Spike Lee

Started by Ghostboy, June 26, 2003, 01:24:38 AM

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MacGuffin

EXCLUSIVE: Spike Lee Says 'I'll Take The Obama High Road' In Clint Eastwood Argument

In an interview published this morning with The Guardian, multiple Oscar winner Clint Eastwood said of Spike Lee that "a guy like him should shut his face." In an interview conducted today with MTV News, Spike Lee kinda, sorta said, "OK."

"I'm going to take the Obama high road," the filmmaker said, refusing to trade any more barbs with Eastwood or elaborate any more over perceived inaccuracies in the recent "Flags of Our Fathers." "It's not a feud."

But why do Clint's statements have everyone asking of Spike if "he feels lucky?" While conducting interviews last month for his newest film, "The Miracle at St. Anna" Lee said, "There were many African-Americans who survived that war and who were upset at Clint for not having one [in the films]. That was his version: The negro soldier did not exist. I have a different version."

That version is, of course, "St. Anna," which focuses on four black soldiers during WWII. Eastwood's response was that to insert black soldiers at the Iwo Jima flag planting would be to commit historical revisionism.

And then he added that Spike Lee should "shut his face."

Tough words. But the dispute is not a personal one, insists Lee. "I've said my statement. I have no ill will towards Mr. Eastwood. What I said to him was not a personal attack, it was an observation," he told MTV News. "So that's really the end of it."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Spike Lee takes on 'Time Traveler'
Touchstone to release film in the fall
Source: Variety

Spike Lee will co-write and direct "Time Traveler," a feature adaptation of a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation's first African-Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.

Lee acquired "Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality" with his own money and has set up the project through his Forty Acres & A Mule Filmworks banner.

Mallett, who wrote the book with Bruce Henderson, recounts his rise from poverty to a distinguished academic and scientific career, and it lays out the technical specs for what Mallett envisions as a workable time machine. Developing a time machine became an obsession for Mallett from the age of 10 after his father's death. His goal was to travel back in time to save his father.

Lee called "Time Traveler" a "fantastic story on many levels (and) also a father and son saga of loss and love."

The filmmaker has been intrigued by the subject and flirted with the Fox drama "Selling Time," about a man who sells a part of his life expectancy for the chance to go back and relive the worst day of his life. Lee is no longer involved in that project.

The helmer recently completed "Miracle at St. Anna," based on a novel about members of the U.S. Army's 92nd Division of all-black buffalo soldiers who become trapped in Italy during WWII. The pic will be released by Touchstone Pictures in the fall.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Spike Lee may revisit Katrina
Filmmaker talks upcoming projects at Silverdocs
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Spike Lee may not be done with Hurricane Katrina yet.

The director of the HBO miniseries "When the Levees Broke" said Thursday he's considering visiting the area where Katrina struck again in the next 24 months for a potential follow-up to "Levees."

"I'm going to go back, not just to New Orleans but to other areas affected, because it's not over," he told audiences at Silverdocs, the AFI/Discovery Channel docu fest in Silver Spring, Md., where he received the fest's Charles Guggenheim award.

While Lee didn't specify what the project would cover, he hinted at its focus when he described his feelings about the current situation on the Gulf Coast. "What the press is not really talking about is the mental state -- suicide, self-medication," he said. "It's horrible."

Lee also said he thinks there's room for a scripted feature about post-Katrina New Orleans and tipped that "The Wire" creator David Simon, whose "Generation Kill" debuts this summer on HBO, may be working on such a pic.

Lee also offered other bits about his own work. He said that his day-in-the-life docu on Kobe Bryant would kick off the NBA season on ABC/ESPN this fall and revealed that his docu about Michael Jordan's last season could see a public unspooling in 2009, with the director planning a Croisette debut. "We hope to have the world premiere at Cannes next May," Lee said.

The auteur also revealed that longtime editor Sam Pollard is involved in the Ed Norton-produced docu about Barack Obama and has already collected more than 1,000 hours of footage.

Lee noted an Obama presidency -- which the director said Thursday was so certain that "there's no 'if' " -- would change the culture of filmmaking. "As an artist you reflect what you see in the world, so I think you'll see a lot of artists reflect the change for good that the country is going to embark on."

The eight-day Silverdocs fest just outside of Washington, D.C., showcases a mix of established and emerging nonfiction filmmakers. Lee was characteristically outspoken at the award presentation, saying he'd "love to see a great film on Martin Luther King, but I don't think I can do it. I can't do everything. I've got to leave something for Tyler Perry."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Spike Lee to film 'Strange' musical
Director shooting Broadway show for cable
Source: Variety

Spike Lee will film the Broadway tuner "Passing Strange."

Helmer will shoot three perfs -- two with auds and one without -- of the critically lauded but sales-challenged musical, according to online reports that surfaced over the holiday weekend.

The show's producers, who are said to be the backers of the video recording, would reportedly aim to air the edited result on a cable net.

A rep for the production confirmed only that the filming would take place, with further details to be confirmed at an announcement skedded for Wednesday.

The well-reviewed semiautobiographical rock tuner by musician Stew, with music co-written with Heidi Rodewald, earned seven Tony noms and took home one for Stew's book.

Since beginning Rialto perfs in February, the show has had difficulty attracting crowds, although the Tony win on June 15 did boost weekly box office into the higher end of the $200,000 range for a couple of frames.

For the week ended June 29, sales slipped to about $245,000, and aud capacity was only slightly above 50%.

Plot centers on young black artist from L.A. who flees his middle-class upbringing and heads to Amsterdam and Berlin in an attempt to find himself. Show originated at Berkeley Rep in 2006 and played last year at Off Broadway's Public Theater.

Rialto producers of "Passing Strange" include the Shubert Org, Elizabeth Ireland McCann, the Public and Berkeley Rep.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Spike Lee's 'L.A. Riots' gathers steam
Source: Los Angeles Times

BRIAN GRAZER says that "L.A. Riots," Spike Lee's long-awaited look at the incendiary events that paralyzed Los Angeles for four terrifying days in 1992, is back on track. The movie, from an original script by Writers Guild dissident John Ridley, could possibly begin shooting later this year. The peripatetic producer has been busy with his latest lineup of A-list filmmaker projects, led by Clint Eastwood's "Changeling," due this fall, and Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon," which arrives in December. But he says he is moving full speed ahead with the Lee film.

"Both Spike and I are totally excited about getting it going," Grazer told me. "John Ridley wrote a great script, but it needed a little more focus, so we put Terry George on it to do a rewrite. The script is due in two weeks, and, having worked with Terry before, we're expecting that it should be something that's ready to shoot."

George, best known for writing "In the Name of the Father" and writing and directing "Hotel Rwanda," did extensive rewrites on "Inside Man," the hit thriller Lee made with Grazer in 2006. Grazer says they haven't cast the new picture yet, though Lee is interested in using some of the young African American actors he worked with on "Miracle at St. Anna," his World War II film coming in September from Disney. (Lee and Eastwood have exchanged angry words about the dearth of black soldiers in Eastwood's own WWII films, but Grazer, ever the smooth operator, is staying far, far away from that dust-up.)

Though Lee is famous for his incendiary takes on controversial subjects, Grazer insists that "L.A. Riots" is more of a vivid drama than a bomb-throwing broadside. "It's a war movie set in a modern city like Los Angeles," he says. "There were 56 deaths, more than 2,000 buildings that caught fire and all sorts of horrific destruction. So we see the anger and the emotion, but the story enables us to see the strife from all perspectives. You get a close look at the sociopolitical dynamics from the perspective of the cops, the African Americans, the Koreans, from all these different people. And then you get to arrive at your own conclusions."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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SiliasRuby

This is the film he was born to make.
The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

When you are getting fucked by the big corporations remember to use a condom.

There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

MacGuffin

'Inside Man' sequel moving forward
Spike Lee coming back to direct
Source: Hollywood Reporter

A sequel to Spike Lee's "Inside Man" is moving forward at Universal, with Terry George in negotiations to write the screenplay and Lee coming back to direct the Brian Grazer-produced pic.

"Inside Man 2," as the project is tentatively being called, will pick up on the characters and dynamic but not the storyline of the original. The first "Inside Man," which was penned by Russell Gewirtz, centered on a standoff between a bank robber (Clive Owens) and a hostage negotiator (Denzel Washington) at a New York bank.

Lee says he foresees that the new film will continue the relationship between the two main characters but in a new high-tension situation. "I want the script to be even better than Russell's, and Russell wrote a really good script," he said.

The news cements long-floating rumors that Universal was looking to reprise the alchemy of the indie fave Lee with the studio budget and marketing apparatus of Universal.

The original "Inside Man," also from Universal, scored Lee his biggest opening weekend, and went on to earn more than $175 million worldwide when it was released in the spring of 2006.

Grazer will produce "Inside Man 2" via his Imagine Entertainment banner, with Lee and Daniel Rosenberg exec producing.

Denzel Washington and Clive Owen are interested in re-teaming for the project, Lee said, speaking from the Toronto International Film Festival, where he was in town to promote the Babelgum Online Film Festival as well as his upcoming WWII pic "Miracle at St. Anna."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Sleepless

I'd much rather see his movie about the LA riots :(
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

modage

Quote from: MacGuffin on September 06, 2008, 12:01:59 AM
"I want the script to be even better than Russell's, and Russell wrote a really good script," he said.
I want a million dollars.  Actually I want TWO million dollars.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

MacGuffin

Is Spike Lee's 'Inside Man 2' Moving Forward Without Jodie Foster?

If you've been keeping up on your movie news, you know that Spike Lee is planning to make a sequel to his 2006 hit "Inside Man." You've read articles like this one, this one and this one, or heard that Lee spoke again about the movie just recently, telling reporters: "If the script is not better than the first one, myself, Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Clive Owen– we said we're not doing it."

So, they're all in as long as the script is good, right? Well, apparently everybody in the world knows the news – but somebody forgot to tell Jodie Foster.

"Why, you have some dope I don't know about?" Foster recoiled when we spoke to her recently, genuinely seeming as though she'd never heard a peep about an "Inside Man" sequel in her life. "I don't think that's what he said."

"You know something more than I know?" she teased. "Are you writing it or something?"

Since Foster is, well, one of the greatest actors of all time, there's obviously a chance that she was just faking her obliviousness extremely well. But otherwise, her surprise might lend strength to rumors that Terry George ("Hotel Rwanda") is writing his script with the intention of cutting out a major character or two. Foster would seem to be the least essential of the three stars, if only because she had the least screentime in Lee's original heist thriller.

"I loved that movie; it was a really fun experience for me," she remembered. "It was the quickest film I think I ever shot. I think I worked for four days or something, and to work with Denzel Washington is a dream that everybody has."

Although she insisted that the film isn't a reality as far as she knows, Foster said that if Spike wants to give her a call, she'd be happy to once again dive back into the role of no-nonsense "fixer" Madeleine White.

"Sure!" she insisted, sending out a message to Spike. "From your mouth to his ears, of course I would love to."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Alexandro

after the miracle at sta. anna debacle, he needs some commercial picture before they let him make one about the l.a. riots...

cron

i just got back from the future and his next film is 'obamboozled' , an hbo documentary about the 2008 electoral fraud, following a group of  new mexico and colarado obama supporters whose votes disappeared mysteriously, the aftermath of mccain's 'victory',  evidence of the fraud, and interviews with a struggling obama.

on my trip to the future, i also brought you this:

the practical 'knock on wood' keychain. people from the future can't get enough of them.
context, context, context.

Stefen

Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

Alexandro


MacGuffin

Spike Lee to make Sundance debut with musical "Passing Strange"
Source: Los Angeles Times

More than 20 years after making his first splash with "She's Gotta Have It," Spike Lee is finally going to make it to Sundance. His belated debut -- in the 25th year of the Sundance Film Festival -- comes as director and co-producer of the film version of "Passing Strange," the stage musical by L.A. indy-rockers Stew (Mark Stewart) and Heidi Rodewald that took an unlikely passage from New York's nonprofit Public Theater to Broadway in February. It ran for 165 performances at the Belasco Theatre, with Stew nabbing a Tony Award for best book of a musical before it closed July 20.

Among those captivated was Lee, who said Friday that he saw the show several times at the Public, then came back for repeat viewings at the Belasco -- even before producers approached him about capturing it on film before it closed. The film will premiere in the Jan. 15-25 festival's noncompetitive Spectrum Documentary Spotlight program, where Lee is hoping it will attract a distributor. The filmmaker said he's been invited to the Sundance festival before, but wasn't able to make it. Stew and Rodewald, who is co-composer of the songs, are well-connected at Sundance, having developed "Passing Strange" at its annual Sundance Theatre Lab in 2004 and 2005.

"Passing Strange" is semi-autobiographical, tracing Stew's roots in L.A.'s black middle-class, his teenage predilection for punk rock and French New Wave cinema, his youthful adventures in 1980s Amsterdam and West Berlin as an expatriate artiste, and his sadder-but-maybe-wiser return.

The show, which premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2006, featured Stew rocking out on guitar and vocals as the narrator and kept the onstage backing band -- including co-composer Rodewald on bass -- in full view among the actors. Classical actor Daniel Breaker played Stew's youthful alter-ego, and Eisa Davis, who was a 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist as a playwright ("Bulrusher"), played his long-suffering mom. 

Lee said he filmed the last three performances in front of audiences, then did one more day of shooting on the empty stage where he could re-run scenes and go for setup shots. "It's very true to what people saw in Berkeley and the Public and on Broadway," he said. "But I still made it a Spike Lee Joint at the same time."

Lee isn't new to stage-to-screen work, having directed television versions of two one-man stage shows, John Leguizamo's "Freak" (1998) and Roger Guenveur Smith's "A Huey P. Newton Story" (2001). Last year, it was announced that Lee would direct a Broadway revival of "Stalag 17," the World War II prison-camp drama that originated as a 1951 play by former POWs Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, before being made into a 1953 film by Billy Wilder. But what happened?

"The producer died, and I lost interest," Lee said. "I made a decision that if I would do Brodway, I don't want it to be a revival, I want it to be something new."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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