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| Shelton Jackson Lee
(born March 20, 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia), better known as Spike
Lee, is a 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. Contents [hide] 1 Biography 2 Influences 3 Controversy 4 Gimmicks 5 Trivia 6 Selected filmography (as director) 6.1 Feature films 6.2 Television 6.3 Music videos 7 External links [edit] Biography Shelton Jackson 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.[1] 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. [edit] 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, Spikes Joint, that includes various merchandise associated with his films. [edit] 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.[2] 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. In most of his films, he has incorporated anti-Italian epithets somewhere in his scripts. However, as many of his films are racially-charged and openly depict flawed characters with biases and prejudices, racial epithets targeting an extremely wide varitety of races have made their way into his scripts at one time or another. Lee has also been criticized for what some regard as anti-Semitism[citation needed]. He was once quoted as saying, "There's an unwritten law that you cannot have a Jewish character in a film who isn't 100 percent perfect, or you're labeled anti-Semitic."[citation needed] 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 was the problem. When asked what the problem is, 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. Conservative talk show hosts picked up on the story and used it as a chance to attack Lee who had been on many conservative Republican's hit list since 1989's controversial Do the Right Thing. The story made it all the way to the halls of congress as Republican House 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, and the story is still passed around among conservative groups today. Even an older version of this page on wikipedia.org reported that Lee called for Charlton Heston to be "shot with a .44 Bulldog, when asked what he would do to combat violence in the United States." 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 or not 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. [edit] Gimmicks - Spike lee always has a small role in his films. - He always calls his films "A Spike Lee Joint" - There is always a sequence using a "floating" effect, when a character seems to slide in the air like a ghost instead of walking. Usually the actor is on a platform with wheels, framed in a way that you don't see his feet [edit] Trivia He is 5'4" in height. (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). A select groups of actors have appeared in numerous Spike Lee productions, including: Rick Aiello (Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Clockers, She Hate Me) Thomas Jefferson Byrd (Clockers, Girl 6, Get on the Bus, He Got Game, Bamboozled) Ossie Davis [School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X (narrating the actual eulogy he delivered at Malcolm X's funeral), Get on the Bus, 4 Little Girls, She Hate Me] Giancarlo Esposito (School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X) Michael Imperioli [Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Clockers, Girl 6, Summer of Sam (which he co-wrote with Lee and Victor Colicchio)] Samuel L. Jackson (School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever) Joie Lee (She's Gotta Have It, School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, Crooklyn, Girl 6, Get on the Bus, Summer of Sam, She Hate Me) Lonette McKee (Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, He Got Game, She Hate Me) Bill Nunn (School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, He Got Game) Roger Guenveur Smith (School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Get on the Bus, He Got Game, Summer of Sam, A Huey P. Newton Story) John Turturro (Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Clockers, Girl 6, He Got Game, Summer of Sam, She Hate Me) Denzel Washington (Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Inside Man) Isaiah Washington (Crooklyn, Clockers, Girl 6, Get on the Bus) Steve White (Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X, Clockers, Get on the Bus) Several well-known public figures have appeared in Spike Lee films portraying characters other than themselves, particularly in Malcolm X. They include Ray Allen (He Got Game) Travis Best (He Got Game) Mark Breland (Summer of Sam) Rick Fox (He Got Game) Evander Holyfield (Summer of Sam) William Kunstler (Malcolm X) Nelson Mandela (Malcolm X) Bobby Seale (Malcolm X) Al Sharpton (Malcolm X) Wyatt Tee Walker (Malcolm X) Spike Lee has also acted in a number of his own films. Most notable are his supporting roles in She's Gotta Have It, School Daze, and Malcolm X, and his leading role in Do the Right Thing. Spike is the son of composer Bill Lee. Bill Lee has been the composer for at least five of Spike's films. The borough of Brooklyn is almost always the setting for many of Lee's theatrical releases. In 2003 Lee sued the Spike TV television network claiming that they were capitalizing on his fame by using his name for their network. The claim was thrown out of court. The counter-suit by Spike TV was settled out of court. Lee's frivolous law suit delayed the launch of the new network, which caused a loss of millions, much of which Spike TV recovered in their counter-suit. Lee's only nonfiction theatrical release (other than the documentary 4 Little Girls), has been The Original Kings of Comedy, a concert film starring popular comedians Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer, and Bernie Mac. Was voted the 78th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly magazine. Spike has verbally attacked Quentin Tarantino. [edit] Selected filmography (as director) [edit] Feature films Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983) (thesis film at NYU's Tisch School) She's Gotta Have It (1986) (also acted) School Daze (1988) (also acted) Do the Right Thing (1989) (also acted) Mo' Better Blues (1990) (also acted) Jungle Fever (1991) (also acted) Malcolm X (1992) (also acted) Crooklyn (1994) (also acted) Clockers (1995) (also acted) Girl 6 (1996) (also acted) Get on the Bus (1996) 4 Little Girls (1997) He Got Game (1998) Summer of Sam (1999) (also acted) The Original Kings of Comedy (2000) Bamboozled (2000) 25th Hour (2002) Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002) (segment "We Wuz Robbed") She Hate Me (2004) All the Invisible Children (2006) (segment ("Jesus Children of America") Inside Man (2006) [edit] Television Freak (1998) (telefilm) Pavarotti and Friends 99 for Guatemala and Kosovo (1999) Pavarotti and Friends for the Children of Liberia (1998) A Huey P. Newton Story (2001) The Concert for New York City (2001) (segment Come Rain or Come Shine) Jim Brown: All American (2002) Sucker Free City (2004) Miracle's Boys (2005) When the Levees Broke (2006) Shark (2006) [edit] Music videos Anita Baker - "No One in the World" - (1987) Buckshot LeFonque - "Breakfast at Denny's" - (1994) E.U. - "Da Butt" (from the School Daze soundtrack) - (1988) Fishbone - "Sunless Saturday" - (1991) Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel - "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" - (1983) Michael Jackson - "They Don't Care About Us" - (1996) Naughty by Nature - "Hip Hop Hooray" - (1993) Prince and the New Power Generation - "Money Don't Matter 2 Night" - (1992) Public Enemy - "Fight the Power" (from the Do the Right Thing soundtrack) - (1989) [edit] External links Spike Lee at the Internet Movie Database Films directed by Spike Lee Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads She's Gotta Have It School Daze Do the Right Thing Mo' Better Blues Jungle Fever Malcolm X Crooklyn Clockers Girl 6 Get on the Bus 4 Little Girls He Got Game Freak Summer of Sam The Original Kings of Comedy Bamboozled A Huey P. Newton Story Jim Brown: All-American Sucker Free City 25th Hour She Hate Me Inside Man When the Levees Broke Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Lee" Categories: Articles with unsourced statements | 1957 births | Living people | People from Brooklyn | African-American film directors | American screenwriters | African-American actors | American film producers | American film directors | Morehouse College alumni | English-language film directors |