THE EVER-ELECTRIFYING DIRECTOR ROCKS THE JOINT, ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS ON PRINCE, SEQUEL S, FILM CRITICS AND MORE
Have you thought about doing a sequel to Do The Right Thing? carrie lee
No. No. No. Hell to the not. Ladies and gentlemen, I know I brought back my first film, She’s Gotta Have It, to Netflix, but there’s no way in no fucking hell — I’m gonna put it in my will — that there will be [a] play, TV show, or film of Do The Right Thing. I plan to do a Broadway musical of School Daze. But Do The Right Thing? Hell to the nah! Not gonna happen!
Where are you keeping your Oscar? Paul leach
At my home. It’s on a shelf, next to my honorary Oscar. It’s a pair.
You used Public Enemy extensively in
Do The Right Thing and have said you are a fan — what is their greatest lyric? John alexander
“Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me / He was simple and plain / Motherfuck him and John Wayne.”
How has making documentaries affected your approach to shooting your own features? sarah Parkin
It’s affected me greatly. I use a lot of documentary techniques in my feature films. I just finished the second season of She’s Gotta Have It and every time a song plays, I cut to the album cover. That comes from my documentary filmmaking.
Blackkklansman is one of the most humorous films you’ve made, yet I can’t watch the last few minutes of it without crying. Were you always going to include the Charlottesville footage or did that come about later on in the writing process? alex Turner
Yes. Even though we didn’t start filming Blackkklansman until September, Charlottesville happened 10 August. I knew I was going to use it, but I didn’t tell anyone. It was never in the script, so Focus Features did not know about it until they saw the film. They tried to talk me out of it. Not everybody, but I knew it had to stay. You know what people are going to say, just like Paramount with Do The Right Thing. Do The Right Thing was set up at Paramount. I wrote it as a spec script and it was set up at Paramount, and right before we were going to go into pre-production, Paramount had this note, that they wanted Mookie and Sal to hug each other at the end of the movie. I wasn’t doing that.
I’m a huge Prince fan, as I know you are too. Did you ever have the opportunity to work together and would you like to make a film about his life and music? Billy Donnelly
We worked together. I did a music clip for my brother Prince. The song is called ‘Mind Over Matter’. I did a film called Girl 6 where all the music is his music, and I would like to do a documentary if it happens, if I’m given the opportunity.
What films have you seen that had an influence on you as director? Jane Bass
West Side Story. Bye Bye Birdie. Mean Streets. On The Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan, written by Budd Schulberg. Budd Schulberg and I became very close friends in the later years of his life.