Spike Lee and Denzel Washington on a Reunion Making “Highest 2 Lowest”

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington first worked together in 1990.

They were relatively early in their careers.

and the movie was More Better Blues.

Washington starred as a trumpet player, scrambling to make a living in jazz clubs and lee played his manager g

you're doing a half-assed job man you okay the deal you told me to get you the dog and i did i got you the best turns possible at the time you understand if you do it on the back end down the line well this is down the line and i'm working on it well you ain't working hard enough i think you're taking advantage of me how can you say that we grew up together i'd rather chop off my left hand and take advantage of you.

You're my boy.

Look, this is about more than friendship, G.

I'm breaking my friggin' neck for you.

Does it look like I'm rich?

Somebody's been talking to you.

Washington and Lee, actor and director, have collaborated with some frequency, Malcolm X and many other films.

But Inside Man, the last film together was almost two decades ago, so highest to lowest is kind of a reunion.

Washington plays a music mogul targeted in a kidnapping and ransom plot.

And the film is inspired by Akira Kurosawa's film, High and Low, from 1963.

Last week, I had a chance to talk with Spike Lee and Denzel Washington.

Spike, we spoke a couple of years ago, and you were telling me that for She's Gotta Have It, you borrowed from Kurosawa's Rashamon, the way different perspectives complicate the narrative and so on.

Why did you go to High and Low as kind of source material and inspiration for the new movie?

Well, first of all, I got asked to do it by my brother right here, Denzel Washington.

That's how this whole thing happened.

It was a gift given to me by Mr.

Washington.

We had not worked, a last time we worked before that was Insight Man, which was like

how many years?

19.

19 years before.

But here's the thing, though.

I was amazed when I was told that number because

time flies.

I just never thought, I did not know that I'd been that long.

I had hoped that I'd work with Denzel

again because

Insight Man was our most profitable.

It is called show business.

I've heard that.

I've heard that.

And another thing I'd like to say is like, we'd have to, we'd learn how we work together.

Really?

No.

It was like the next day, you know, we had that relationship.

And so I know I've used the word blessing a lot, but I'm going to say it again.

It was a blessing.

I've read your long list of best films, and Curozawa is one of the directors that really stands out there for multiple films on it.

And these are things that you've loved since being at NYU.

Why High and Low?

The story, essentially, a business story, amazingly about the shoe business in Curosawa.

Well, we made an adjustment with that.

Yeah, I saw that.

Well, here's the thing, though.

It's about

this film, to me, is about morals

and what someone will do and won't do.

And I believe when this film opens,

August 15th, Friday, go see the movies.

See it in the theater.

Don't see it in your house.

August 15th, Friday.

I know that they will put themselves in the place.

Yeah, what would you think?

The character that David King is.

They will ask themselves: if you're in this situation, would you pay the ransom?

Would you pay, how much would you you pay i think the audience is going to put themselves in that situation denzel have you ever said no to spike lee when he's tried to cast you

he's never tried to cast me

how do you work we don't work for each other so how does it how does it work in this case the script came to me first i knew this was a story that spike

i i hoped that spike would would would would would would be interested in so i called him up he said send it to me he read it he said let's make it.

And here we are.

Here we are.

Quick as all that.

It was that simple.

Yeah.

Benzo Washington is Benzo Washington.

And there are certain figures in this industry that.

And we made almost a quarter of a billion dollars on the last picture we did together.

So it was good business.

You know, it's not rocket science.

You're talking inside man.

Yes.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Now, over time, there have been lots of, well, a fair number of directors and actors who have had long associations.

In fact, Curosawa had one with Tishiro Mufune and De Niro has one with Scorsese,

Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart.

Tell me a little bit about

that's right.

Tell me about working together for the first time and how that relationship has evolved.

I sent Denzel the script and that was

when I started acting.

There were two or three actors that I followed.

De Niro, Hoffman, Pacino.

The filmmakers that made those films never called me.

I was never asked to be in any of their films.

So when Spike called me, we developed a relationship and we made our own films.

So when I was in a position

to return a favor to Spike, that he started by calling me.

with Mo Betta,

I said, hey, I'm calling a guy who called me and who can tell a New York story as well as any of the other New York storytellers.

Did you feel iced out by those directors?

I don't care.

I don't care.

Worked out all right.

It did.

But I hear something in your voice that's.

You hear God in my voice.

I fear God, not man.

I could care man.

I could care less what man thinks about what I've done.

or about what I'm doing.

So wherever I go,

from this day forward, you remember that God is leading me, not the industry, not Apple, not interviews, not interviewers, not Spike Lee, not this world.

I'm being led

by the Almighty.

And that's what's most important to me.

What sense do you make of where God is leading you as an artist?

Toward what end?

To fulfill what

goals?

To lead more souls

to our Heavenly Father.

That's what I'm here for.

As a human being and as an artist?

As a human being and as a human being.

The platform is film, but that's not the purpose for me personally.

How has collaborating changed as your careers have grown?

I've become a better director working with

Mr.

Denzel Washington.

What he does, there's a scene in this film, very

scene where Jeffrey Wright is really begging.

This character is on his knees, begging.

Denzel's character paid

this ransom, $17.5 million.

And it's really a scene where

it's heartbreaking.

And at the end of the scene, Denzel picked up a grenade,

which is a prop.

That is not in the script.

He grabbed this grenade, said, you know, sometimes I feel like blowing this motherfucker up.

It's not about just on the script.

It has to be deeper than that.

It has to be deeper than that.

How much do you discuss?

When did you see that grenade?

When did you see the grenade?

I don't even remember.

I don't even remember, to be honest with you.

You don't remember that moment, Denzel?

I remember picking it up, yeah.

How much do you discuss scenes ahead of time, and how much do you leave it to chance and improvisation?

I mean, what we do is that we have a reading.

But before that, we're auditioning.

And so a lot of times we're audition actors, you know, we see there's something, you know, we don't have to fix this part in the script

because up to that point, we haven't heard the lines

read.

There's a hundred percent, I gotta tell young filmmakers:

reading the script is not the same as hearing the words that are written,

it is day and night.

And so, over my career, I've had to do a lot of rewriting

during auditions because what was written, and I'm talking about stuff that I wrote too.

And so, when Devil and I audition to people, you know, we'll both say, you know, we got to change that line.

You know, it's the process.

And then.

And then Spike hired great actors.

She hired.

Yeah, I hired great actors because I know if we got,

don't get mad, we got Jordan here,

we're not going to have

some okie dokes, Booty Pokes, around him.

We got to have a Pippin.

Horace Bratton, you know, you got to have surround

a team.

There you go, a team.

Somebody that knocked me out as an actor in this is ASAP Rocky.

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.

No, man, come on, nah.

This ain't no fucking negotiation.

It's a day of reckoning.

I'm 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.

And there's one scene where they're separated by a panel of glass.

It's an amazing scene.

And it's shot with the two characters in profile with this prism effect representing the glass between them.

Spike, talk a little bit about that as a just as a piece of filmmaking and the technical side of it, and the imaginary side of it.

Yeah, well, you had to go to, that's from the original.

I mean, that's one of the highlights of

Turstaues film, High and Low.

And I always shoot with two cameras.

I always shoot with two cameras.

And I'd never done this before.

So

we have Denzel and Saraki, as you said, separated by glass.

And they had a profile.

And so

what we did, we had two dollies

that were attached.

So they moved at the same exact time.

Oh, the two camps, the dollies were attached?

Yeah, they were attached.

I've never done that before.

And they were like they were on either side of what was supposed to be the glass?

Yeah, we had two cameras on like the glasses right here in the middle.

Okay.

In the middle.

I mean, you had

another scene before that, the recording studio,

which

turned into a rap battle.

Here's the thing: I'm going to tell D.

Don't tell the D.

Again,

my brother surprised me because

it wasn't the script.

So we'll go on.

You improvise the rap battle?

Well,

it was badly written.

So, D

improvised.

He kills, he comes out with brutalized

elements.

That's the rap game.

The crap game used to support valleys in the zone.

And I got to give credit to ASL Rocky because he was there right.

He was there.

He was there right with it.

So, even though it wasn't scripted, he was ready.

And then finally, as a line says, What is this?

A rap battle?

I didn't know that was going to happen.

Ace was rolling with it.

And it lifted that scene, too.

Which is why I call Spike

trust.

I trust Spike completely.

I didn't even know the way he was shooting it.

I'm learning the days it had to do because I wasn't there for that.

He was handling that, and

we were battling.

And we have that over five years, over five films, and whatever the amount of years it's been, that shorthand.

And I completely, completely 1,000% trust Spike.

And

I do what I, I do my part, and he does the rest.

And I don't like to say, you know, I trust

my brother.

Here's the thing, though, David.

I mean,

we work together, it's not a lot of discussion.

Like, oh,

you know, it's like it's something this relationship we built up over how many years over

five films.

You say, we could say say that's Squirrel City Centonero.

You know,

that's the great City Lement.

Marty's great too, but City Lement and Al Pacino, and that's Francis with Brando and the Godfather and Apocryphs Now.

And

when you have that,

it's like a great band.

We're all playing the same parts, but it's not something that's discussed.

It's a feeling.

And

it takes over time.

I mean, it's very rare you're going to have that from the jump.

That's just

35-year overnight sensation.

So

it's hard to explain.

I know people might think it's some type of magic or voodoo, whatever you want to call it, but

it's being human beings.

That's the best way I could explain that.

I was going to say, like those other relationships, Scorsese and the other filmmakers and actors that he talked about, those films were in the theater.

So I would ask all

of my followers and Spike Lee's followers to follow us to the theater on Friday.

The movie opens Friday, August 15th.

Here's the thing, though.

Again,

I know it might be more convenient to sit home and live on your big,

big-ass TV, but it's not the same experience as going to a theater.

I remember going to the Zigfield.

I love going to the Zigfield.

When I saw, I mean,

and it's a shame, it's a ballroom now.

But when a big film came out, you went to the Zigfield and the theater is packed and there's energy and it's like, there's nothing like it.

No, it's amazing.

I remember the great sport event, too.

But

the go-to-packed theater, I've never seen

Jaws

ailing, close encounter.

I mean, I mean, like,

I waited two hours in the freezing cold to see the exodus.

Remember the Paramount Theater?

It was being called the circle.

We had to go down.

I saw the Exodus there.

Two hours, must have been two degrees.

People were screaming.

You could hear people vomiting.

You can't get that at home.

Hey, so what they did is Friday and vomit.

Everybody, Friday,

go to the lawful theater and throw up.

No, don't throw up with somebody else.

Don't bullet yourself.

I'm speaking with Spike Lee and Denzel Washington.

More in a moment.

This episode is brought to you by Old Fitzgerald.

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Denzel, I spoke a while back to Judy Dench, and like you, she's spent a lot of time performing Shakespeare.

And she told me something really surprising and interesting.

She said that playing a role like M in the James Bond movies was as hard for her as being on stage in a Shakespeare tragedy.

What do you think?

No, Shakespeare plays much harder.

Tell me why.

For the actor, well, because I am a pentameter to begin with.

Her father loved me, often invited me, still questioned me the story of my life from year to year, the battles, the disfortions that I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days at the very moment he bade me tell it.

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances of moving accidents by flood and field, of hair breadscape's name in a deadly breach, of being taken by the insolent foe and sold to slavery.

That's harder than yoke.

But also film, you stop and start.

You don't have that on the stage.

But that's what Judy, that's what she thought, right?

She did.

Okay.

She did.

Spike, I came back from the screening of this movie, and I told a friend of mine who works here, who's a musician,

that one of the great parts of the movie was the chase scene, and it's propelled by the Puerto Rican Day parade music of Eddie Palmieri.

And the Salsa Orchestra.

Oh, it was fantastic.

And then as I was telling them this, Eddie Palmieri probably died that very same day because the next day I read his obituary.

Huge loss, big loss for the culture, for the world, for the world.

But that's something you've, for forever, you've think a lot about is the propulsion of these movies through music and

driven by the music.

Tell me about thinking about that and conceiving that for a movie to make it move.

It's two words, three words: the French Connection

Hold on!

The chase scene, that scene is from the French Connection.

When you say that, though, what do you mean?

The style of the chase scene, yeah.

I mean, the whole, the whole, first of all,

the big scene in High and Low is

the scene where they have to dump the money.

Because I really had to show

that young

devil was not just some dog, he's smart.

Well,

you want PD, you know, they're going to catch your ass.

So he's thinking, how am I going to

orchestrate?

Uh-oh, how can I orchestrate this drop of 17.5

million

in Swiss francs and a Michael Jordan jump man black backpack and not be caught.

So

looks at the calendar.

Oh, the hated Boston red side is going to be in Yankee Stadium.

That was cold.

That's from the afternoon game.

This is why I called him Spike.

That was cold.

Well, so that's not enough.

So

number four train, the last stop, Rome Avenue line is 161st Yankee Stadium so what happens on a Sunday

every year

Puerto Rican day parade

so right away

I'm calling I'm going I went to the blue note to see Eddie Palveri

and I told him you got to do he said good but I said Eddie word can't get out test me surprise this has to be on the low on the low So, in post-production, I need another song.

He said, Okay, I got you, Spike.

He said, I'm getting another song, and the title is on the low.

He said he performed them live.

The songs, yeah, and then thank you, D.

Also,

that was not the playback.

We went seven things,

six, seven takes.

So, every time we did it, they performed it live from beginning to end.

Then we have Anthony Ramos

and Roly Verez,

two famous Bahuicos?

Bodicua.

Bahuqua.

Bodiqua.

Bahuico.

Bodiqua.

Bahuiqua.

Bodiqua.

No, you say it.

Bobicwa.

Boico.

Yeah, close tonight.

Buyqua.

That's not it.

Buyo.

And then we recruited

as many bowicos as we could find in the Bronx.

Puerto Rican ladies.

Yeah, I got it.

To be in the crowd, we hand out the Puerto Rican flags.

So it was

a joyous, joyous day.

Smartest thing I ever did, calling Spike away.

Spike, one last question.

What do you want more in life?

Best director, Oscar, or a Knicks championship?

Knicks champion.

I said this already.

Oh, Lord.

I said, I have two options.

I'll give one away.

We haven't won since the 72, 73 season.

We've only got two.

How many Lakers got?

Don't ask him that.

Listen, I'm from New York, friends.

Stop now.

Come on.

How long have y'all seen the tickets with the Lakers, though?

Every since Mikael closed Lynn Rambas.

I was at that game covering.

August 15th.

August 15th.

Oh, man.

All right, David.

Thank you all.

David, thank you.

Take care.

I spoke with Spike Lee and Denzel Washington last week, and highest to lowest opened in case you missed the date.

It's in theaters now.

I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today.

Thanks for joining us.

See you next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

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This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer, with guidance from Emily Botine and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Deckett.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Charina Endowment Fund.

This episode is brought to you by Old Fitzgerald.

Ah, hello.

Thanks for tuning in.

May I pour you a glass of Old Fitzgerald bottled and bond seven-year-old bourbon?

It hits all the right notes, from a whisper of wheat and lingering brown sugar to subtle oak.

We call it your key to hospitality because the best things in life are better when shared.

The pleasure is ours.

Old Fitzgerald, Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Bardstown, Kentucky.

50% alcohol by volume.

Think wisely, drink wisely.

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