ENTERTAINMENT
WE'RE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE
American Heart Association
Filmmaker Spike Lee
Speaks Out On His Movies
MICHAEL ELKIN
Special to The Jewish News
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88
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1991
I
n taking the temperature
of what he considers a ra-
cist America, film-maker
Spike Lee often adds some
heat of his own.
In 1989's Do the Right
Thing, his examination of
Italian/African-American con-
flicts, Mr. Lee sparked a
cinematic firestorm of words
and actions that some social
observers feared would erupt
into a conflagration in urban
areas.
In his Jungle Fever, Mr. Lee
lights the fire under this
country's attitudes toward in-
terracial romance. Racism
serves as kindling for his ex-
ploration of a black/white
coupling.
But it was last year's Mo'
Better Blues, and its incen-
diary depiction of the way
Jewish night-club owners
deal with black jazz artists,
that ignited a heated ex-
change between the film-
maker and some members of
the Jewish community.
Is Spike Lee a curse or cure
in the country's quest for
answers to its problems of
race?
Or, as Mr. Lee's pictures
would seem to suggest, does
America care to quell the con-
flicts at all?
As we talk, the controver-
sial Spike Lee, baseball cap
perched atop his head, recaps
the questions that plagued
his release of Mo' Better Blues.
Here was a film he had made
about jazz, but the static Mr.
Lee was getting from some
critics was out of sync with
what he had hoped to hear.
"We never expected that,"
says the filmmaker of the
criticism he encountered in
depicting the movie's two
night-club owners as
mercenary and exploitive
Jews.
Not that Mr. Lee was naive
enough to think that any pic-
ture he makes would avoid
close examination. "We ex-
pected scrutiny," he says of
Mo' Better Blues.
But Mr. Lee took umbrage
when some members of the
Jewish community attacked
the film for spreading Jewish
stereotypes. Mr. Lee's com-
ments, published in the New
York Post at the time, only
seemed to fan the flames.
According to statements at-
tributed to Mr. Lee in the ar-
ticle, the characters of Moe
and Josh Flatbush were in-
spired by "the many, many,
Denzel Washington and Spike Lee as artist and manager in
Mo' Better Blues.
many Jewish club owners
throughout the years whom
every great jazz musician had
to fight for the couple of pen-
nies they got."
In trying to make sense of
the controversy in a follow-up
article he wrote for the New
York Times, Mr. Lee said, "If
the critics are telling me that
to avoid charges of anti-
Semitism, all Jewish
characters I write have to be
model citizens, and not one
can be a villain, cheat or a
crook, and that no Jewish
people have exploited black
artists in the history of the
entertainment industry,
that's unrealistic and unfair."
Mr. Lee doesn't back off that
statement now.
"Black people have always
been exploited," he says.
Of course, he notes, had the
club owners in Mo' Better
Blues been depicted as greedy
and exploitive — but not
Jewish — who would have
objected?
What does that say, then,
about the Jewish community?
"The Jewish people in the
United States have the big-
gest lobbying force," he says.
But Mr. Lee adds, smiling,
"that's no knock. I wish my
black brothers had the lobby-
ing force of our Jewish
brethren?'
In the meantime, Spike Lee
doesn't seem about to form a
cousins' club with the Italian-
American community either.
Jungle Fever, a heated ac-
count of the relationship bet-
ween a black man from
Harlem and white woman
from Bensonhurst — and how
their respective communities
react to their romance — is
the director's second film
focusing on Italians and
blacks.
And Mr. Lee likes that
focus. When asked if he would
explore the tensions between
blacks and Jews in an upcom-
ing movie, Mr. Lee responds
that that conflict "has never
been as explosive as the
black/Italian combination."
Mr. Lee, 34, grew up in an
Italian neighborhood in
Brooklyn, part of "the first
black family to move in." Mr.
Lee says he still maintains
ties with some of his former
Italian neighbors.
And his new movie's focus
on interracial couples also
hits home.
"My father married a white
woman" after the death of his
mother, Mr. Lee says. Spike's
dad is Bill Lee, a composer of
note who scored Mo' Better
Blues.
Spike Lee has no problem
with his father's decision. But
the filmmaker's image as a
movieland's lightning rod for
ill will between ethnic groups
seems to bother him a bit.
"I am perceived as this
angry young black film-
maker who hates white peo-
ple," he says with a scowl.
Mr. Lee hates stereotypes
on and off screen. "I want to
make many different kinds of
film."
And if white audiences
don't get what he's saying,
well, welcome to the
neighborhood, says Mr. Lee.
"I saw a Woody Allen film
on the Upper West Side, and
I didn't know what they were
laughing at," says Mr. Lee. "I
didn't get all the jokes about
psychiatrists and being in
therapy."
For those who complain
about Mr. Lee's "in-your-face"
style of movie-making, there
are no apologies forthcoming.
Indeed, Mr. Lee reportedly
had included a scene in
Jungle Fever that didn't make
the cut.