Sunday, February 10, 2008

Spike Lee speaks at UT Arlington

By Linda Jones

When Spike Lee was growing up in Brooklyn, he rarely saw movies that depicted the rich and colorful scenes of life in his predominately African American neighborhood - or anywhere else, for that matter.

When he became a filmmaker he changed that. Brooklyn became the backdrop for a number of the movies Lee has produced during his 21-year film career and he has made it his mission to produce films that depict all aspects of the African American experience.

The Oscar-nominated filmmaker talked about his films and his career to a near-capacity audience at the University of Texas at Arlington on Saturday. His appearance was the culmination of “Reel to Real,” a week long celebration of his work.

In what was more storytelling than lecture, Lee - dressed in his typical casual attire and sporting a blue baseball cap - spent an hour pacing the stage sharing vignettes about his filmmaking career and his successes and challenges along the way.

Lee graduated from Morehouse College -the alma mater of his father and grandfather - with a BA in Mass Communications and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Film & Television from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He chastised members of the audience who applauded his self-deprecating comments about being a very lazy student.

“Don’t clap for that,” he said. “Laziness and shiftlessness should not be popular.” He stressed the importance of working hard and staying focused.

Lee said that an instructor at Morehouse pulled him aside and advised him to get serious about his education and settle on a major. When he went home for summer break, a friend gave him a Super 8 movie camera and he spent the time filming scenes from his neighborhood. He showed his finished product to his class when he returned to school. The favorable response he received inspired him to choose filmmaking as his area of study.

“At that moment, I stopped half-stepping,” he said. “I stopped being lazy and shiftless and decided to become a filmmaker,” he said.

What followed was a career that has spanned 21 years and a like number of films.

Lee also spoke to the students about the importance of working hard and encouraged them to be courageous enough to pursue a career path that will make them happy even though it may not be in keeping with what their parents want them to do.

“I was very lucky to have had parents and grandparents who understood this," said Mr. Lee, who comes from a family of elders who were involved in music and the creative arts.

He told a story of how his grandmother saved money from her Social Security checks to pay his way through college but did not discourage him when he decided to study filmmaking. Instead, her words were encouraging.

Lee said that his grandmother told him, “Spike, I know nothing about filmmaking but if that’s what you want to do I’m happy for you.”

Lee said that racism is not the only story to be told in film, but it was a story that he “wanted to get out first.” The issue of racism figured prominently in films such as When the Levees Broke, the critically acclaimed four-part miniseries about the U.S. government’s handling of the disaster following the Katrina hurricane; and 4 Little Girls, the poignant look at the deaths of the girls in Alabama who were killed in a church bombing while attending Sunday school.

Lee’s career was launched in 1986 after he released his low-budget feature film She’s Gotta Have It. The film, which cost approximately $175,000 to produce, grossed about $7 million in U.S. box office sales and earned him an award at the Cannes Film Festival.

It was followed by School Daze, which addressed the sensitive issues of hair texture, skin color and social status in the African American community. He said he was accused of “airing dirty laundry” in the movie, which he describes as his years at Morehouse packed into one homecoming weekend.

Lee said he didn’t know what he was doing when he produced those films even though they were widely popular. But he said the experience that he gained doing them made him better prepared to produce his third feature, Do the Right Thing, which was about racial conflict in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The film, released in 1989, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Lee said his most difficult film to produce was Malcolm X his epic biography of the Black Nationalist and follower of Islam. He ran into conflict with Warner Brothers over funding and the length of time the movie should run. Lee, who felt that the story about Malcolm X’s complex life needed more time to tell, said he refused to guarantee that he could do it in less than two hours. In the end he got his way and produced a movie that ran 3 hours and 25 minutes. His efforts to keep the film project alive were bolstered by a string of his prominent celebrity friends who donated $11 million to the project.

During the question and answer period, a 14-year-old asked Mr. Lee to state his position about a sensitive topic among young black males in particular.

“What is your stance on baggy pants?”, the youth asked Mr. Lee poetically. The young man said that he did not wear his pants that way but felt there was nothing wrong with it as long as they were getting an education.

In a long-winded response Mr. Lee spoke about images and perceptions and the importance of knowing the origins of thing.

He mentioned that the style has origins from prison where the inmates were forbidden to wear belts, so their pants sagged. Knowing the origin of some trends, he explained, helps people determine whether or not they want to be associated with them.

Lee was also asked how he felt about using the “N-Word” as a term of endearment.

“It still makes me uneasy when people who are not African Americans still use that word,” said Mr. Lee. But he acknowledged that he has used the word in his language and in his films.

Lee told his audience that he recognizes that everyone isn’t able to pursue a job or career of their choice and said that he is grateful that he was able to.

“The majority of the people in this world go to the grave having slaved at the job they hate,” he said. “I get down on bended knee every night and give thanks because I’m doing what I love.”

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