The 2018 David Lean Lecture: Spike Lee

THE 2018

DAVID LEAN LECTURE

DELIVERED BY SPIKE LEE

D EL I V ER ED BY S P I K E L EE

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The Lobster is probably LanthimosÕ­ most absurdist film to date Ð packed with unsettling metaphors and dark allusions Ð but it is also one of his most comedic.

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OVERVIEW

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t’s lazy criticism to compare creators and their works, but that doesn’t seem to stop commentators too often calling Yorgos Lanthimos the ‘Greek Lars von Trier’ or the ‘Greek Michael Haneke’. It’s meant as a compliment, of course, but it undermines the individualism that Lanthimos, and indeed von Trier and Haneke, bring to their films.

Perhaps the only real correlation between the three is that their voices are all conspicuously provocative, often cryptic and always unique.

Lanthimos’ first feature is his most conventional comedy, a co-directorial job with Greek funnyman Lakis Lazopoulos, called My Best Friend (2001). Conforming to a more traditional story structure and featuring archetypal comic characters, My Best Friend is an unabashed sex farce. It was a major hit with its home crowd but saw little exposure outside of the Greek Isles.

If My Best Friend was like being hit on the funny bone with a satirical hammer, Lanthimos’ next and first solo outing as director was more like having your rib tickled with a razor. Kinetta (2005) is an exhausting, kinetic car crash of bleak comedy, cryptic storytelling and surreal images – all reoccurring tropes in Lanthimos’ films. It shocked many festival-goers at the time, while also winning various festival awards.

More importantly, it announced Lanthimos to a broader audience.

However, it was Dogtooth (2009) that became Lanthimos’ first international hit.

The film won the Un Certain Regard and Youth prize at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as an Oscar nomination, cementing Lanthimos as an exciting new voice in world cinema.

He would make only one more film in his homeland, the wonderfully absurd Alps (2011), before choosing to relocate to the UK. He blames the lack of infrastructure and available

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by Toby Weidmann

training for young talent for the move, telling The Guardian in 2012, “I learned about [making films] by watching films... Even today I’m not sure why I make films or what makes me want to make films. I think it’s other people’s films.

Whenever I see a really great film, I think, ‘I want to make a film like that.’ And then I never do.”

The very many fans of Lanthimos’ next film would disagree with that final sentiment.

The Lobster (2015), his first film in the English language, is the director’s most popular film to date, with critics, audience goers and awards organisations alike. This surrealist black comedy won the Jury prize, as well as receiving a Palme d’Or nomination and a special mention under the Queer Prize banner, at Cannes. It was also nominated for both a BAFTA and an Oscar. The Lobster is probably Lanthimos’ most absurdist film to date – packed with unsettling metaphors and dark allusions – but it is also one of his most comedic.

His most recent release, The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), was again nominated for the Palme d’Or and won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. Many critics believe it is the director’s most accomplished work yet. A quite ridiculous, tragic and yet bitingly funny horror story about revenge, obsession and family, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is, like many of Lanthimos’ films, a subversion of genre into something provocative, something cryptic and something unique. Simply put, Yorgos Lanthimos is the Greek Yorgos Lanthimos.

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IN HIS OWN WORDS ON INSPIRATIONS “One of the first [films I saw] was Bye Bye Birdie at Radio City Music Hall. It’s funny, that opening scene of Do the Right Thing, in which Rosie Perez dances to ‘Fight the Power’, that came, I realised later on, from the opening of Bye Bye Birdie and Ann Margret singing about Birdie being drafted.”

ON WHAT DISTINGUISHES A SPIKE LEE JOINT? “It’s hard for me to describe. I think it’s just really all the ingredients that I put into my film. Whatever film it is, whatever subject matter it is. Whether it’s a documentary or a narrative film. The connective tissue is that it’s coming through me, but all the stories I feel are different. They’re connected but they’re different. Fingers on a hand. Toes on a foot.”

ON DOUBTING YOUR OWN ABILITIES “There is no way I could be in the position I am now, if I had doubt. That came from my

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parents and grandparents – even if they had thought it, they never once said: ‘You can’t do that.’ They said: ‘We support you, but you gotta work hard.’ You had to bust your ass.”

ON THE OPEN-ENDED NATURE OF HIS FILMS “More often than not, I let the audience do some work.”

“As a writer, I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they’re telling the truth, then it’s valid.

Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.”

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF DIVERSITY “Many people had passed on [She’s Gotta Have It, the television series]. The reason it got made was because Netflix has three black women executives – Pauline Fischer, Tara Duncan and Layne Eskridge – who knew the cultural significance of Nola Darling and Mars Blackmon. Other people didn’t get it…

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Every time someone says no, they never tell you why, they’re very polite. They’re not going to say, ‘This sucks,’ because they don’t want to burn a bridge, and they want you to come with the next thing. But all the people who said no – there was no black person in the room with them.”

ON CASTING “I’m very picky with the people who I cast in my films. The number one goal every film is to get, as best you can, the right people for the roles you have in the film. Money prevents that sometimes, schedule prevents that sometimes Ð those factors play a part in casting.”

ON CONNECTING WITH AUDIENCES ON RETIREMENT “We knew that if we connected this period film “I’m going to try to work for as long as Akira Kurosawa did. My hero. He was working [BlacKkKlansman] to today, we would have a through his early 80s. I’m [61]. So I got a good chance for it to do well… Sometimes lot more stories, a lot more films, a lot more films don’t click, audiences don’t get it right documentaries. A lot more work.” away. People did not get Bamboozled. They didn’t get it. They get it now.”

ON OPENING CREDITS “I really pay attention to opening credit sequences. It’s the way to get the audience’s mind attuned to what’s going to follow for the next two hours or so. It’s much more than something you have to do because of a contract.

You can make it interesting and creative.”

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Sources: The Guardian Ð ÔSpike Lee: ÒThis guy in the White House has given the green light for the KlanÓÕ, by Tim Adams (2018); The Atlantic Ð ÔWeÕre in DisarrayÕ, by Sam Fragoso (2015); Spike Lee: ThatÕs My Story And IÕm Sticking To It, Kaleem Aftab; Rolling Stone Ð ÔFight the Power: Spike Lee on Do the Right ThingÕ, by Gavin Edwards (2014); The New York Times Magazine Ð ÔThe Culture Caught Up With Spike Lee Ð Now What?Õ, by Thomas Chatterton Williams (2017); Vanity Fair Ð ÔÒIÕm Not Using the Word ÔComedyÕÓ: Spike Lee on BlacKkKlansman, the Trump EraÉÕ, by K Austin Collins (2018); BlacKkKlansman production notes (2018)

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JOINT VENTURES With a diverse filmmaking career, spanning more than 30 years, Spike Lee is one of cinema’s most unique and influential voices. kaleem aftab reveals why...

THE EARLY YEARS It was at the Cannes Film Festival, where his debut film She’s Gotta Have It premiered in 1986, that ‘A Spike Lee Joint’ first entered the cinematic vernacular. The colloquial use of the term joint instead of film in the credits immediately set the filmmaker apart from his peers and announced in a simple, yet effective way that the New Yorker’s films would be imbued with a sense of history, social realism and blackness. Joint has long been used as a term, especially in song, to refer to prisons, speakeasy bars, and marijuana, and Spike embraced the edginess of the word.

It established him as both provocateur and connector; he would bring the full variety and hues of African-American life to cinema and jettison many of the stereotypes of black people that had hitherto been perpetuated and reinforced by an American cinema scene historically dominated by white males.

His early films – She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991) – put middle-class black America on screen for the first time. His protagonists were artists, students, musicians, architects as well as the unemployed and drug addicts. These films were set in the real world and given an immediacy by their desire to talk about current political events, from police brutality and wrongful arrests to race riots. His films met these issues head on, flipping the perspective so we heard from the oppressed rather than the oppressor. These five films, written and directed by Lee, ensured he was the most talked about director on the planet.

DOCUMENTING HISTORY To many, Spike Lee is an even greater documentarian than he is a narrative filmmaker.

His choice of documentary subjects and the sensitivity and tenderness with which he treats

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON ÒSpike Lee has a very unique way of recruiting and pitching stuff. It was a phone call, very brief, ÔI got a book for you. Read it.Õ I was blown away, obviously, just by the fact this really happenedÉ I mean, this is a guy IÕve idolized since I was a kid. He gave people of colour, men and women, a voice, a platform, and he chose me. I was beyond excited and just couldnÕt wait to get to work.Õ [From BlacKkKlansman production notes, 2018]

Washington made his acting debut in Malcolm X (1992) and was one of the leads in BlacKkKlansman (2018) B L A C K K K L A N S M A N ( 2 018 )

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his subjects are like a window to his soul.

They are indicative of the lessons he learned in his early childhood (when he was still known as Shelton Jackson Lee) from his mother, a teacher, and his father, a jazz musician, as well as just by living in the then largely black middle-class neighbourhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

His documentaries are about political history, 4 Little Girls (1997); environmental catastrophes, When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) and its follow-up, If God is Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise (2010); American sports stars, Jim Brown: All American (2002) and Kobe Doin’ Work (2009); musicians, Bad 25 (2012) on Michael Jackson; comedians, The Original Kings of Comedy (200) and the filming of stage plays, A Huey P. Newton Story (2001), John Leguizamo: Freak (1998), Passing Strange (2009) and Rodney King (2017), to name but a few.

His work as a documentarian has also seeped into his fictional narratives: he began his seminal Malcolm X (1992) with footage of the Rodney King beating, used archive material in his exploration of the black image Bamboozled (2000) and, most recently, the

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RUTH E CARTER ÒSpike was very open and generous. Yet, he was equally as quick to inform you of a misstep with a loud laugh and shout, ÔTEAR IT UP!ÕÉ He was the epitomy of a New Yorker to me. He read the Post and The Village Voice. He went to plays and knew all kinds of new artists. He would include you and made you feel like he was taking good care of you.Ó [From Ruth E CarterÕs 2017 blog about School Daze]

Carter was nominated for an Academy Award for her costume design on Malcolm X (1992), her first of two Oscar nods. She is a regular collaborator with Lee, working on 12 of his films to date

inclusion of Charlottesville riot footage into the extraordinary BlacKkKlansman (2018).

His documentary films are compliments and complements to his fictional narratives, notably showing a refusal to accept the stated position as sacrosanct, a desire to turn over rocks and a compassion for the powerless.

BEHIND THE SCENES Lee has made many great contributions to cinema, but perhaps the one least mentioned is the pantheon of cast and crew he has given a break in filmmaking. As the director, Lee has always been the first among equals, but

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DEE REES

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from the get-go he has also been aware of the importance of giving others a chance to shine, especially those who have traditionally been impeded in career progression. Lee continues to push his production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, to incubate new talent, and he complements this nurturing by teaching film at his former alma mater, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he is currently a professor, guiding a new generation of filmmakers to take risks and make film in their own fashion.

Taking Lee’s work with cinematographers as an example, the director’s first half dozen films were made in collaboration with director of photography Ernest Dickerson, with whom he attended film school. A flourishing partnership full of Dutch angles, vibrant colours and the development of Lee’s signature dolly shot, Dickerson would go on to be a director of some note himself. For Crooklyn (1994), Lee partnered with Arthur Jafa, whose incredible work with black imagery was recently showcased by the Serpentine Gallery. Clockers (1995) was the big break in the career of Malik

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Ó[Spike Lee]Õs been a mentor. Growing up, he was one of the first black directors I became aware of, because he was so visible in front of the camera. On Inside Man, I was interning for the script supervisor, which was great because youÕre right by the camera. You get to see him talk to the actors, you get to see him talk to the camera department, lens notes, distance, all that. From that I got a good sense of process, and having a good sense of family on set.Ó [From CinemaBlend interview, 2011]

Rees is the director of Mudbound (2017) and Pariah (2011). She was a second-year film student at New York UniversityÕs Tisch School of the Arts in 2005 when she first met Lee, who is the schoolÕs artistic director

Sayeed, while Kerwin DeVonish, the film’s the camera loader, worked his way up to be head of department by the time of Lee’s 2002 drama Red Hook Summer.

More recently, the early careers of Daniel Paterson (Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, 2014) and Chayse Irwin (BlacKkKlansman) have benefitted from Lee’s penchant for spotting and nurturing

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new talent. It would be remiss to talk about his work in the camera department without mention of Lee’s collaborations with Ellen Kuras and Matthew Libatique, too.

A quick look at the credits of Lee’s early work also highlights the starting points of various other key collaborators (and future award nominees and winners), from costume designer Ruth E Carter to editor Barry Alexander Brown – both of whom have worked on many of Lee’s films.

NO M AT TER THE BUDGET ‘One for them and one for me’ is a mantra of Lee’s friend and fellow New Yorker, Martin Scorsese. Although well-known for his independent movies, Lee’s work is also punctuated by studio-backed films. And, as with every great auteur, no matter how his films have been made Lee’s work always carry his unmistakable signature.

The first sign that Lee would do it his own way was when he asked leading black celebrities to help plug the budget when making Malcolm X for Warner Bros. He felt it was the only way he could complete the epic while doing the story of the leading Civil Rights activist justice. It remains one of Lee’s most beloved films, and features one of the alltime great Denzel Washington performances.

Lee also delivered one of the great studio heist movies, from a Russell Gewirtz script, in Inside Man (2006), which starred Washington again (their fourth collaboration) alongside Brits Clive Owen and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

What’s remarkable is the way Lee used clothing, from baseball hats to turbans, to show modern New York from inside a bank vault.

Throughout his work, Lee has been one of the great chroniclers of American life, so perhaps it’s no surprise that when David Benioff

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BARRY ALEXANDER BROWN ÒÔItÕs the work Ð the work is the only thing important.Õ I have heard Spike say this, or something like it, from the time I met him 37 years ago. I have had the great pleasure to be a part of much of that work and I am still surprised how fresh he has kept his sense of cinema over all these years Ð still experimenting, still approaching each film with the excitement of youth and still pushing me to keep up, to do my best as a collaborator. I have seen him tired and at the edge of exhaustion but I have never seen him disinterested.

He will sit in the editing room with me after having watched a cut; his head bowed, his eyes seeing what his mind is playing back and then look at me to share an insight on the film that I have completely missed, share an idea that will either quicken the pace or sharpen a moment, whether itÕs dramatic or comic. Working with Spike has kept me young, has kept me inspired.Ó Brown first collaborated with Spike Lee on School Daze (1988) and went on to edit many of his other films, including most recently BlacKkKlansman (2018)

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SPIKE LEE FILMOGRAPHY (SEL EC T )

adapted his novel 25th Hour for Lee to direct in 2002, the story was updated to include scenes at Ground Zero. It was the first, and for many, the best film about post-9/11 New York. Similarly, his recent BlacKkKlansman turns a 1970s’ cop tale about the KKK into an impactful and on-point message about how racists have changed tactics to become electable.

2018 BlacKkKlansman 2018 Pass Over 2017 Rodney King 2015 Chi-Raq 2014 Da Sweet Blood of Jesus 2013 Oldboy 2012 Red Hook Summer 2009 Passing Strange 2008 Miracle at St. Anna 2006 When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts 2006 Inside Man 2004 She Hate Me 2002 25th Hour 2002 Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (segment ‘We Wuz Robbed’) 2000 Bamboozled 2000 The Original Kings of Comedy 1999 Summer of Sam 1998 He Got Game 1997 4 Little Girls 1996 Get on the Bus 1996 Girl 6 1995 Clockers 1994 Crooklyn 1992 Malcolm X 1991 Jungle Fever 1990 Mo’ Better Blues 1989 Do the Right Thing 1988 School Daze 1986 She’s Gotta Have It

Kaleem Aftab is a film writer and critic for various outlets, including The Independent, and wrote Spike Lee’s official biography, Spike Lee: That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It (2005)

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AWARDS A N D NOMINATIONS (SEL EC T ) BA F TA 2002 Special Award AC A D E MY AWA R DS 2015 Honorary Award 1997 Documentary (Feature) nomination, with Sam Pollard: 4 Little Girls 1989 Writing (Screenplay Written for the Screen) nomination: Do the Right Thing G O L D EN G LO B ES 1990 Best Director – Motion Picture nomination: Do the Right Thing 1990 Best Screenplay – Motion Picture nomination: Do the Right Thing PR I M E T I M E E M MY AWA R DS 2007 Outstanding Direction for Non-Fiction Programming win: When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts 2007 Exceptional Merit in Non-Fiction Programming win, with Sam Pollard, Sheila Nevins, Jacqueline Glover: When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts 1998 Outstanding Non-Fiction Special nomination, with Sam Pollard, Daphne McWilliams, Jacqueline Glover, Sheila Nevins: 4 Little Girls

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C A N N ES FI L M FEST I VA L 2018 Grand Prize of the Jury win: BlacKkKlansman 2018 Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention win: BlacKkKlansman 2018 Palme D’Or nomination: BlacKkKlansman 2002 Un Certain Regard nomination, with Kaige Chen, Víctor Erice, Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Aki Kaurismäki, Wim Enders: Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet 1999 CICAE Award nomination: Summer of Sam 1991 Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention win: Jungle Fever 1991 Palme D’Or nomination: Jungle Fever 1989 Palme D’Or nomination: Do the Right Thing 1986 Award of the Youth win: She’s Gotta Have It 1986 Golden Camera nomination: She’s Gotta Have It

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THE DAVID LEAN LECTURE

WITH THANKS

The Academy’s annual David Lean Lecture is generously funded by The David Lean Foundation. The lecture series serves to continue the legacy of the great director David Lean, one of the founders of the British Film Academy (as it was then known) in 1947 and a continuing inspiration to many through his exceptional body of work.

Spike Lee

Previous David Lean Lectures have been given by: 2017 Yorgos Lanthimos (delivered 2018) 2015 David O Russell 2014 Lone Scherfig 2014 Paul Greengrass 2012 Pedro Almodóvar 2011 Errol Morris 2010 Peter Weir 2009 Atom Egoyan

2008 Lean Centenary Celebration 2007 David Lynch 2006 Oliver Stone 2005 Woody Allen 2004 John Boorman 2003 Ken Loach 2002 Robert Altman 2001 Sydney Pollack

WITH SPECIAL THANKS The David Lean Foundation

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