "I think we've done more to hold ourselves back than anybody," Lee told Esquire. "If anybody's seen all my films, I put most of the blame on our shoulders and say, 'Look, we're gonna have to do for ourselves.'... I feel we really have to address our financial base as a people."

Following the success of Malcolm X, Lee fell into a moviemaking slump as his next three projects failed at the box office. His 1994 semi- autobiographical film Crooklyn grossed only $13.6 million, a poor showing when compared with Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, which made $28 million and $33 million, respectively. Crooklyn chronicled the everyday struggles of the Carmichaels, a middle-class African American family living in Brooklyn during the 1970s. Critics criticized the film's structure, which was based more on random incidents in the life of the family than on an actual plot.

Lee's 1995 film, Clockers, focused on a murder investigation in a New York City housing project. The plot revolved around a pair of African American brothers--the older one is struggling to get out of poverty through honest means, while the younger works as one of a cadre of drug pushers known as "clockers," because they work around the clock. The brothers become the focus of a murder investigation when the older brother confesses to a killing that the younger brother had been ordered to commit by a local drug lord. The movie did not fare well at the box office.

In 1996, Lee released Girl 6. This comedy starred Theresa Randle as an aspiring actress who becomes a phone-sex operator. Relishing the control she exerts over the men who call her, a control which is absent in her own life, Girl 6 becomes obsessed with her work. Critics widely panned the film and criticized its shallow depictions of women. Girl 6 also fizzled at the box office. That same year, Lee produced the film Get on the Bus. The plot revolved around a busload of African American men who are traveling to the historic Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Along the way, the men discuss issues such as manhood, religion, politics, and race. By the time they arrive in Washington, D.C. the men, once strangers, have become brothers and friends. Released one year after the Million Man March, the movie was a critical success although it did not receive widespread distribution.

In 1997, Lee released a documentary film 4 Little Girls. The film chronicles the events leading up to the September 15, 1963 bombing of an African American church in Birmingham, Alabama by white racists. The bombing claimed the lives of four girls who were in the church at the time. The film, which included archival film footage, photographs, and interviews with people active in the civil rights movement, resurrected a painful chapter in American history and received favorable critical reviews.

Lee married his two great loves--filmmaking and basketball--for the 1998 movie He Got Game. The movie depicts the corruption and temptation which are the hallmarks of professional sports recruiting, as experienced by a high school basketball star, Jesus Shuttlesworth. Complicating the decisions surrounding Jesus' career is his convict- father, Jake, who has been temporarily released from jail on orders from the governor to convince Jesus to attend the governor's alma mater. Starring the popular actor Denzel Washington as Jake, and Milwaukee Bucks guard Ray Allen as Jesus, the film received favorable reviews.

Lee diverged from his characteristic themes and produced a film with a predominantly white cast in 1999. The movie, called Summer of Sam, was about the Son of Sam killings in New York City in 1977. He branched again into comedy--albeit sarcastic and seething--with Bamboozled, then released a comedy documentary, The Original Kings of Comedy, in 2000. In 2001, among other projects, Lee produced a miniseries for television about the man who cofounded the Black Panthers, entitled A Huey P. Newton Story.

In addition to filmmaking, Lee is an astute businessman. He has established Spike's Joint, a chain of apparel boutiques, in several cities and created his own record label, 40 Acres & A Mule Musicworks. He also owns a production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks. Lee also formed his own advertising agency, Spike/DDB, after partnering with the noted advertising agency, DDB Needham, in early 1997. He also authored Best Seat in the House: A Basketball Memoir, which was published in 1997.

In October of 1993, Lee married Tonya Linette Lewis after a brief courtship. Their daughter, Satchel, was born in 1994. In 1997, Tonya gave birth to their son, Jackson Lewis. The Lee family resides in New York City where Lee, a rabid basketball fan, is a regular spectator at New York Knicks basketball games.

Awards

1983 Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Student Academy Award for Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads; Cannes Film Festival's Prix de Jeunesse, 1986, for She's Gotta Have It; two Academy Award nominations for Do the Right Thing; best documentary, Broadcast Film Critics Association, Four Little Girls, 1997; best documentary, Golden Satellite, Four Little Girls, 1997; Cesar Award for lifetime achievement, 2003; lifetime achievement award, Fourth Annual Lyrical Underground, 2004

Works

Writings

• By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of Making Malcolm X, Hyperion, 1992.
• Best Seat in the House: A Basketball Memoir, Random House, 1997.

Selected Filmography

• She's Gotta Have It, Island, 1986. School Daze, Columbia, 1988. Do the Right Thing, Universal Pictures, 1989. Mo' Better Blues, Universal Pictures, 1990. Jungle Fever, Universal Pictures, 1991. Malcolm X, Warner Bros., 1992. Crooklyn, Universal Pictures, 1994. Clockers, Universal Pictures, 1995. Girl 6, 20th Century Fox, 1996. Get on the Bus, Sony Pictures, 1996. 4 Little Girls, 40 Acres and a Mule, 1997. He Got Game, Buena Vista Pictures, 1998; Summer of Sam, 1999; Original Kings of Comedy, 2000; Bamboozled, New Line Cinema, 2000; 25th Hour, Touchstone Pictures, 2002; She Hate Me, Sony Pictures, 2004;

Further Reading

Sources

• America, August 19, 1989; September 15, 1990; August 10, 1991.
• American Film, July/August 1989; September 1989.
• Ann Arbor News, October 30, 1992; November 18, 1992.
• Chicago Sun-Times, September 13, 1995.
• Commonweal, November 8, 1991.
• Detroit News, January 26, 1992.
• Ebony, November 1991.
• Emerge, November 1991, pp. 28-32.
• Entertainment Weekly, November 27, 1992.
• Esquire, August 1991.
• Essence, November 1991, p. 64.
• Film Comment, July/August 1989.
• Jet, June 10, 1991.
• Maclean's, February 17, 1992, p. 60.
• Mother Jones, September 1989.
• Ms., September/October 1991.
• The Nation, June 1, 1998, pp. 35-36.
• Newsweek, February 15, 1988; August 6, 1990; June 10, 1991; February 3, 1992, p. 30; November 16, 1992, pp. 67-72; April 22, 1996, p. 75.
• New York, June 17, 1991.
• New Yorker, August 13, 1990; June 17, 1991; October 12, 1992.
• New York Times, August 9, 1987; November 15, 1992; November 29, 1992; December 6, 1992.
• People, July 10, 1989; March 5, 1990; August 13, 1990; June 22, 1992.
• Rolling Stone, November 26, 1992, pp. 36-40, 80-81.
• Time, June 17, 1991; March 16, 1992; September 18, 1995.
• Upscale, October/November 1992.
• Vanity Fair, June 1991, pp. 70, 80-92.
• Video, February 1990; February 1991.
• Vogue, August 1990.
• Washington Post, March 22, 1996; October 18, 1996.
• Other
• Additional information for this profile was obtained from the IAC Insite World-Wide Web site, http://web4.iac-insite.com/insite, and the CelebSite, last updated January 12, 1998, http://www.celebsite.com/ (accessed September 2, 1998).

— Nina Goldstein and Rebecca Parks

Lee, Spike (Shelton Jackson Lee), 1957-, American filmmaker, b. Atlanta, Ga. He gained recognition as a student at New York Univ. with his graduation film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1982). His films usually celebrate the richness of African-American culture and address such societal problems as racism, sexism, and narcotics addiction. She's Gotta Have It (1986), a low-budget film mainly about sexual relations and attitudes, established Lee as a commercially viable director. His Do the Right Thing (1989) presented the complexities and tensions behind interracial relations. Many of his later films have been controversial-Jungle Fever (1991), an exploration of interracial relations and attitudes; Malcolm X (1992), based on the life of the African-American leader; Clockers (1995), a violent portrait of life at the lowest reaches of the drug underworld; Girl 6 (1996), a high-spirited portrayal of a young woman in the phone sex business; and The Original Kings of Comedy (2000), a series of racially charged stand-up routines by four contemporary African-American comedians. He broke with his traditional style and subject matter to make Inside Man (2006), a polished heist movie. Lee first turned to documentary with 4 Little Girls (1996), a moving study of the fatal 1963 bombing of a black church in Alabama. The made-for-TV When the Levees Broke (2006) documents Hurricane Katrina and its harrowing aftermath in New Orleans; If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise (2010) is its sequel.

Quotes:

"It is really important that young people find something that they want to do and pursue it with passion. I'm very passionate about filmmaking. It's what I love to do."

"Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing... then it will be done, but not until then."

"You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here."

Biography

While African-American filmmakers have been a staple of the cinematic landscape since the pioneering work of Oscar Micheaux during the '20s, none have had the same cultural or artistic impact as Spike Lee. As a writer, director, actor, producer, author, and entrepreneur, Lee has revolutionized the role of black talent in Hollywood, tearing away decades of stereotypes and marginalized portrayals to establish a new arena for African-American voices to be heard. His movies -- a series of outspoken and provocative socio-political critiques informed by an unwavering commitment toward challenging cultural assumptions not only about race but also class and gender identity -- both solidified his own standing as one of contemporary cinema's most influential figures and furthered the careers of actors including Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, and Laurence Fishburne. Along the way, Lee even cleared a path for up-and-coming black filmmakers such as John Singleton, Matty Rich, Darnell Martin, Ernest Dickerson (Lee's one-time cinematographer), and Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes. Born Shelton Jackson Lee in Atlanta, GA, on March 20, 1957, he was raised in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. The son of jazz musician Bill Lee, his first love was sports; an obsessive fan of the New York Knicks basketball club, his initial goal was to become a major-league baseball player. Only while attending Atlanta's prestigious Morehouse College did Lee's affection for film begin to surface, and while earning a degree in mass communications he returned to New York to make his first movie, 1977's Last Hustle in Brooklyn, a portrait of the area's Black and Puerto Rican communities shot with a Super-8 camera during the height of the disco craze. Upon graduating from Morehouse, he enrolled in New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, earning his Master of Fine Arts Degree in film production. His senior feature, 1982's Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, was the first student effort ever showcased in Lincoln Center's "New Directors, New Films" series, and also garnered the Student Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The success of Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop encouraged Lee to hire representation at the William Morris Agency, but when no studio contracts were forthcoming, he began exploring alternate means of independent financing. After a series of setbacks, he managed to secure 125,000 dollars to produce the stylish and sexy 1986 comedy She's Gotta Have It, which took the Prix de Jeunesse award at Cannes and earned close to 9 million dollars at the box office. Hollywood soon came calling, and in 1988, he released his major studio debut School Daze; however, it was his third film, 1989's Do the Right Thing, which launched Lee to the forefront of the American filmmaking community. A provocative, insightful meditation on simmering racial tension, it was among the year's most controversial and talked-about films and went on to net an Oscar nomination for "Best Screenplay" (although not a nod for "Best Picture," a slight in and of itself the subject of much outcry). The jazz world was the subject of '90s Mo' Better Blues, which opened to lukewarm press; however, with his next effort, the following year's Jungle Fever, Lee was again at the center of controversy over the picture's subject matter, interracial romance. Upon the movie's completion, he began work on his long-awaited dream project, 1992's Malcolm X. Shot at various points across the globe (including Mecca), the three-hour biopic of the slain civil-rights leader reached theaters in its intended form only after celebrities including Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, and Prince helped defray financing costs in the wake of Warner Bros.' mandate that Lee trim the film's running time by half an hour. After so many politically charged pictures, Lee next shot the change-of-pace Crooklyn, a relatively light serio-comedy based largely on his own experiences growing up in Brooklyn in the early '70s and written in tandem with his sisters Joie and Cinqué. Next up was 1995's Clockers, a highly regarded urban crime drama based on the novel by Richard Price. In 1996, Lee released two very different features. The first, Girl 6, looked at the world of a young actress forced to accept work as a phone-sex operator, while the other, Get on the Bus, paid tribute to the historic Million Man March on its one-year anniversary, with financing courtesy of figures including Danny Glover, Wesley Snipes, and Johnny Cochran. While a long-planned biography of baseball great Jackie Robinson continued to languish in limbo, in 1997, Lee did realize another dream with 4 Little Girls, a documentary about the racially motivated bombing of a Birmingham, AL, church that killed four pre-teens in 1963. Upon signing a three-year, first-look production contract with Columbia, he then began work on He Got Game, a study of the politics of high-school basketball starring his frequent leading man Denzel Washington. The film opened to mixed reviews, which did little to diminish the anticipation surrounding Lee's next film, Summer of Sam. Set in Brooklyn during the long, hot summer of 1977 when serial killer David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz terrorized the city, the film looks at the murders through the eyes of various borough inhabitants, played in part by Adrien Brody, Jennifer Esposito, Mira Sorvino, and John Leguizamo. The film generated mixed responses, eliciting the love-it or hate-it reactions so common among critics when reviewing Lee's work. The director's subsequent project, Bamboozled (2000), incurred a similar reaction: an excoriating satire on the images of blacks in (predominately white) popular culture. The film won over a number of critics even as it alienated others, yet it was another testament to Lee's status as one of the most complex and divisive filmmakers of both the late 20th century and the early 21st century. In the following years Lee would tackle a quartet of more personal projects with A Huey P. Newton Story, Come Rain or Come Shine, Jim Brown: All-American, and a ten-minute segment of Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet before again turning to feature films with The 25th Hour. A rare film for Lee in that it basically eschewed his usual topic of racial issues for a rather straightforward adaptation of David Benioff's popular novel, The 25th Hour. The film found Lee branching off to surprising effect, even if it didn't score a direct hit at the box office. After stepping behind the camera to direct the Showtime gang drama Sucker Free City in 2004, Lee moved back into feature territory with the 2004 comedy drama She Hate Me. In 2006 Lee enjoyed his biggest box office success in a few years with the crime thriller Inside Man, and earned critical raves for When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, a documentary about Hurricane Katrina that he followed up four years later with the sequel If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

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