|
Shelton Jackson Lee (born March 20, 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia), better known as Spike Lee, is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor noted for his films dealing with social and political issues. He also teaches film at New York University.
Biography Lee was born in Atlanta to Bill, a jazz musician and Mary, a school teacher. Lee moved with his family to Brooklyn when he was a small child. As a child, his mother nicknamed him "Spike." In Brooklyn, he attended John Dewey High School. Lee enrolled in Morehouse College where he made his first student film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn. He took his film courses at Clark Atlanta University, and graduated with a B.A. in Mass Communication from Morehouse College. He then enrolled in New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He graduated in 1982 with a Master of Fine Arts. Lee's thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, was the first student film to be showcased in Lincoln Center's New Directors New Films Festival. The film went on to win a Student Academy Award. In 1985, Lee began work on his first feature film, She's Gotta Have It. With a budget of $160,000, the film was shot in two weeks. When the film was released in 1986, it grossed over $7,000,000 at the U.S. boxoffice.* Lee's films are portraits of people and places. Lee's movies have examined race relations, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and political issues. Many of his films include a distinctive use of music. Lee's father is a jazz bassist and is responsible for the music in some of his son's films, including Mo' Better Blues starring Denzel Washington. Lee's film Do the Right Thing was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1989. His documentary 4 Little Girls was nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Academy Award in 1997. Influences In Fort Greene, the place where Lee spent his adolescence, he was beaten nearly to death by his dad, and this had a severe impact on his earlier films. Richard A. Blake, author of Street Smart: The New York of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, and Lee, writes: “For Spike Lee, Fort Greene functions like the observation tower, as though one could stand atop the column of the Martyrs Monument and look out on other areas of Brooklyn and the rest of New York. Sometimes what he sees and reports can make others, especially black audiences, quite comfortable.” Lee has a production company, ’40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks,’ a recording studio, and retail outlet, ‘Spike’s Joint,’ that includes various merchandise associated with his films. Controversy Lee has never shied away from controversial statements and actions involving American race relations. In 1992, Lee encouraged young black students to skip school and flock to theatres to see his movie Malcolm X. Ten years later, after headline-grabbing remarks made by Mississippi Senator Trent Lott regarding Senator Strom Thurmond's failed Presidential bid, Lee charged that Lott was a "card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan" on ABC's Good Morning America.* Lee has been criticized for depicting Italian-Americans in a stereotypical manner in some of his films, most notably Summer of Sam, Jungle Fever, and Do The Right Thing. Lee was the executive producer of the 1995 film New Jersey Drive, which depicted young African-American auto thieves in northern New Jersey. At the time, the city of Newark had the highest automobile theft rate in the country, and Newark mayor Sharpe James refused to allow filming of New Jersey Drive within the city limits. Years later in the hotly-contested 2002 Newark mayoral campaign, Lee endorsed James' opponent, Cory Booker. At a 1998 Cannes Film Festival screening of Summer of Sam, Lee was asked by a reporter about the post-Columbine attacks on Hollywood. Lee stated that he didn't think that movies and TV were the problem. When asked what the problem was, he talked about America's continuing problems with guns and mentioned groups like the National Rifle Association. "So then they asked me, 'What about Charlton Heston' and I said, 'Shoot him!' But I immediately laughed and said, 'It's a joke,'" Lee recounted. "It was an ironic joke about how violence begets violence." Spike, having been misquoted before by the mainstream media, then went on to joke with the assembled reporters how he didn't want to wake up the next morning with headlines about how he wants to shoot Charlton Heston. Ironically, that's exactly what happened. The New York Post printed a story that left out the surrounding context and matter-of-factly suggested that Spike Lee actually wanted Heston to be executed. The story made it all the way to the halls of Congress as Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey issued a statement condemning Lee as having "nothing to offer the debate on school violence except more violence and more hate." Though Lee made many media appearances and spoke with a number of newspapers correcting the account of what happened, the misquote remains more well-known then the actual quote. More recently, Lee commented on the federal government's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. Responding to a CNN anchor's question as to whether the government intentionally ignored the plight of black Americans during the disaster, Lee replied, "It's not too far-fetched. I don't put anything past the United States government. I don't find it too far-fetched that they tried to displace all the black people out of New Orleans." On Real Time with Bill Maher Spike cited the government's past atrocities including the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Some have responded by pointing out that there is no way to flood the Lower 9th Ward without also flooding Arabi and Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish, which are predominantly white communities. Lee went on to direct the documentary When the Levees Broke about the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Trademarks Trivia Spike helped launch the careers of Wesley Snipes (Mo' Better Blues), Martin Lawrence (Do the Right Thing), Academy Award nominated actor Samuel L. Jackson (Jungle Fever), and Academy Award winners Halle Berry (Jungle Fever) and Denzel Washington (Mo' Better Blues). Selected filmography (as director) Feature films Television Music videos See also | |||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |