After more than 30 years, Spike Lee is finally getting his Oscar moment
When people say “Let me show you what I posted today on my Instagram,” the answer is usually easy: Um, no thanks. But when Spike Lee says it, and right after another – yes, another – Virginia elected official admits to wearing blackface, you pay attention.
The prolific director peers through his thick black frames and searches his phone. “Right ... here,” he says, offering his screen. It’s Tommy Davidson and Savion Glover wearing blackface in a scene from 2000′s “Bamboozled,” Lee’s searing satire about pop culture and racism. The caption reads: “What’s Up Wit Deez Politicians In Ole Virginny Wit Da Minstrel Shows? Did Dey Just Peep BAMBOOZLED? Dey Mad, Hella LATE.”
“Woooo!” Lee exclaims in his red, black and green beret (also the Pan-African flag colors). He starts chuckling, but it’s not really the sound of joy – it’s more of a knowing chuckle, like, I told you so and have been telling you to wake up for decades, America, so where have you been? You’re mad late.
“People slept on that film,” says Lee. “They slept on a bunch of them.” The success of his latest, “BlacKkKlansman,” has caused a “reassessment of my body of work,” he says.
Many Spike Lee Joints still feel urgent; the director has seldom struggled
for relevance with his chosen subject matter. “BlacKkKlansman” follows a black cop in the 1970s who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, and feels as vital as ever. Yet as one of the most influential filmmakers in modern cinema, Lee has only this year received his first best director and best picture Oscar nominations. “BlacKkKlansman” netted six altogether, nearly 30 years after his seminal “Do the Right Thing” was snubbed for a best picture nod (“Driving Miss Daisy” won the category that year).
“There’s no way in the world I’m saying, ‘Now I’ve arrived,’” Lee says. What can the academy even offer a filmmaker such as Lee at this point in his career, anyway? “Well, I could win!”
“This is not in any way disrespectful to the academy,” he continues, “but after ‘Do the Right Thing,’ I just said, you know, whatever award it is, I’m not going to let myself be in position where I feel I have to have my work validated. If I was a musician I would say the same thing about the Grammys or the Tonys or any of those organizations that give out awards.”
Building an expansive body of work has been Lee’s goal since his film-school days at New
York University (where he now teaches). He remembers reading how Akira Kurosawa, then advanced in age, responded to a journalist who had asked what one of the world’s greatest filmmakers could possibly still have to learn. “There’s a universe I still have to learn,” Lee retells it. So for three decades, Lee has steadily churned out projects - some of them to much acclaim, others not so much. With Oscar nods and box-office tallies in hand, “BlacKkKlansman” could be considered one of Lee’s most successful films to date. But to him, it’s just the latest Spike Lee Joint.
“Timing is everything, and on this film, the stars were in alignment,” Lee says. “I don’t think I tried any harder on this film than others, but there are certain things when you put a film out, when you put a piece of art out in the universe, you have no control after that.”
Just three years ago, Lee joined an Oscars boycott because of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign started by April Reign. That year, then-Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced changes to diversify its voting ranks. Until then, only three black directors had ever been nominated for an Oscar (John Singleton, Lee Daniels and Steve McQueen). That number has since doubled.
“April Reign and Cheryl Boone Isaacs can take a bow any time a person of color gets nominated,” Lee says, “because they had something to do with it.”