Spike Lee On Dynamic Duos & Reimagining Kurosawa

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This is Fresh Air.

I'm Tanya Mosley.

With filmmaker Spike Lee, there are a few guarantees.

The story will have something to say, the images will enter the cultural conversation, and he's going to weave in New York any chance he gets.

Over 40 years in more than 35 films, Spikely has captured defining moments in American life.

The racial tensions on the hottest day of the year and Do the Right Thing, the sweeping life of Malcolm X, and the devastation and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and When the Levees Broke.

He's given us dramas, comedies, and documentaries that take on power, history, race, and community.

And along the way, he's introduced audiences to actors we now can't imagine Hollywood without.

Holly Berry, Rosie Perez, Samuel L.

Jackson, and Denzel Washington.

Leaving out Gene Bunny, John Carlos, Posito,

his latest, highest to lowest, flips Akira Kurosawa's 1963 classic, High and Low, into a modern-day hip-hop drama.

Denzel Washington plays a music mogul whose world unravels when his family is pulled into a ransom plot.

Jeffrey Wright and ASAP Rocky round out the cast with Rocky stepping into a Spikely joint for the first time.

And Spikely, welcome back to fresh air.

When was the last time I was here?

I know it's been some years.

It's been a minute.

Look, I'm happy to be here.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Let me tell audiences about this film.

So in this film, Denzel Washington plays David King.

He owns this record label, this very successful record label, and his son, along with the son of his friend and driver, Jeffrey Wright, is kidnapped for ransom.

And the kidnapper, played by ASAP Rocky, accidentally releases the wrong young man, leaving King and the decision to fork over $17.5 million

in French, in Swiss francs.

In Swiss francs for a young man who is not his son.

Let's listen to a clip.

King David, now ain't this son.

Sorry?

I got your full attention now, huh?

You finally listening to me.

Yeah, I'm listening.

Good.

You know you got the wrong boy, right?

Yeah, so I've heard.

And I also learned you can never trust the help.

But luckily for me, it was never about the boy.

It was always about you.

Well, fair enough.

But if it's about me, then you can't expect me to pay $17 and a half million dollars for somebody else's son if it's about me.

But his blood is going to be on your hands then.

How you want it?

No, man, come on, nah.

This ain't no negotiation.

This a day of reckoning.

You're not God no more than I am.

All right, listen.

God give you everything you want, right?

No, God gave you everything you need.

So the question is, what do you need?

How can I help you?

I ain't saying I'm God, but I could help.

That was a scene from Spike Lee's newest film, Highest to Lowest.

Spike, this film wrestles with a couple of different themes, but there is this main question that is being asked.

What would you do to save your own child?

What would you do to save the child of someone you love?

And you've always taken on subjects that kind of move with time, like you're asking a moral question in your work.

What was it in particular about this story, reimagining this story that you felt like was so important to tell right now?

Well, I'm glad to use the word reimagining.

I say reinterpretation because I'm running away from the word remake.

But Kurosawa's film, The Great Kira Kurosawa, who made this film post-war Japan 1963, is from a book by a writer

Ed

And the strength of this film, the strength of the book and Chris Howell's film, it really deals with morality.

And when you have an actor, and in the Japanese version, Tish Mufun, one of the great, great actors, and then with Denzel, who's right there,

great actors,

when they're going through trials and tribulations, the audience becomes engaged and they're with

that person

every step of the way.

Consequently, audiences, when they see this film, the ones who've seen already,

they're with Denzel's character, David King, and they ask themselves, what would they do?

Right, right.

What would they do in the position that they see on screen that the great magnificent Denzel Washington is in?

And it takes star quality.

Here's the thing.

The reason why people are stars is because they have the talent and the audience is engaged.

And from the jump, the audience has been engaged with Mr.

Denzel Washington.

And I've been blessed with five of those dynamic duos.

Right.

You guys are like Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

Yeah.

Or you could say

LeLay, great Sita LeMet and Al Pacino.

You could say Francis Ford with Brando and Godfather in the apocalypse now.

So throughout

history, you've had these

pairings.

There's something a little disconcerting, I'll say, about seeing

Denzel in this character.

He portrays it so well.

I've seen the film twice, and you know, the first time.

Yeah.

The first time I was like, man, he's so, he's like disheveled a little bit.

He's not like a man.

He's at the top, but he doesn't appear at the top.

The second time, I felt like that's on purpose.

Like, there's something that's being seen in the way that he's moving that perhaps he's out of step with this moment.

Well, I think that's a great observation.

I mean he's not at the top anymore.

His label,

record label, stack of hits, is not putting out the hits anymore.

So he's in a very vulnerable part.

And also,

when you're at the top,

And that point comes when you're not the top anymore, that's earth-shaking.

In the original film, in Kirasawa's film,

the protagonist is a shoe executive.

Right.

And yours, a music mogul.

Why did you choose music?

It's an interesting.

Well, that was the script went through Halvick for many years.

And so when it ended up in Denzel's hands, that change had already been made.

So I got a call.

Denzel says, Spike, you got this script.

You want to rest?

I said, yeah, send it, FedEx.

And before I even hung up the phone, I knew I wanted to do the film not even knowing, having read what the script was and what it was about.

Because Denzel didn't say you didn't describe it, you just said, I got a script, I want you to read it.

That's where it happened.

It's interesting that that was already the way the script was written when it got to you.

And of course, immediately you're like, yes.

Music is such an integral part of your work.

It's

interwoven into your

filmmaking.

Yeah, it's part of the filmmaking.

There's this piece of music, though, right off the top.

It's It's you open with the 1943 Rogers and Hammerstein, oh, what a beautiful morning from Oklahoma.

Right.

But the rest of the film is like soul and hip-hop.

How did that, is there a story behind you?

Well, I love all types of music.

And I remember my mother, who's a cinephone.

My father hated

movies, but my mother is a cinephone.

I'm the oldest, so.

They both have passed, but

she was the one that, I was my mother's movie date because my father hated Hollywood.

So she introduced me to a whole lot of films.

Of course, at the time, I didn't want, I mean, I want to run it.

It was a while broken came running down the streets and play stick balls and stoop ball stuff, but she says, you know,

I'm taking your little rusty butt.

We're going to the movie, so I don't care what you say.

And here's the thing, though.

Every time I look, I don't want to go, I don't want to go.

And then we'll come out the theater said mommy that was good

so it's just an example of

kids don't know and when parents take the time introduce introduce their

stuff to children who might go kicking and screaming but when they come out of the theater or the movie theater or the museum whatever you know

you can say lives been changed and I know that's happened to me do you remember one of the movies your mom took you to that really stuck with you all right

This is a famous one.

I've said this before, so anybody at home who's heard this before,

excuse me.

My mother loved Sean Connery as James Bond, 007.

And my mother,

she would always want to go to the opening weekend of these films.

And the theater was packed.

And, you know, those early James Bond films, the explosions, gunplay, just crazy stuff.

And there was a lull in the film.

You have to have this.

You can't do that the whole length of the film.

You got to get the audience of breath, you know, just some quiet, you know.

And the theater is completely quiet.

I said to my mother, Mommy,

why is that lady,

why is her name Pussy Galore?

The whole theater heard that.

My mother grabbed me by the neck and said, don't you say another thing?

What I do, what'd I do?

True story.

But

that film came out in 63, so I was born in 50s.

I was six years old.

Right.

You're like, what's this?

I don't know, but it just sounds like a funny name to me.

And you still remember it to this day.

Hey, every time that works.

Even adults probably says about that name of that character.

My mother was embarrassed.

Let's take a short break.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Spike Lee.

His latest film, Highest to Lowest, is a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 classic, High and Low, set in the world of American hip-hop and global fame.

We'll continue our conversation after short break.

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Today, we're talking to Spike Lee, the director, writer, and producer whose more than 35 films include Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Black Klansman, and When the Levees Broke.

His latest movie, Highest to Lowest, stars Denzel Washington as a music mogul whose life unravels when his family is targeted in a ransom plot.

The film also stars ASAP Rocky.

Denzel's character has lost his ear, really.

Like, he's become so far away from that hungry, artistic guy he was at the beginning of his life.

He's a great scene where his wife played Bill Fisher.

Darrett says that, you know,

she doesn't see the joy anymore.

Right.

And

it's something that I heard happen often.

I mean,

sometimes I can feel it.

You get to midlife and you feel like this thing that you're so passionate about,

there are ebbs and flows.

Ebbs and flows.

Have you ever been there?

No.

You've not.

You've always had a passion.

Film?

Oh, that's...

Look, I can't talk for anybody else, but for me, I've never had,

fell out of love with cinema because I tell this to my students.

I'm a tenured professor of film at NY Graduate Film School.

Ernest Dickinson, great camera master,

all my films up the Malcolm X.

Ang Lee was my classmate.

Jim Dramers is two years ahead of us.

So my love has always been there.

Now there's a business side that's different, but just talking about making films

and I truly believe I was put here

to be a storyteller.

So I'll never, you know, you can get the BS, but push that aside.

And sometimes it could be a big pile.

Right, like how do you not allow yourself to be consumed by all of that stuff you just have to deal with to get to the thing thing you love so much

because when you get to the thing after going through that stuff you're getting through the thing you love

and and

to break it down even a little more for my sister and the audience i first day of class i tell my students that i'm lucky and

if you can make a living doing what you love you won

um there's this

explosive, propulsive scene in the film in highest to lowest.

It's like the apex part of it.

It happens during the Puerto Rican Day parade.

And I want to talk a little bit about it.

Who are the fans on the number four train and where they're going?

Baseball.

And they're New York Yankee.

Yankee fans, right?

And who are the Yankees playing that day in Yankee Stadium?

Boston.

They hated Red Sox.

Right, right.

We got it.

We can't leave that.

There are so many.

I mean, that whole scene, there's so much there.

You know what's that called, really?

A set piece.

Say more.

What does that mean?

A scene that stands out.

Yes.

Yeah, that's a set piece.

But also,

the set piece, there's one like that in the original, too, on the bullet trains in Tokyo, Japan.

So both scenes take place where the ransom is dumped to be picked up by the...

kidnapper.

I was wondering what came first.

Was it the music and the parade?

Was it the scene in the train?

Was it because it's really like a story about New York set inside of a thing?

Well, it had to, it comes from the original.

I mean, that's where inspiration comes from.

I knew I cannot

do a reinterpretation of that, but not even use this scene, a famous scene from that film.

And

the thing that was important that the character played by Ace Rocky,

I don't want to be, people think this is just a young thug rapper.

know, no

young thug is smart.

Even though his intentions are off the mark, but

I also don't want to play the NYPD as dopes, as stupid.

So I had to come up with this scenario where

it would be very complicated for the NYPD to

stop this thing happening.

Right.

So I order now I thought about

having this

thing having this drop, ransom drop, happen on a Sunday afternoon Yankee Stadium.

The Red Sox are in town.

And also, on top of that, the Puerto Rican Day Parade is always on a Sunday.

So have both of those on a Sunday.

And then

I went out to my brother Eddie Palmieri,

who recently passed away three or four days before the premiere in New York in Broadway.

Did he ever have a chance to see it?

Did he see himself in it?

No.

And filming this, you know, we were very

respectful.

And

it was not done to play back.

We did seven or eight takes, I don't remember exactly, and each time was live.

The Eddie Palmer and South Orchestra playing live.

And when you see the film, you can see the jewelry in Eddie's face as he's performing and doing a thing that he was born to be on earth, you know, to perform and sing and represent the great people of Puerto Rico.

It's such a moving scene, too, also and

knowing and understanding that he just passed away.

We just lost him.

One of the giants.

In general, one of the giants.

And it was very emotional at

the premiere in New York, in Brooklyn.

We had Eddie II.

There's many members of the family there, too.

He spoke to the audience before we began the film.

Oh, oh, that's beautiful.

I want to stay on highest to lowest because I wanted to tour this penthouse apartment

that Denzel is.

That's a real building.

It's a real building.

And the art and the artifacts.

Tell me the story about that.

Are those your pieces?

A lot of them are, but

copies were made because stuff gets messed up on a film.

So I cannot have somebody accidentally put a hole in the bosquier.

We weren't

a real Richard Abaddon porch of Lena Horne, you know, so those are ports, and then we finished those, those copies were destroyed.

Okay, so like copies of copies, but just to describe for the audience, I mean, Basquiats on the wall.

It's a shortcut.

It's a shortcut to show that this is a fluent

black family.

Yeah.

You know, and the money.

You first you see where they live for open accredits, but when you go inside their penthouse, you see there's millions of dollars on the the wall.

Of black art in basketball.

Black art.

A lot of that art is owned by my wife and I, Tanya.

When did you start collecting art?

Well, I started collecting

comic books, baseball cards, basketball cards.

So

the art thing came much later when I had some money.

But here's the thing, I'm under the age where

our mothers threw out our comic books,

our baseball cards, which are worth thousands, thousands.

Today, we didn't know.

Here's the thing they know, especially in Brooklyn.

We're flipping cards, we're putting cards on our bike

on the spokes so you can hear the noise.

No one knew.

Yes.

No one knew that they would be worth something.

Millions of dollars.

Right?

You could have funded your first, she's gotta have it with all of those.

Which cost,

which costs $175,000, which was

their cars worth more than that.

I follow this young woman on TikTok and she talks a lot about art.

And I think she's an art history major, and she's like out in the world now, just starting out.

And I was like, she seems familiar.

I don't know.

And then one day I

happen across one of her videos, and it's your daughter.

So she grew up, yeah, she grew up around all this, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, she's grown.

So is my son, Jackson, and then they're both

in the arts.

My daughter's a great photographer.

My son, Jackson, you know, he's works to me.

He's like

the merchandise, you know, getting deals done.

So they're both, you know, thriving.

They're thriving.

But art

is the bedrock.

It's the bedrock in the game.

And they grew up, you know, with their

my wife, Tanya's a producer, too.

In fact,

the film she produced

was the first place I saw Ace Rocky in that film.

Wait, that was her film, his first film.

What is it called?

The title of the film that Tanya produced.

Dope.

It's dope.

That's why I first saw Rocky in front of the camera.

Not in music video, in a film.

Rocky's performance is amazing.

Last night, the screening here in LA,

I gave him a big hug.

I said, Look, I love you.

You're great, but the next film, you can't play a rapper.

You cannot just be corned into

doing this role again.

You have immense talent, so please don't play another rapper.

You see, right after this, right.

You see more, you see depth.

There's a lot of comparisons people give to him and Denzel because of the way they look.

They look like the first I saw, checking it out five years ago, I was saying, This guy looks like

Denzel's son.

Yeah.

And that was evil 4, you know,

the whole thing

in the high and low happening, highest to lowest happening.

Yeah.

I mean, the community said that.

I don't want him to be put in the corner this early in his career.

Yeah.

I mean, he has, he's, I mean, he's a leading man.

Let's take a short break.

My guest today is Spike Lee.

We're talking about his new film, Highest to Lowest.

We'll be right back after a short break.

I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

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T's and C's apply.

I'm actually just thinking about you back when you first came on the scene.

I mean, you came like a lightning bolt.

You talk about campaigning for Malcolm X, putting that nicely.

I remember the media really portraying you, talking to you a lot about being angry.

And I had this debate with my husband husband about it because I was like, I actually really loved it.

I felt like, you know, as a young person being anti-establishment,

I felt like.

What did your husband say?

Well, he said, well, I never thought he was angry.

I just thought he was confident and knew what he wanted and had a point of view.

But

what was your assessment?

You were kind of tough on the media those early days.

Well, they were tough on me.

You know, this belligerent, young rabble-rouser.

I mean, when Do the Right Thing came out, you know, I was portrayed as a racist and

Mookie through Goblin's Canadian through the Salis Famous window and Jungle Fever

said I was anti-Semitic because of how they felt the portrayal of the two Jewish owners of the club played by

the Tutiro brothers, Nick and John.

So I don't combat.

that type of criticism as much as I used to, of course, it's died down.

But when Do the Right Thing premiered in Cannes, 1989 american journals were saying that this film was going to cause riots

black people riot in summertime

and they were pleading to uh

universal pictures if you're going to release the film don't release in summertime because they thought that would be where we'd be all wrapped up or something yeah it's kind of crazy looking back on that like a film's not going to do that but when you If you look, that film really had the crystal ball.

When you look at the

the killing, the murder of Ray Raheem by the NYPD in the chill cold,

where that happened.

We were talking about global warming, a lot of things in that film, you know, we talked about came to life in

later years.

I mean, that the socio-political message, it almost mirrored to a T 2020.

Yes.

That's when everyone was talking about it like Radio Raheem became a meme.

And I wrote that script in 88.

We shot in 89.

Yeah.

And you know, it

looks

happy, I'm not bragging about that, but we

I'm not happy that the stuff you had in the film ended up happening in real life.

Yeah, but it did.

The thing about it is, it seems like we didn't have the, we weren't there yet in the 80s and 90s to have a true conversation about it.

Came back up in 2020, allowed us to tap into it.

And I know what you're saying, sis, but it's

sad that

people had to die

for this to happen.

Families were destroyed because of this.

They really weaponized the world woke.

And as we sit here in L.A., you know,

they got the feds now trying to take over D.C.,

formerly known as Chalk City.

We live, you know,

the world now is bananas.

Let's talk a little bit about your documentary work because you've done quite a few of them.

Academy Award-nominated Four Little Girls about the 63 Birmingham church bombing.

Bad 25, which I forgot about, but Bad 25 about Michael Jackson's bad album.

And that's not, I mean, that's not even a full list

off the wall.

I've heard many storytellers say, especially documentarians, like they take on work

that they can't get out of their heads.

And I wanted to know what's your rubric for finding the documentaries that stories that you want to tell.

For me, I don't make a distinction between feature films

and

documentaries.

For me, it's storytelling.

And one of the most significant films I ever made was For Little Girls, which is about

the 19 September 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

And

the goal was to

talk to the parents, the relatives,

the teachers.

Talk about these four beautiful young black girls who were murdered,

were

murdered by multiple sticks of dynamite,

and

who

these beautiful young girls might have been

or they were allowed to live.

These members of the KKK stuck dynamite in a place of worship, a church,

and murdered four beautiful young black girls who weren't allowed to

live.

Who knows what they might have been?

Mothers,

grandchildren, but their life was

snuffed out.

with the

act of hate.

Jadaka Hoover was not a friend of black folks, not a friend of Dr.

King or the Civil Rights Movement.

That week, they know who did it.

It was one of the people.

The guy's nickname was Donnie McBob.

And we wanted this film to be seen.

I did it at HBO.

We wanted this film to be eligible for the best feature-length documentary.

And so, in order to do that, you have to have a week-long run, theatrical run.

And a couple days before that, I got a call by the FBI.

I don't know why they're calling me.

They said they would like to see a print of the film.

And a week later, they reopened the case.

Wow.

And sent two of those

murderers to prison.

They ain't been walking around free since September 9th.

Jacob Hoover, they knew who did it.

That's pretty powerful, Spike.

So I can't do anything to top that.

No, that's pretty.

And it's not a thing I talk about a lot, but it did happen.

It's one of your most powerful pieces of work.

I agree.

You lost an Academy Award.

You were, like, nominated for it, but you didn't win.

We did a funny story.

Yeah.

So we got nominated, and I told HPO, we got to bring the parents to L.A.

So, we did not win.

And so at that time, Denzel co-owned a restaurant.

So that was supposed to be the party.

Like, it was a party.

And no one was upset about not winning because their night was made.

They got a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Denzel Washington.

For them, that was the Oscar.

That was the Oscar.

Denzel hugged them and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

And they got their Oscar.

Another story that you told was the story of Hurricane Katrina.

And we're now coming up on the anniversary.

I know that you all.

Let me ask a question,

my sister.

You got to help me here.

What word can I say instead of anniversary?

Right.

And commemoration doesn't work.

It is like,

what is the word that speaks out?

Give me my email.

So when you get that word.

Right, you find it.

Because I think it's coming up August 29th, right?

It is, yeah.

Please give me that word, because

I refuse to say anniversary.

Right.

To me, that's

birthdays, wedding, or what, but what happened happened 20 years ago.

I don't want to.

Yep.

help me i can't say anniversary anymore so you won't say anniversary so you just say it's been 20 years yeah

thank you right boom

um it's been 20 years there's another documentary katrina come hell or high water that you're you're you're associated with or you're an executive producer and there's a uh three parts i did the final

episode of the three and also ryan kugler has one too so a big moment coming up what is it about this particular story you've already done it with one.

What is it that we need to revisit, that we need to sit with and understand about it in this second go-round?

Americans have short memories.

So that's why I came apart of this other, this is a revisiting of it.

And here's another thing, though, is that

by going back 20 years and then looking at New Orleans today, They've lost a large part of the black population.

Black folks have gone on and thrived in Houston, Atlanta, Georgia,

Charlotte, North Carolina.

It's

a good argument to say that New Orleans has not

to show us what it is now,

what's been lost.

I think that people are still dealing with that.

It's 20 years later.

Right.

As you mentioned, your mom was deep into movies.

Your dad was a jazz musician.

You grew up just surrounded by music.

Yeah, a creative household.

Creative household.

And

they often say we like love and we are connected to the music that was a coming of age for us.

Like we are often perpetually stuck in it.

But as a creative, like how, how do you view the moving times, the music that we're hearing today

without sounding like a fuddy-duddy?

Like, can you see that value?

Music.

And

people complaining about rock and roll back in the day.

So I'm not necessarily a purist that like my father was.

I mean anything that that that was played with electricity, you know, he was not he was not with that.

He always was tone as is.

Like literally?

Like he didn't even like to play recognition.

My father Bill Lee was the top folk bassist working.

He's on the first Simon and Garfunkel album, the first Gordon Leopard album.

Like played with Judy Collins.

I mean a whole bunch of people.

He's on the Bob Dylan album.

And when Bob Dylan went electric, everybody went electric.

And my father refused to play Fender bass.

He called it tone as is.

I'm not going to do anything where

electricity is used to amplify the sound and make it louder.

Wow.

And my mother had to go to work.

Wow.

If you saw Crookland,

that's real life.

That's the hardest of the Lee family.

Yeah.

And my mother, I mean, before my father was working, she was going to Bloomerdale's and going to Taylor, you know, every week.

But my father said, I'm not doing that.

I'm not playing electric bass.

My mother had to work, you know, and I and I saw I was feeling, as the eldest of five, I was feeling a certain way about my father because

my mother was working and had to cook and clean, and included myself, my siblings.

We were crazy.

I mean, we would, when relatives knew that them bad leads are coming over, they were like, oh boy, I hope they don't eat up all our food and tear our house up.

That was a real possibility, huh?

Oh, it happened.

Yeah,

it happened.

So I felt the way about my father.

But then I understood that he's a purist, and my mother supported him, loved him.

And so she had to work, cook, and clean.

And she's going to do that.

And hopefully, God willing, you know, my father will get a break.

And the world will see the great musician he was.

And later on, my mother died.

He scored my films, my student films, NYU graduate film school, and then she used to have it.

Mobile Blues, Do the Right Thing, and the jungle fever.

You know, Spike, this is a real treat for me to talk to you because the treat is mine.

It's mutual, my sister.

Oh, well, well, I'm happy about that.

I think your films are part of like my self-conception, my understanding of who I am and the role that I play in this world.

What's the first film you saw?

Mine.

She's to have it?

No, because I was too young for that, but I saw that later.

But the one that really sits with me the most is Malcolm X.

And I'll tell you why, because I grew up in Detroit.

Détrois.

I grew up in Détrois.

Detroit Public Schools, the day that your film came out, they allowed kids to leave school to go see it.

And a teacher of mine had us all get on a bus and we arrived.

You got on the bus?

We all got on the bus together.

I made a movie too.

And we arrived at the theater, and there were lots of other schools there.

And

there is this moment at the end of the film that I want to play.

It is where there are kids in classrooms in the United States and then on the continent of Africa.

Soweto.

Yes.

On May 19th,

that they designate Malcolm X Day.

And each student stands up and says, I am Malcolm X.

Let's listen to it.

May 19th, we celebrate Malcolm X's birthday because he was a great, great Afro-American.

And Malcolm X is you, all of you.

And you are Malcolm X.

I'm Malcolm X.

I'm Malcolm X.

I'm Malcolm X.

I'm Malcolm X.

I'm Malcolm X.

I am Malcolm X.

I am Malcolm X.

I am Malcolm X.

I am Malcolm X.

I am Malcolm X.

As Brother Malcolm said,

we declare

our right

on this earth

to be a man,

to be a human being,

to be given the rights

of a human being,

to be respected

as a human being

in this society,

on this earth,

in this day,

which we intended to bring into existence.

necessary

that was a clip from Spike Lee's 1992 film right Malcolm X

it makes me emotional to hear it today but I'll tell you that day I saw it in the theater

when that

by any means necessary everybody stood up in the theater they were yelling they were screaming they were doing the fist up the black power fist how old what grade was this my sister ninth grade ninth grade so first year high school let me tell you the story.

I've seen a lot of people, a lot of great people,

but to be in a room and directing the great Nelson Mandela

for the end of the movie.

And the reason why I chose that, because I read that Mr.

Mandela, who is in prison for

27 years, I think.

Yes.

On Robin Island, he said one of the things that kept him going was autobiography of Malcolm X as told to

Alex Haley.

And we're going over the script, which is a quote by Malcolm X, and he said, Spike, oh no, he said, Mr.

Lee, I cannot say

by any means necessary.

But I was, I had, first of all, I had the footage of him saying this.

I knew I could put that in there.

But it wasn't until

later on I understood that because he was going to run to be president in South Africa.

Mandala, yeah.

And Afrikaners would use that

against him.

By means necessary, we're going to kill you white folks.

So he was very smart.

I didn't protest.

I said,

it's okay.

And also, one of those kids that says I'm Malcolm X

is John David Washington.

Denzel Washington's son.

He's a young.

I have to go back and look at it.

Later on, start my film, Black Klansman.

Yes.

How did that idea come about to have the kids stand up and declare that classroom scene?

It's a homage to Sparta kids, but also it

worked also the show that

we could do in Then and Then.

The thing is that that sequence where kids stand up and the school starts in Soweto,

but then it goes to Harlem.

Yeah.

So I wanted to show the, you know, the bond between African Americans and their brothers who's, brothers and sisters who are still

in the world.

It's a powerful show that

we are diaspora.

Yes, and also apartheid was still in place.

Going back, though, to that time period, you were sort of like responding to the media.

You were responding to them responding to your work and the thoughts that this work would spark something within Black America.

But something shifted.

That there'll be uprising.

Right.

And so there was a response that you were giving to the media during that time that I just really remember feeling so strong.

And then something happened with you.

Then you became like the person we see today, like so jovial and so open.

But I was like that from the beginning.

Well, you're talking about the way I was portrayed, which was not who I was.

But I cannot stand silent and say that, I mean, for example, that this film was caused by Black Folks to Riot.

I'm talking specifically about

Do the Right Thing.

And

that film got two nominations.

Danny Ello

for Sal

and also Denzel Wash for Glory.

When I saw Glory and that scene, he was getting whipped and that lone tear

went down his eye, I thought to myself, Danny, you ain't winning.

This is not going to happen.

And then also,

We got, I mean, I got nominated for a screenplay.

The film that won that year was Driver's Daisy.

So that could tell you more than enough about the climate.

Then also the people who voted and who were the people who were members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Did you ever feel that way, though?

Like you were entitled to awards that you did not get, that you earned awards that you did not get?

And where do you sit on it?

Because...

Well, I think that, I mean, there's footage of me being

not happy.

The last time was with Black Classman.

Which wasn't that long ago.

I mean, that's...

What was the name of that film?

Green Book.

Green Book.

Oh, okay.

So I won't.

So I said, man, every time somebody's driving somebody, I'm going to lose.

Driving his Daisy and Green Book.

And funny thing, though, I was very upset.

And I jumped out of my mouth footage of this.

at the academy that night.

I jumped out of my seat, I'll see, cursing and my wife trying to

have me sit down.

I'm like, just get off me.

And she sits then,

my wife, sit my son out there to get me.

And so I calmed down.

If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Spike Lee.

We'll be right back after a short break.

This is Fresh Air.

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It's never been a secret about the filmmakers who have inspired you over the years.

I remember a few years ago you had an exhibit at the Academy Museum and like all the folks were there, all of your heroes.

All of your giants, yeah.

Yeah, all of your giants.

For you, though, a few years ago, She's Gotta Have It was remade.

Not remade.

Reimagined.

That's the same thing that happened with this film.

People think Highest Low is not a remake of High and Low.

Right.

It was reinterpretation.

Yes.

That interpretation was an interpretation for the 20s, you know, the 2020s now.

Your she's got to have it was so subversive because it was

1986 about sexual liberation, a young woman who has the freedom to choose.

I just wonder, like, as you move through time and you're experiencing your own work, other folks reimagining your story for a new time.

Like, it's kind of like the beauty of storytelling.

But let me tell you this, though.

It's only when I got into NYU graduate film school three-year program that I really got introduced to world cinema.

And the first Kurosawa film that I saw that wasn't a samurai film was Rosh Shamon, which is a film about a murder and a rape and how these different characters each tell their version of the story.

And that premise I used for she's going to have it.

So this is not the first thing, you know, I'm getting down with my brother Kurosawa.

I got to meet too.

When did you meet him?

It was when he was here in the States and at that time

Squirsace and Spielberg and Francis Ford were promoting, they produced the film, I forgot the name of the film.

And one of my prized possessions, it was in the show at the Brooklyn Museum, is a beautiful portrait that he signed for me.

He did the autographs with a paintbrush.

Oh, he did.

white ink and gives me a beautiful people you go to my instagram official spike lee you'll see this portrait of him, that Curaçao assigned me with a paintbrush for white paint.

What a moment, and

what a prized possession.

Yes.

Did he know and understand the impact that he had on you through your films?

Did you guys talk about it?

You told him about it.

A lot of times when you meet these giants, and you know, after a while, you go, I'm going for an hour, like Spike.

Oh, we get it.

I influenced that.

I'm glad I influenced your work.

Well, no, I don't have an hour right here for you to tell me that.

Yeah, right, right.

Spike Lee, thank you so much for this conversation.

It's been a pleasure.

Yes.

Spike Lee's new film, Highest to Lowest, is now playing in theaters.

It will be available to stream on Apple TV Plus starting September 5th.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, journalist Ruth Marcus joins us to talk about President Trump's combative Attorney General, Pam Bondi.

In her latest piece, For The New Yorker, Marcus describes how Bondi has upended the Justice Department, reversing policies and firing staff in what she calls the most convulsive transition of power since Watergate.

I hope you can join us.

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