Adam Howard: Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard in today for David Remnick. If you came of age watching Spike Lee movies as I did, or joints as he likes to call them, you quickly became familiar with his public persona. He was ambitious, uncompromising, and outspoken, and as far as his critics were concerned, maybe a little too outspoken.

Spike Lee was a groundbreaking voice, especially for Black audiences. For 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. His 40 years of showmaking include classics like Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing, several documentaries, including a couple about Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and recent favorites like BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods. He's still making movies destined to stir the pot. The subject of his latest project, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, classic Spike Lee.

[applause]

Colin Kaepernick: Thank you, thank you. Can I say something first before we start? Is Brooklyn in the house?

[applause]

Colin Kaepernick: Now we can start.

Adam Howard: David Remnick sat down the other day with Spike Lee at the New Yorker Festival. They began talking about Spike's father, a bassist and composer, Bill Lee, died at age 94 this year.

[music]

David Remnick: In his time, your dad was the bass player that everybody wanted to play with. It's an amazing thing. Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin. He played on It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, with one Bob Dylan, John Lee Hooker, everybody.

Spike Lee: First album with Gordon Lightfoot, first album by Simon & Garfunkel. He's on Puff, the Magic Dragon, he's on bass with Peter, Paul, Mary. My father was the top folk bassist, but his thing was jazz. When Bob Dylan went electric, everybody went electric. People wanted to continue to work with my father, but he didn't want to play electric bass.

David Remnick: He wanted to continue playing upright.

Spike Lee: Yes, upright.

David Remnick: He was a traditionalist.

Spike Lee: My mother, who every weekend used to shop at Bloomingdale's on Saks Avenue, that had to stop. Because there was no money coming into the house, because my father refused to play electric bass. My mother had to work, she started teaching at St. Ann's in Brooklyn Heights.

David Remnick: What was your relationship like with your father? It got complicated at times. Talk about that.

Spike Lee: Growing up and seeing the way my mother was working and coming home and cooking and cleaning for five crazy kids, and my father just being at his piano and just writing music, it wasn't until later that I saw that this is his life. He was not going to play music that he didn't want to play. It was great that we were able to work together. That conviction he had, I've taken a lot of that. That some things you just can't compromise.

David Remnick: What was it like to work with him on films? He did the music for I dont know, several--

Spike Lee: He did all my student films. She used to have at School Daze, Do The Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues. What happened was, is that my father did not believe in technology. When you're doing a score, "All right, this scene, daddy, is two minutes long."

David Remnick: Only two minutes long.

Spike Lee: Then we'd go in the studio, it's like, "What are you doing?" That's when I had to bring in Terrence Blanchard, the great composer. Terrence Blanchard played with Branford Marsalis on School Daze on Do The Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues. When you see Denzel playing, that's Terrence playing. When you see Wesley Snipes playing horn, that's Branford Marsalis.

(FILM - Mo' Better Blues)

[music-Mo Better Blues]

[music]

[end of video]

David Remnick: Tell me what it was like growing up in your house. Was the discussion of music and art at the forefront?

Spike Lee: Anybody that's seen the film Crooklyn, that is autobiographical, that was our house.

[applause]

(FILM - Crooklyn plays)

Spike Lee: We lived in a very artistic household. Thank God our parents were like-- They said, "Whatever you want to do, just be good at it." There wasn't steering us away from the arts. I think a lot of times when it comes to the arts, parents kill their children's dreams. Because art, we're not spending all this money so you could make pottery or a poet or something. You'd be a lawyer, doctor, whatever you want. It was just natural that we would be in art, but it wasn't drawn in our head. My mother was taking me to movies a little. My father hated Hollywood movies, so I was my mother's date.

David Remnick: What would she take you to see? What first excited you on the screen?

Spike Lee: James Bond.

[laughter]

Spike Lee: My mother was a big Sean Connery fan, loved James Bond.

(FILM - Goldfinger plays)

[end of video]

David Remnick: Do you remember what movies started that were maybe a little on the higher on the food chain artistically than James Bond? Not that there's anything wrong with Goldfinger, but that you saw and you said, oh, that's something I might want to do.

Spike Lee: That didn't happen until college. I went to Marist College in Atlanta, Georgia. I had to choose a major so I chose mass communications. It was film, TV, print journalism, and radio.

David Remnick: That takes in a lot of area.

Spike Lee: Mass communications. I feel film chose me, not the other way around.

David Remnick: If you want to be a writer, forget the ergonomics of it, you need a pencil. To be a film director, you need a whole bunch of other people, you need equipment, you need money, you need backing, and you need to be, to some degree, you need to be Napoleon. You've got to lead all these people. What in your personality drew you to being a film director as opposed to a novelist or a poet or a painter or whatever? Why did you express yourself through that?

Spike Lee: Because film encompasses all those things you just nailed, that you just talked about. I did my student films undergrad and I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker. I knew that that whole thing of move, driving out to LA, flying to LA and working your way up for the mail room, doesn't work for Black people so I'm going to go to film school.

David Remnick: At NYU film school, who are you listening to? What are you watching that's starting to startle you and help you become you? What are you watching and listening to?

Spike Lee: Everything. I really thank NYU Graduate Film School for introducing me to world cinema. Because a lot of the great filmmakers, even though I'd seen some samurai films, I know Curtis [unintelligible 00:08:12]. It was introduction to world cinema. I know what the Hollywood stuff is, but once I was introduced to different ways of thinking, different ways of making a film, not just the Hollywood system.

David Remnick: I think A.O. Scott said that She's Gotta Have It and Jim Jarmusch's first movie really set off the independent film movement.

Spike Lee: For me, Jim Jarmusch is my hero because I checked that equipment to him. Even though Scorsese went to NYU and Olive Stone, they weren't there when we were there. When someone you know, you check equipment to, makes it, then it's doable.

David Remnick: Tell me about breaking through. She's Gotta Have It was made for $150,000?

Spike Lee: $175,000.

David Remnick: Where did you get the money?

Spike Lee: Well, I was doing crowdfunding before there was crowdfunding.

[laughter]

Spike Lee: I had a pen in hand, postcards, and a stamp. Remember postcards? When's the last time you licked a stamp? I just sent postcards everybody I knew to help me get money. What we did was--

David Remnick: In other words, you're hitting up your parents' friends?

Spike Lee: Anybody I knew.

David Remnick: Take me through the stages of getting through, from the imagination to into a movie theater, and all of a sudden I go to a theater and I see, wow, this is something absolutely new.

Spike Lee: Well, it almost killed me, but I had great, great people around me who believed in this dream. One of my classmates, I went to John Dewey High School, Coney Island. His mother just died and in the insurance he got $10,000 and he said, "Take it." I say, "No guarantee take it."Once the film became a hit, he bought a brownstone in Fort Green. He's still collecting checks and that film came out in 1986, so he got a brownstone at a very good, good, good, good price.

David Remnick: He sure did, he certainly did. Where does this story come from? Had you been writing it from she--

Spike Lee: She's Gotta Have It?

David Remnick: Yes, She's Gotta Have It.

Spike Lee: The concept really comes from Rashomon, the great film by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa where a rape happens, and you see all these different characters get their version of that instance.

(FILM - Rashomon)

[Japanese language]

Spike Lee: When they flip it? Three men speak to the camera and get their version of who they think Nola Dawn is who's having a sexual relationship with all three, all these three men at the same time.

(FILM - She'sGotta Have It)

[end of video]

David Remnick: I think your career exploded even more with Do the Right Thing.

(FILM - Do the Right Thing plays]

[end of video]

David Remnick: By that time--

Spike Lee: That was my third film.

David Remnick: Right, and 1980?

Spike Lee: '89.

David Remnick: '89. By that time, was it a hell of a lot easier to get financing or were you finding Hollywood still a tough nut to break it?

Spike Lee: It was easier, but I still can't get everything I want to make now. Unless you're Spielberg or Christopher Nolan, they're not just going to give you a blank check. I'm not complaining. I'm in my fourth decade as a filmmaker and I'm not slowing down, not stopping.

David Remnick: You've talked in the past about racism in Hollywood and other institutions. Has that changed at all in Hollywood and if so, what to what degree?

Spike Lee: Well, there's many more people of color that are working in Hollywood today in front of and behind the camera but it's still not necessarily even playing field. The struggle continues.

David Remnick: Did you feel a special burden because of there were so few visible Black directors in the '80s. Is there a special weight on your shoulder in some-- In terms of representation? In terms of--

Spike Lee: No, it was a privilege because I was in position to give people careers. A whole bunch of people came through four acres in front of and behind the camera. I remember we were getting ready to do Malcolm X and the Teamsters at that point had no Black teamsters. I had a meeting with the guy, I'm not going to say his name, I said, you got to get some Black teamsters. He says, we don't have any. Well, I said, you know what, tomorrow the fruit of Islam's going to be driving trucks, and they found some Black teamsters. They didn't want to mess with the fruit.

David Remnick: Do the Right Thing was not nominated for Best Picture Award, and in the end--

Spike Lee: We got an award.

David Remnick: What?

Spike Lee: Danny got it for Best Support Actor.

David Remnick: Yes indeed.

Spike Lee: Lost out the Denzel for Glory, and I got it for screenplay, Dead Poor Society.

David Remnick: It's not for Best Picture, and what was--

Spike Lee: Who knows? Well, who knows what film won Best Picture that year?

Spike Lee: I do.

[background conversation]

David Remnick: Driving Miss Daisy.

Spike Lee: Driving This motherfucker Daisy.

[laughter]

David Remnick: What did you feel at that very moment?

Spike Lee: Well, let's move many years ahead. Black Klansman.

[applause]

Spike Lee: What we got nominated for best picture for that, but what film won that year?

Lady 1: Green Book.

Spike Lee: What?

Audience: Green Book. Green Book.

Spike Lee: I was like, "Darn, every time somebody's driving somebody I lose."

[laughter]

David Remnick: When you see one of your films visually they're incredibly distinctive.

Spike Lee: That's not just me that's the great cinematographer I've had to work over the years too.

David Remnick: There's something called a double dolly shot.

Spike Lee: Double dolly shot, I did not invent it.

David Remnick: Double Dolly shot for those of you don't know, but if you saw it and I was smart enough to have a film of it you'd know it right away. It's when the center figure is still and the background is moving very quickly and it's very disorienting.

Spike Lee: They're floating.

David Remnick: What is it, tell me about it technically and what are you using it for? What is it meant to do emotionally to the viewer? You see it in Malcolm X, it's in a lot of films, Mo' Better Blues.

Spike Lee: Again Ernest Dickerson, my brother, fellow class, great cinematographer. We were young out of film school and so we're just doing filmschool-ey shit and then showing off. Then Ernest and I said you know what? We're out of film school. We're out of NYU if we use this shot, it has to make sense, it has to be motivated. True story. We're getting ready to do Malcolm X, and I became somewhat friends with the late great Dr. Betty Shabazz, Malcolm's widow. Se told me that she felt that her husband Malcolm knew he's going to be assassinated when he went to Audubon Ballroom [unintelligible 00:16:23]

When she told me that I said Ernest man, we got to find a place. Then it hit me, we have a scene where Malcolm, played by the great Denzel Washington. He's going to Audubon Ballroom, I said, that's where we got to do it. Then I said we got to use that Sam Cooke's song A Change is Gonna Come. That song coupled with the circstances and the double dolly shot, it's the best use of it so far that we've done.

[music- A Change is Gonna Come]

David Remnick: Are there any other signature moves that you've either used or abandoned or you think of as part of your film vocabulary?

Spike Lee: We have a lot of times with people speaking to the camera, double cuts where we repeat. Like we might have somebody people hug, we might see them hug twice. Just try to be innovative with the camera and keep the camera moving to not just stand there.

David Remnick: Do you find it harder as you get older to come up with new stories, new material? Or does life keep coming at you hard enough so that your well is full?

Spike Lee: No, I have a wealth, a plethora of ideals. It's just the money, you got to finance that stuff.

David Remnick: That's the big burden?

Spike Lee: Yes. My dream project is a film called Save Us Joe Louis, which I co-wrote with the great Budd Schulberg. Budd Schulberg won a Oscar for On the Waterfront. Budd Schulberg is inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame as a writer. I got to know Budd, introduced me [unintelligible 00:18:34] Budd was at the two Joe Louis v Schmeling fights in Yankee Stadium. This screenplay is about the relationship between Joe Louis and Max [unintelligible 00:18:47] who was not a NAZI but was on the tyranny of Hitler.

David Remnick: In your vision of it, who would play those two actors, those two roles? Schmeling and Louis?

Spike Lee: I don't want to jinx it but I co-wrote it with Budd, and for two years Budb would call me every day. He was on his deathbed, he would call me, and what kept him alive was the ideal that we're going to make this film together and he was like, "Spike." You knew Budd?"

David Remnick: I knew him.

Spike Lee: "Spike, did you get the money yet?" I'm working on it, Budd. I'm working on it. I made a promise to Budd on his deathbed and we're going to get this film made one day.

David Remnick: Now, you've been doing a lot of documentaries. I was honored to have the privilege for it to briefly be in a couple of them. One about New York City and one that's forthcoming about Colin Kaepernick. You do this thing, it's really not disconcerting but nerve-wracking. You put somebody in a chair and the camera's about 2.5 feet from your face. You were great and we'll see. Right now you're doing Colin Kaepernick. How many hours of footage do you have?

Spike Lee: Just interviews?

David Remnick: Just over it, yes.

Spike Lee: Hundreds of hours

David Remnick: It's going to break down to what?

Spike Lee: Five parts.

David Remnick: Of each an hour? Each an hour and change? Who sits there and goes through over and over? That's all you? How can [unintelligible 00:20:20]

Spike Lee: What I do is that I look at the dailies with the editors and then they go off and do what they do and they show it to me but you got to put the work in. You can't fake the funk. This documentary has taken a long time.

David Remnick: Why is that?

Spike Lee: The story keeps going.

David Remnick: He's not coming to the Jets, I hate to tell you.

[laughter]

Spike Lee: He might not ever play again.

David Remnick: [laughs] This is the most important question I can possibly ask you. Why don't you organize a team to buy the Nicks?

Spike Lee: They're not for sale?

David Remnick: You could do it and make them better because I got to tell you I can't take it anymore. I don't know how you do this.

Spike Lee: We haven't won in 50 years. The last year was the '72-'73 season. Were going to be good this year.

David Remnick: Why are we going to be good this year again?

Spike Lee: What do the flappers people always say?

David Remnick: Wait till next year.

Spike Lee: Wait till next year. Well, this is the year.

David Remnick: This is it. This is the year. From your lips to God's ears. I want to ask you some collaboration questions. Denzel Washington, what is the quality that you find in him and you bring it out in so many different films, why is he as great with you? Not that he wasn't great in Equalizer 3, which I loved.

Spike Lee: I got nothing to do with that. Denzel in my opinion, is the greatest living actor today. You could feel his power, his sensitivity, his humanity. Just the way he carries himself like he's not fucking around. If you're on a set, whether you're a boom, then you're not doing your job, he's going to let you know.

David Remnick: He lets you know.

Spike Lee: Yes.

David Remnick: How?

Spike Lee: Spike.

David Remnick: That was good.

Spike Lee: You know how I direct Denzel. All right, Denzel, what do you want to do next?

[laughter]

Spike Lee: All right. Oh, that's a great idea, we'll do it. He's the GOAT.

David Remnick: You're going to do another one with him.

Spike Lee: I would love to.

David Remnick: You got anything in mind.

Spike Lee: Not yet but we're working on it.

David Remnick: Is he trying to be Joe Lewis? Okay.

Spike Lee: Played hurricane.

David Remnick: That's right. How long can you do this? You look at Scorsese's--

Spike Lee: [unintelligible 00:22:57] was '86. I'm 66.

David Remnick: Is that the idea?

Spike Lee: I got at least 20. I got to get to Kurosawa.

David Remnick: Got you. Spike Lee, thank you so much.

Spike Lee: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. David Remnick. Give it up for David.

[appaluse]

Adam Howard: Filmmaker Spike Lee talking to David Remnick at the New Yorker festival. If you've been an admirer of Spike Lee's movies over the years, you're definitely going to want to check out what he considers the list of essential films. There are 95 movies on this list and some of them are movies you would totally expect to see like The Godfather and Raging Bull and of course, there's a few Kurosawa's on there as well. There's some surprises too, movies like Mad Max and Kung Fu Hustle, if you can believe it. You can find a link to Spike's list on our website, newyorkerradio.org. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, more to come.

[music]

 

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