Doing his best to shock, advise and humor, Spike Lee showed up last month to speak at the Springfield Symphony at an event sponsored by Western New England College.  For a man who will be releasing his 18th feature film this month, She Hates Me, the forty something director and actor remains angry at the movie industry and the media in general.
Lee said that until there are Afro Americans in the position of "gate keepers" (studio owners, newspaper editors, etc.), they would never be represented. As an example, Lee cited the film Cold Mountain. "Where were the Blacks?" he said. "This movie took place during the Civil War! Imagine if I went to the gate keepers in Hollywood and said, 'I have this idea for a film. It takes place during WWII and has no Nazis, no concentration camps, no Hitler, just Jude Law behind enemy lines and Nicole Kidman in Berlin.' You think they'd go for that? No, but if I pitched Nigger Train, that they would finance."

Sending a message to the students in the audience, Lee said that his parents were key to his success. "After I exhausted all of my electives in college, my parents said, 'Think long and hard about what you want to do.' They supported my decision to become a filmmaker when many people said, 'Hey, there are no Black filmmakers except Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. What makes you think you can do it?’ ”
Spike Lee's first film, She's Gotta Have It, cost $15,000 to make and grossed $175,000. To pay for it, Lee had the crew save up bottles and cans to contribute to expenses. Two decades later, Malcolm X with Denzel Washington cost $35 M to make and grossed $85M. His production company, 40 Acres and Mule, is in Brooklyn where he also runs an advertising agency, Spike DDB. n