Best Of : Jane Fonda / Spike Lee

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right.

Learn more at rwjf.org.

From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend.

Today, Jane Fonda, at 87, the Oscar-winning actor, is pouring her energy into activism.

She'll reflect on her decades-long career and how she first began her fitness empire to fund her activist work.

Also, we hear from Spike Lee.

His latest film, Highest to Lowest, reimagines Akira Kurosawa's 1963 classic, High and Low, but through the lens of modern-day America and hip-hop culture.

Denzel Washington stars as a powerful music mogul whose life unravels when kidnappers mistakenly hold his friend's son ransom instead of his own.

The story becomes a tense moral moral dilemma.

Does he risk everything to save a child who isn't his?

That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right.

Learn more at rwjf.org.

This is Fresh Air Weekend.

I'm Terry Gross.

Tanya Mosley has today's first interview.

Here's Tanya.

My guest today is Jane Fonda.

When she accepted the SAG After a Lifetime Achievement Award back in February, she used the moment to sound an alarm.

Empathy is not weak or woke, she told the room, urging her peers to use their platforms for good.

Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements, like apartheid or our civil rights movement or Stonewall, and ask yourself:

would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge?

Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs?

We don't have to wonder anymore because we are in our documentary moment.

Six months later, I'm talking with Fonda not about a new film or project, but about the path that brought her to that speech.

Born in 1937 into one of Hollywood's most famous families, Fonda came of age when women were expected to be seen, but not outspoken.

Through the decades, Fonda found her voice first on screen, where she went on to win two Academy Awards, in 1971 for Klute, playing a New York City call girl trying to leave sex work and pursue an acting career.

And in 1978, for Coming Home, portraying a military wife whose husband ships off to Vietnam.

Fonda's Fonda's career and life choices have rarely been predictable.

In the 80s, she became an unexpected fitness mogul.

Her first workout tape remains the number one selling home video of all time.

And through the decades, she's chosen to live a life of resistance, marching against the Vietnam War, supporting civil rights and Native American activists, and more recently as an environmental activist.

In 2019, she held weekly climate demonstrations on Capitol Hill, where she was arrested five times.

Jane Fonda, welcome back to Fresh Air.

It's good to be back.

I initially wanted to talk with you six months ago after the SAG AFTRA award ceremony where you won the Lifetime Achievement Award, but I couldn't get you till now.

So yes, I'm happy to have you here.

Thank you.

But that speech, the timing of it, it came one month after the inauguration.

And there's something else you said in it.

I want to read this quote.

A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way.

And even if they're a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge, but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent because we're going to need a big tent to resist what is coming at us.

Who were you thinking about when you wrote those lines?

Oh, I was thinking about all the people that live in the middle of the country, you know, what's called flyover country.

People who used to belong to unions that worked jobs that paid enough to buy a house and send your children to high school and college, and

that's gone for them.

When the rug has been pulled out from under you like that, you know,

where does your sense of self, your sense of meaning, your self-respect?

It's very hard, and you're going to be very angry.

You know, my dad came from Nebraska, from Omaha, and I've walked precincts in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio.

And, you know, people are really angry and they're really hurting.

And so they voted a certain way.

78 million Americans did.

All of them are not MAGA.

You know.

And when they realize that what they voted for has turned against them, that it's not what they thought,

that

prices are going to go up, health care, they're going to not be able to afford the medical care that they need and

the food that they need and so on, You know, they're going to be looking for alternatives.

And I think those of us, well, a lot of us in America have alternatives to offer.

And

we have to not judge, but we have to put forward a vision of what we think America should be.

Do you feel like it's your duty at this age, 87 years old, to

say these things, to speak, to still be an activist?

Because I mean, you could be off on an island somewhere.

People say that, and I don't understand how i mean i can't even imagine right now being on an island someplace you know i there's a book i want to write but when i write i go inward

this is not the time to go inward we have to go out we have to speak we have to shout we have to find non-violent ways to avoid what's happening which is very we're very very close to becoming fascist in this country i never ever imagined that that would be the case but it's beginning to happen, and we have to find ways to stop that.

Today, one of the things that you're focused on among many issues.

I'm focused on one thing.

Well, actually, two things: saving our democracy and confronting the climate crisis, and they go together.

They're totally interdependent.

We can't solve one without the other.

You can't have a stable democracy with this unstable climate.

You can't have a stable climate without a stable democracy, and they'll be solved together.

In 2019, you were arrested five times.

That's no big deal.

My beloved friend Martin Sheen has been arrested 72 times and I'm famous.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

So and I'm a privileged person.

They don't treat me the way they would if I did exactly the same thing and I was black.

It would not be the same.

And it wouldn't

probably be the same now.

If I got arrested now, it would probably be for five years.

Would you still be willing to put yourself on the line to do that?

I don't know right now because I think that what I'm doing with my Jane Fonda Climate PAC is important enough for me to be sure I don't go to jail for five years.

I have to keep doing this.

This is important.

We're focusing with my PAC, down ballot.

That is to say, governors, mayors, city councils, state legislators, county executives, state and local.

Building a firewall because this is where the real climate and democracy work is being done right now on the state and local level.

You know, Jane,

you're kind of the most visible activist of your generation.

But do you think that your generation also to a certain extent bores some responsibility for the moment that we're in?

Yeah, I do.

It's called neoliberalism.

A lot of so-called democratic leaders for the last decades,

but particularly starting in the 80s,

move to corporate liberalism, you know, so that the Democratic Party seems to be kowtowing to its donors and moving to the middle, which is not what we need to be doing.

Okay, little-known fact about your fitness empire.

You actually recorded that first tape because you were trying to fund your activism.

Well, my second husband and I had started a statewide organization called the Campaign for Economic Democracy.

The war had ended, and we began to focus on the economic inequality that exists in this country.

So we focused on that.

It was the beginning of the very apparent takeover of much of our economy by corporations, including agriculture.

And a light bulb went off.

I have to start a business.

And it took us about a year.

to figure out what it should be and it turned out it was the workout.

So the money went to the Campaign for economic democracy.

We're listening to Tanya Mosley's interview with Jane Fonda.

She's a two-time Oscar-winning actor, a best-selling author, fitness pioneer, and activist.

We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

Let's get back to Tanya Mosley's interview with Jane Fonda.

In the next part of our conversation, we briefly discuss suicide.

If you're having thoughts of suicide, help is available by calling or texting 988, which is the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Again, the number to call or text is 988.

You had gone through this long period, really all of your life,

based on what society had told you, based on what your father, your father.

Your father used to say some pretty horrible things to you about your body.

He objectified me,

and he objectified women.

You know, for for all one of the things that i've really learned is

our parents aren't perfects our parents are are have all the weaknesses that all humans have you know he he he wasn't perfect but he was a good man he had good values and he did his best and um

So I, you know, I don't feel anger or anything.

It's that's the way men of that generation

thought about women.

When did you come to understand understand that, that he's of a generation, he's a good man, but he was a man of his time?

When I got older,

not as old as I am now.

No, I think probably in my 50s and 60s, I made peace with that.

After he passed away.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think I'm going to have to pass away before my kids make peace with me because I certainly have not been

a perfect parent, but I've done my best.

Oh, it's so interesting because so much of your life and what you've talked about, when people sit down and talk with you, it's about your relationship between you and your father, Henry Fonda.

And then your mother, who passed away when you were 12.

Well, she didn't pass away.

She killed herself.

Yeah, she died by suicide.

Yeah.

She was bipolar.

Yeah.

There's a documentary about your life that came out a few years ago.

And in that documentary, your son says, I think my mother's number one wound, the place by which she moves through the world, comes from that original ache and hurt of losing your mother at 12 years old.

But you received this gift later in life.

Were you able to read her medical records that gave you a deeper understanding of her?

It helped you understand yourself.

You know, even as a child, I knew, and I would say to myself, something happened to her, my mother, a child, because I knew that there was something wrong.

I knew that she didn't really love me or my brother, but my brother more than me, because she wanted a boy.

But

when I was writing my memoir, My Life So Far, in the early 2000s,

I got a lawyer to get her records from the institution where she was when she killed herself.

And among the papers that I got was, she must have been asked to write a little biography of herself.

And I read that.

And it turns out that

she was sexually abused at age seven.

And

I could tell reading this document,

she'd been a secretary, so she knew how to type, small typing, single space, very intense,

what it was that had happened to her.

I think she had, you know,

mental issues.

Her father was alcoholic and schizophrenic and paranoid and a problem.

But then to have, on top of that, being sexually abused had really affected her.

Yeah.

Put me in the timeframe of when you were able to get those records.

Where were you in life?

I was

single.

Ted Turner, my third husband and I had separated.

And I was writing my book.

I had asked for five years.

I said, Don't ask me, you know, I don't want a quick deadline, or I'm going to take five years.

And I was in the beginning part of the five years of writing my memoirs.

What did that provide for you to learn that information about your mom?

I remember when I read it, I was alone in a hotel room, and I started to shake.

I got so cold, and I got in bed and covered myself up, and I started crying.

And all I wanted to do was take my mother in my arms and hold her and tell her how sorry I was.

And that I understood.

And that I know she did her best.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You've been working pretty consistently for the last few decades, but around 91,

all the way into the mid-2000s, you retired.

You went away from public life.

And

although you've talked about it, everybody I talk to says, oh yeah, what was she doing during that time?

I was married to Ted Turner.

Yes.

I married,

from 10 years, from 90 to 2000.

You can't be married to Ted Turner and have another job.

That's the job.

And it's a full-time job.

And it was great.

And I'm so grateful that I had Ted in my life for 10 years because he's the most interesting, fascinating, exciting, wonderful guy.

This interesting thing has happened to you through your life, though, where there comes a certain point where you outgrow that life it's like you're becoming more and more jane as you move through life is that a fair way to put it it's a very astute way i'm amazed to hear you say that yes yeah because you decided to come back to acting after that marriage well i spent five years after the marriage writing my memoir

And at the very end of that writing process, I received a script called Monster-in-Law.

And

my best friend produced it, Paula Weinstein, the late Paula Weinstein, God bless her.

And

it was a great comeback.

Yeah, and you've been working pretty consistently after that.

One of the projects you're very proud of is Grace and Frankie, which was a Netflix comedy which ran for seven seasons, starring you and Lily Tomlin, who you guys have a long history together.

I mean, nine to five.

We've made three movies together.

Yes.

Yeah.

In Grace and Frankie, you're two women in your 70s whose husbands played by Martin Sheen and Sam Watterson leave the both of you for each other.

And it forces you both into this unlikely close relationship.

I want to play a scene from the second season.

Grace and Frankie are speaking to their exes and their children about like how they feel like they're being mistreated.

And this clip has been edited for time.

Lily Tomlin speaks first.

Let's listen.

You, you turned me into a little old lady who's losing her mind and shouldn't even be allowed to drive.

And I'm just a dupe who couldn't possibly have any good advice to give.

And you,

you said you wouldn't hire me because I'd overshadow you.

But I gave you the first new idea that Sagrace has had since you took over.

Well, we gave you the first idea.

And you never acknowledged it.

You took credit for it.

And then you threw Frankie to the curb.

Mom, you try being in business with her.

Well, I might.

I will.

I am.

You are.

Well, yep, we talked about it.

Oh, yes, we talked about it.

What are we doing?

What are we doing?

I'll tell you what we're doing.

We're...

We're making vibrators for women with arthritis.

Yes, vibrators.

Brilliant.

I highly doubt there's a vibrator market for geriatric women with arthritis.

There is.

I'm in agony.

Seriously, Mom, how do I explain to my children that their grandma makes sex toys for other grandmas?

I'll tell you what you can tell them, honey.

We're making things for people like us because we are sick and tired of being dismissed by people like you.

Mic drop.

Let's go home.

That was my guest today, Jane Fonda, with Lily Tomlin on the show, Grace and Frankie.

And June Diane Raphael in there a little bit.

Yes.

Yes, wonderful daughter.

What has it been like for you playing Grace, playing this character who has so many different notes at

that specific age?

It was great.

It was fun.

And, you know, I'm just

in awe of Lily Tomlin.

I mean, the fact that I got seven years to spend with her,

I am deeply grateful.

This woman is a true genius.

And

it was just a great experience.

Marta Kaufman, I'm so grateful for her.

She came to us and said, I want to make a series with the two of you.

And she did it.

She created it.

It was fun.

It was wonderful.

I had a nervous breakdown the first season.

Oh, why?

I hated the first season.

Why?

I dreaded going to work every day.

And when it was at the end, I thought, well, what am I going to do?

I'm either I'm going to quit the business for good, and I was seriously old then, and I couldn't have had a comeback, or I guess I'll have to go into therapy and figure it out.

And I did.

What did you figure out?

First scene of the first episode, Lily and I, we hate each other.

We're at this restaurant waiting for our husbands, and they arrive.

And what do they do?

They tell us that they are in love with each other and they're going to leave us and they're going to get married to each other.

And then the whole rest of the season is about that.

How do we recover from that?

How do we become friends instead of enemies?

And

in therapy, what I realized is

what it triggered that first episode in me was abandonment.

And so the whole season was about dealing with abandonment.

And And

I just, it was horrible.

And I went into therapy and I figured it out.

And then I fell in love with Grace and everything from then on was fine.

What an amazing job you have that you're able to work through real life issues through these characters.

And you're never too old.

You know, I've gone back into therapy now at 87.

because I want to figure out why I'm not a better person and why I wasn't a better parent.

And I'm figuring it out.

Wait, so you weren't in therapy?

And it all started when I was 60.

Yeah.

When I said I didn't want to have regrets.

I don't want to have regrets and so I've gone into therapy so I won't have any regrets and I'll understand what's what it was all about.

Jane, what do you think it is about you, this quality that you have that you keep striving?

Resilience?

Resilience is such an interesting thing.

You know, I think I think people are born with it.

You know, resilience is when a young child who is not getting love at home kind of

there's a radar that's scanning the horizon.

If there's a warm body that maybe could love her or teach her something,

you go there.

You find love where you can.

You find support where you can.

That's a resilient child.

That was me.

Yeah.

But there's also, you know, I mean, the phrases aren't just for anything.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

You should get older.

You're set in your ways.

These ones are all things.

When Ted and I separated, he said to me, people don't change after 60.

People don't make new friends after 60.

I'm sorry, that's not true.

No,

I'm grateful that

I have a very vibrant old life.

Jane Fonda, this has been such an honor.

Thank you so much for taking.

Tanya, thank you.

Jane Fonda spoke with our co-host, 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 every chance he gets.

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

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

Hallie Barry, Rosie Perez, Samuel L.

Jackson, and Denzel Washington, to name a few.

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.

Spike Lee recently spoke with our co-host, Tanya Mosley.

Spike Lee, 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, I'm 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 gonna be on your hands then.

How you want it?

No, man, come on, nah.

This ain't no negotiation.

It's a day of reckoning.

You're not God no more than iron.

All right, listen.

God give you everything you want, right?

No, God give 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

McBain.

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

And when you have an actor, and in the Japanese version, Tisha Muffun, 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 because they have the talent and the audience is engaged.

Yeah.

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

Denzel Washington.

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 Hollywood 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?

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 he didn't describe it.

You just said, I got a script.

I want you to read it.

And 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 work.

It's part of the filmmaking.

Yeah, it's part of the filmmaking.

There's this

piece of music, though, right off the top.

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 was a cinephone.

My father hated movies, but my mother is a cinephile.

I'm the oldest, so I was my mother's movie date because my father hated Hollywood.

So she introduced me a whole lot of films.

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

I was a wild broken kid run up and down the streets and play stick ball and stoop ball stuff, but she says,

I'm taking your little rusty butt.

We're going through 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 of the theater.

I said, mommy, that was good.

So it's just an example of

kids don't know.

And when parents take the time and 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 have 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 those.

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 Galora?

The whole theater heard that.

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

What do I do?

What do 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 didn't sound 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.

We're We're listening to Tanya Mosley's interview with filmmaker Spike Lee.

His new movie, Highest to Lowest, reimagines Akira Kurosawa's 1963 classic, High and Low.

We'll hear more of their conversation after a break.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

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.

There's a great scene where his wife played Bill Fish.

Adara 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.

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 do it.

You know, you can get the BS, but push that aside.

It's sometimes gonna be a big pile.

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

to break it down even a little more for my sister and the audience,

first day of class, I tell my students that I'm lucky.

And

if you could make a living doing what you love, you won.

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

I mean, you came like a 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 about it because I was like, I actually really loved it.

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

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 the garbage can through the Sal's 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 Tuturo brothers, Nick and John.

So I don't combat that type of criticism as much as I used to, of course, as it died down.

But when Do the Right Thing premiered in Can, 1989, American journalist was saying that this film was going to cause riots.

So black people riot in summertime.

And they were pleading to

Universal Pictures, if you're going to release the film, don't release it in summertime.

Because they thought that would be where we'd be all riled 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

killing, the murder of Raid Raheem by the NYPD and the chill cold,

where that happened.

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

later years.

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

Yes.

That's when everyone was talking about it, like Radio Raheem became our name.

And I wrote that script in 88, we shot in 89.

Yeah.

Look, I'm not happy.

I'm not bragging about that, but

I'm not.

happy that the stuff you had in the film ended up happening in real life.

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.

Yeah.

As you mentioned, your mom was deep into movies.

Your dad was a jazz musician.

You grew up like 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, mean, anything that was played with electricity, you know,

he was not with that.

He always was tone as is.

Like literally?

Like he didn't even like to play records.

My father, Bill Lee, was the top folk bassist working.

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

He 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 used 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 that's that's real life that actually

the lee family yeah and my mother i mean before my father was working she was going to bloomerdale's and going to tailor and you know every week

But my father, I 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 and I was 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, we 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 and loved him.

And so she had to work,

cook, and clean.

You know, 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, 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.

The treat is mutual, my sister.

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

I think your films are part of 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 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 at the bottom.

You got on the bus?

We all got on the bus together.

I made a mood.

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.

Right.

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.

By any means

That was a clip from Spike Lee's 1992.

In the 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 of

the black power fist.

How old?

What grade was this monster?

Ninth grade.

Ninth grade.

So first year of 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 the autobiography of Malcolm X 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, at first, 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.

Mandela, yeah.

And Afrikaners would use that

against me.

By means necessary, I mean, 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 Clansman.

Yes.

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

It's a homage to Spartacus, 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 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 was getting whipped and that lone tear

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

this is not gonna happen and then also

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

The film that won that year was Drive as Daisy, so that could tell you more than enough about the climate

then and 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 the name of that film.

Green Book, Green Book.

Oh, okay.

So I won today.

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

Driving 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

CL Suite cursing.

My wife trying to

have me sit down.

I'm like, just get off, man.

And she sits then, Tanya, my wife, sent my son out there to get me.

And so I calmed down.

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 Gotta 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 use for she's going to have it.

So this is not the first thing, you know, getting down with my brother Curaçao.

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 his he did the autographs with a paintbrush oh he did not ink so it's white ink and gives me a beautiful people you go to my Instagram official spike lee you see the this portrait that of him that Curacao assigned me with a paintbrush for white paint what a moment and what a what a prized possession yes Did he know and understand the impact that he had on you through your films?

Did you guys explain?

Yeah,

You told him about it.

Yeah.

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.

All right, we get you,

I influence that.

I'm glad I influenced your work.

But just well, I don't have an hour right here for you to tell me that.

Yeah, right, right.

Spikely, thank you so much for this conversation.

It's been a pleasure.

Spikely's new film, Highest to Lowest, is now playing in theaters and streaming on Apple TV.

Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Yanni Miller.

Our technical director and engineer is Orgy Bentham.

Our managing producer is Sam Brigher.

Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.

I'm Terry Gross.

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right.

Learn more at rwjf.org.