Lee, Spike

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Lee, Spike

March 20, 1957

Filmmaker Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to William Lee, a jazz musician and composer, and Jacqueline Shelton Lee, a teacher of art and literature. The oldest of five children, Lee grew up in Brooklyn, New York, with brothers David, Chris, and Cinque, and sister Joie. Lee's family environment was imbued with a strong sense of black history. Like his father and grandfather, Lee attended Morehouse College, and graduated with a B.A. in 1979. Upon graduating, Lee enrolled in New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he received an M.F.A. in film production in 1983. While at New York University Lee produced several student films: The Answer (1980), Sarah (1981), and Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1982). Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop, his M.F.A. thesis film, was awarded a Student Academy Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1982, was broadcast by some public television stations, and received critical notice in Variety and the New York Times.

Lee has produced over two dozen films. In virtually all of the films he has been director, writer, actor, and producer. Lee's first feature-length film was the highly acclaimed comedy She's Gotta Have It (1986), which he shot in twelve days on location in Brooklyn at a cost of $175,000, financed partly by his grandmother. The film eventually grossed $8 million. The action of the film centers on a sexually liberated young black woman who is having affairs simultaneously with three men. Interspersed with these scenes, she and the film's characters debate her conduct from ideological perspectives then current in the black community; such topics as hip-hop, color differences, sexual codes, and interracial relationships are raised. This debate spilled over into the national media. Controversy was to become a hallmark of Lee's work. She's Gotta Have It is characterized by disjointed narrative syntax,

mock-cinema verité technique, active camera movement, and disregard for autonomy of text. Lee has often employed the same actors and film technicians in many films, giving them a repertory effect.

Lee's second film, School Daze (1988), was financed by Columbia Pictures for $6.5 million and grossed more than $15 million. It also dealt with a controversial topic, the conflict at a southern black college between lightskinned students who seek assimilation into mainstream America and dark-skinned students who identify with Africa.

In 1989 Lee produced Do the Right Thing, which was set in Brooklyn. The film was produced for $6 million and grossed $30 million. Do the Right Thing focused on the relationship between an Italian-American family that operates a pizzeria in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and the depressed black community that patronizes it. The film chronicles the racial tensions and events over a period of one day, climaxes in a riot in which one black youth is killed, and ends with the complete destruction of the pizzeria.

This highly successful film was followed by Mo' Better Blues (1990), the story of the love affairs, personal growth, and development of a jazz musician in New York City. Jungle Fever (1991), also set in New York, was Lee's treatment of interracial relationships, centering on an affair between a married black architect and his Italian-American secretary.

Lee's most ambitious film to date has been Malcolm X, which was released in November 1992. In this film Lee departed from his earlier technique and employed the traditional style and approach of the Hollywood epic biography. Produced by Warner Brothers, Malcolm X was three hours long and cost $34 million, though it had originally been budgeted for $28 million. By the end of 1994 it had grossed $48.1 million. In a highly publicized initiative, Lee raised part of the additional funds needed from black celebrities Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Michael Jordan, Janet Jackson, and Prince, among others. Denzel Washington, who portrayed Malcolm X, was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor. Lee based his film on an original screenplay, written by James Baldwin and Arnold Perl in 1968, that was based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.

In 1994 Lee collaborated with his siblings Joie and Cinque Lee in the production of Crooklyn, the story of a large, working-class black family growing up in Brooklyn.

In the following years, he continued to produce idiosyncratic and well-crafted films about the black experience. Get on the Bus (1996) celebrated the diversity and ideals of the Million Man March. Four Girls and a Church (1997) was a touching documentary about four girls murdered in a church bombing in Birmingham in 1963. He Got Game (1998) explored the relationship between a teenage basketball star and his estranged father. Major releases after the turn of the century include Bamboozled (2000), 25th Hour (2002), and She Hate Me (2004).

Spike Lee's film career has generated a film company, Forty Acres and a Mule; a chain of retail outlets that sell paraphernalia from his films; and a series of television commercials, ten of them with basketball star Michael Jordan. He also serves as artistic director of the graduate division of the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

See also Film; Malcolm X