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Letter to the editor

Spike Lee back in theaters, hot seat

By STEVE PERSALL
Published July 23, 2004

[Photo: David Lee]

Jack Armstrong (Anthony Mackie), center, turns to unusual temp work — becoming a sperm donor — after he loses his job as a corporate vice president, in She Hate Me.

The voice that yelled in our ears exhorting everyone to "wake up" to a new era of African-American cinema is quieter now, more like an urging conscience than an irritating alarm clock.

Not that Spike Lee has mellowed. His new film, She Hate Me, opening July 30 in New York and Los Angeles and then expanding its release, begins by proclaiming President Bush as phony as a three-dollar bill and ends with a bisexual life commitment. Between, the movie traipses through topics that have gotten the filmmaker into hot water before - gay and Italian portrayals, sexuality and race - plus new minefields: congressional witch hunts and a corporate scam echoing Enron and Imclone's recent scandals.

In the film, Jack Armstrong (Anthony Mackie), a vice president of the fictional corporation Progeia, is framed for someone else's shady dealings and gets fired. Financially strapped, Jack turns to unusual temp work, donating sperm - mostly through intercourse - to maternally minded lesbians for $10,000 per session.

Those parallel stories give the movie a wildly erratic tone, like mixing Wall Street with My Baby's Daddy. Lee didn't argue when I suggested that She Hate Me could have used the Kill Bill technique, breaking the story into two separate and distinctly different films. Instead, he softly laughed and made his case for the collision of styles.

"They're not foreign to each other," Lee said in a telephone interview. "Corporations are made up by people. When (Enron CEO) Ken Lay and his cronies decided to do what they did, that affected those good, hard-working Americans who invested their life savings, their futures, in Enron stock. Now it's gone forever.

"These (sperm donor and Progeia) stories go hand in hand because they both deal with morals, scruples and ethics. I've done this before, mixing tones, making these great tonal shifts.

"When people see this film, they might not be Jack Armstrong, they might not be Martha Stewart. But I don't care who you are. In your life, many times you're put in positions when you might be asked to compromise your ethics, your morals and scruples, just for the almighty dollar."

Lee hasn't fallen into that trap, or else it wouldn't be as difficult to find studio support for the films he wants to make. That Jackie Robinson biography Lee promised the baseball legend's widow still hasn't gotten off the ground. Neither has a long-discussed re-creation of 1938's historic Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling boxing match. She Hate Me was turned down by every major studio until Sony Pictures Classics took a financial chance.

"This film was a definite struggle," said Lee, aware of his declining box office marketability as well as anyone else.

It's ironic that the artist who revitalized African-American cinema with She's Gotta Have It, School Daze and Do the Right Thing now suffers as a result of the direction that genre has taken.

"As far as studios are concerned, they would much rather do films with African-Americans that are broad comedies rather than any serious subject matter," Lee said. "Of course, you have exceptions, like with films Denzel (Washington) is in. But for the most part, African-Americans have been ghettoized in comedic roles."

Lee railed against that trend in popular entertainment in Bamboozled (2000), in which a TV executive (Damon Wayans) creates a minstrel-era variety show filled with African-American stereotypes that becomes a hit. Lee's satire and its poor box office results exaggerated a sad truth: Worthwhile images of black culture generally don't sell, not even to black moviegoers.

"It's a self-fulfilling prophecy," Lee said. "When there are exceptions like Rosewood or Baadasssss! or Bamboozled, for the most part the African-American community has not come out in force enough to support those films."

Though Lee's recent films were widely ignored by African-American audiences, they didn't dodge scrutiny by other subcultures. She Hate Me contains more to make them squirm.

Italian-Americans who bristled at perceived stereotypes in Do the Right Thing and Summer of Sam get John Turturro as a Mafia don quoting lines from The Godfather. Homosexuals who branded Lee as insensitive after Get on the Bus will question why so many lesbians jump into bed with Jack and enjoy it so much. People who accused Lee of tasteless exploitation with references to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 25th Hour and David Berkowitz's murder spree in Summer of Sam may think the same of his Enron-inspired plot.

Not a single frame of She Hate Me suggests that Lee's sensibilities have been affected by past controversies.

"First of all, I've never thought that I've presented ill-advised or stereotypical images of anyone in the past," Lee said. "Every time I make a film, I'm trying to be a better filmmaker. I'm always open to growth. But I did not think going into this film, "Oh, because this or that happened last time, I need to do this, this and this.'

"A lot of times, if you worry about that stuff too much, it puts you in a state of paralysis. As an artist, that's the worst thing that can happen, if you're afraid to make a move because you're worrying about what someone is going to think. Provocative works of art automatically mean people don't line up unanimously thinking one way."

Obviously warming to the subject, Lee continued:

"Let me take one charge at a time," he said. "I've never thought I've given any homophobic depictions of gay people. There were some people who got mad at me because I had characters in my films who were homophobic. But just because I have a character in a film who's homophobic, that doesn't mean I'm homophobic.

"It's interesting to me that that distinction is made for some filmmakers, and it's not made for me. I'll give you an example: Martin Scorsese, one of my favorite filmmakers and a friend of mine.

"Look at his films like Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas. Look at how many times African-Americans are referred to as the n-word, stuff like that. Let's look at The Sopranos. Every time they talk about black people, they're called a shine, a spear chucker, something like that.

"Is (Sopranos creator) David Chase a racist? Does he hate black people? Of course not. That's the world in which those characters live. I've always found it amusing that while those distinctions are made for those people, they can't be done for me."

It has been suggested that Lee's personal celebrity - athletic shoe ads, sightings at New York Knicks and Yankees games, unsuccessfully suing Viacom for calling a new network Spike TV - makes the difference. Moviegoers know who's behind the camera, so whatever happens in front of it can be easily attributed to the filmmaker.

"I disagree with that," Lee said. "I'll show you another example: Taxi Driver, when Martin Scorsese plays a character himself. Remember that scene? Travis Bickle picks him up, and Martin's saying: "See my wife up there? She's up there with a n---. You ever see what a .44 does to a so-and-so-and-so?' Come on, that's not an actor, that's Martin Scorsese playing that character. And nobody says a thing."

Lee's career initially thrived, and now teeters, on his willingness to say what no other filmmaker would dare. When Norman Jewison was hired to direct Malcolm X, Lee protested that a white man shouldn't be entrusted with such an important African-American story. After Lee's version and Do the Right Thing were mostly ignored by Academy Awards voters, Lee declared that he was through with the whole Oscar process.

Some people don't like to hear what Lee is very willing to say, perhaps, it has been suggested, just like comedian Bill Cosby and his recent rebukes of poor African-American parenting. Lee addressed the subject in Get on the Bus and, more positively, in the semiautobiographical Crooklyn.

"I don't think I'm crying in the wilderness," Lee said. "There are other people out there, but it takes someone like Bill Cosby who's well-respected to get people to listen.

"I'm in Bill Cosby's debt for saying what he said. I think what he's done is say, "Let's refocus, let's think about what's really important, and let's mobilize and try to correct these ills that are affecting black Americans, but in a greater sense are affecting America and the world.'

"There are many ways that we can attack that. I'm going to hopefully get together with Bill Cosby soon and see what we can come up with."

- Steve Persall can be reached at 727 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 22, 2004, 10:52:12]