It's Gotta Be the Shoes!

Of all the great American filmmakers who have a bad image with the public - from homewrecking, underage-fancying Woody Allen to "sex offender...with a record" Victor Salva to half-crazed paranoid drugged up Oliver Stone - perhaps no one is more frequently maligned then Spike Lee. The guy has become a cartoon of the "Angry Black Man," to the point where no one takes anything he does or says seriously any more, and people are embarrassed to talk about how many of his new films continue to be really good.

I wrote about this phenomenon a while back...about bad comedians running a punchline so completely into the ground that the public just begins to accept a caricature as the truth, and nuance takes a backseat to cliche. Spike Lee provides a particularly egregious example, a smart man, an artist, with many provocative or interesting points to make, who is constantly presented to people as a silly little angry black man in glasses, to be ridiculed and/or ignored.

Maybe you don't believe me. Maybe you think playing Mars Blackmon in a couple funny TV spots, or getting riled up at Knicks games, removes Spike's significance from the public discourse. Or maybe you don't think Do the Right Thing, Clockers, The 25th Hour, Malcolm X, Bamboozled and She's Gotta Have It are great movies. We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one.

(Okay, he's made a few bad movies. But he works all the time. Very few directors have made as many films as Spike without making as many bad ones. But, yeah, okay, fine, Summer of Sam is pretty awful. And somewhat prejudiced against Italians.)

But if you disagree that Spike gets an unfair shake in the press, look no further than this offensive interview with Slate Magazine. Slate's art critic, Lee Siegel, asks him a series of leading questions clearly designed to get him into an angry rant. She barely talks about his films or anything he's working on (except for one silly question..."what are you working on right now?" Lee, you're interviewing the man, shouldn't you already know that?) She just keeps asking him about contemporary, provocative subjects, or even about his opinion on whole races of people, to get him to say something that could potentially be viewed as racist or outrageous.

Not only does he not take the bait, but Spike comes off like an entirely level-headed, reasonable and thoughtful guy. In fact, after reading the interview, I disagree with a few things he says, and feel like he speaks sometimes without considering the long-term ramifications of what he's saying. But he still comes off a lot better than the interviewer.

The interview is ostensibly about Spike's new autobiography, That's My Story and I'm Sticking To It. It's a pretty stupid name for an autobiography. (I'd have gone with the above headline, myself). But after one quesiton about the book - and it's about the title - Lee immediately gets into her real questions. This is the second question she asks in the entire Q&A:

Of course, I was particularly interested in what you have to say about the situation of blacks in Hollywood. But also in your statements about the Holocaust. You pretty much said that any movie about the Holocaust is going to carry all the prizes.

Spike is about to correct her, because that's not even what he really said. But what kind of question is that? It's a semi-controversial statement he made almost a decade ago that was blown way out of proportion even at the time! Here's his reply:

Whoa, whoa! What I was speaking of specifically was the feature-length documentary branch of the academy. I mean, there was a time—you could do the research, I don't have the chart in front of me—but for a period of over 10 years, almost every film that won best feature-length documentary was about the Holocaust.

Of course, he's right. And he's not making an anti-Semetic statement at all, as he was accused of when this was first in the news. He's pointing out that the Academy blatantly plays favorites in determining winners, giving the prize for subject matter and content rather than quality of filmmaking. And he's right. Anyone who can read the Arts & Liesure Section can see that non-fiction films about the Holocaust win Oscars with some amount of frequency. This isn't even surprising, because there are, demographically, a lot of Jews voting on the Oscars, and Jews are going to be more interested in Holocaust films than other people.

Like I said, it's a provocative statement, but not a racist one. And to ask about it up front is (1) hostile, (2) of questionable merit and (3) indicative of the interviewer's lack of knowledge about Spike Lee aside from the barbs of Master of Wit Jay Leno.

Slate: That is an issue, right? It's followed you throughout your career, the relationship between blacks and Jews.

Lee: It's not an issue for me.

Slate: No, it's an issue for everyone else.

Lee: I have nothing to do with that. But I remember thinking when we were nominated for 4 Little Girls and then finding out that a rabbi was a producer for the other one: We're not gonna win.

Okay, he comes dangerously close to making an anti-Semetic remark here. In fact, he's right...That other film with the Rabbi Producer did win. And it's not so insane to think that a movie about Jewish themes will do better, Oscar-wise, than a movie with Southern black themes. As a Jew, I can make that separation - that he's dealing in stereotypes that are often repeated by anti-Semites, but that he also at the same time may be correct in his assessment. At the same time, I personally would never make that statement in public.

My larger point, though, is that there's no reason for him to still be discussing this issue in this much depth. And Siegel's leading him to say something offensive. "Why don't blacks and Jews get along?" "Why is this is an issue for everyone?" "Why won't you say something mean about Jews."

Slate: You know, I go to a Clint Eastwood movie, and I see that time after time, Morgan Freeman is playing Clint Eastwood's sidekick. Everyone loves these movies; they always win awards. But nobody complains about that. There's no black group that complains and asks, "Why can't Clint Eastwood be Morgan Freeman's sidekick?" Would you like to see a black uproar over that?

Are you goddamn kidding me? "Would you like to see a black uproar about that?" You think they'd ever ask Steven Spielberg that question?

"So, Steve, I've noticed that Dustin Hoffman, a Jew, is never cast as the lead in any big budget action films. Would you like to see a big crazed Jewboy uproar about that? Think all the Jews should start wilding in the streets, stealing TV's and clubbing police officers over the head with their oversized penises? Hmmm?"

I mean, is anyone on Earth offended by the fact that Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood are friends and make movies together? In Million Dollar Baby, okay, sure, Freeman's character works for Clint's in the gym. But he is the narrator, and the emotional heart of the film. But in Unforgiven, they're pretty much equals. If Clint's the main character, it's only because he's the director and people focused on him more. Plus, Morgan kind of plays the second-fiddle onlooker in a lot of non-Eastwood movies, like Shawshank Redemption and Sum of All Fears.

Now there's a question for Spike Lee. "Morgan Freeman was a supporting character in a Ben Affleck film. Are they trying to say Ben Affleck is inherently better than all black people?"

Once again, here's Spike's fairly reasonable, measured response:

Lee: Oh, man. We have more things to have an uproar about than Morgan Freeman.

Spike then has to lead the conversation over to an acutally interesting topic, the lack of black creative power at the major studios. He gets in a few good points:

Look, you get into that position and you know that first of all your films have to make money no matter who you are. But I can confidently say that if there had been a gatekeeper at MGM, I don't think Soul Plane could have gotten made. I'm confident in saying that.

So things go along a little better for a while. They talk about Bamboozled, a film of Spike's I really enjoy. And they make a point about Damon Wayans, how he was able to move from that movie, a strong rebuke of black entertainment based around archaic stereotypes and minstel-level comedy, and right into Marci X, as offensive and racist a mainstream film as has been released in this decade.

But Lee's not done yet. She's got a few more zingers just waiting in reserve:

Slate: Do you think there's a difference between a black acting style and a white acting style?

If I were Spike Lee, and someone asked me that question, I'd have been out the door. Are you kidding me? How do you answer something like that? "Blacks are gooder!" What an idiot.

Lee: No, I'm not gonna—no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not. Nope.

Slate: Because I look at a great actor like Jeffrey Wright—do you like his stuff?

Lee: Yeah, I love Jeffrey.

I like Jeffrey Wright also, by the way. Looking forward to seeing him in Syriana.

Slate: And I see that he's not an actor in the mold of, say, Brando, or Sean Penn. Wright disappears into his characters like a British actor, and I see a lot of African-American actors doing that—Cuba Gooding, I think, does that also.

Lee: You're putting Cuba Gooding in the same league with Jeffrey Wright?

Do we need to go on? Are we done here? Is Lee Siegel saying that Cuba Gooding disappears into his characters in a way Marlon Brando never has? Isn't that immediate grounds for being terminated by Slate Magazine? It should be.

Slate: What are you working on now?

Lee: We're doing the score for my new film. The film is called Inside Man. It's about a bank robbery that becomes a hostage situation. Denzel Washington is a New York City detective; he runs a hostage-negotiation team. He has to match wits with the mastermind behind the bank robbery, who is played by Clive Owen.

Intrigued? Me too. This sounds like a terrific film. And it's the first I've heard about it. Lee Siegel asks him not one more question about the new film. Who wrote it? Is it all shot on location in New York? Are you fazed by the expectations going into a new film from you and Denzel Washington? Doesn't this sound a lot like Die Hard? Who's doing the score? Who's shooting the movie? When is it coming out? Did you write the book while working on the film, or has the book been done for a while?

Nothing. He/she segues immediately to this:

Slate: I remember you got very angry when you were talking to Will Smith about directing Ali, and Smith said to you, "Well, I want someone with a broader vision." You said you knew right away it wasn't going to be you.

Spike, talk shit on Will Smith. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.

I'll be honest with you guys. There's more offensive stuff here, but I started losing interest at this point. This interview is ridiculous. Slate should apologize to Spike Lee and interview him over again.