“You can print that”: the filmmaker who told Spike Lee to go straight to hell
Spike Lee is not known for mincing his words, often making bold statements about the work of other filmmakers that can wind him up in trouble. He was famously not a fan of the 2019 film Green Book (which is, to be fair, totally justified) and diplomatically said it was “not his cup of tea”, a fairly tame comment for the director.
Lee has also publicly expressed his frustration over Tarantino’s portrayal of Black people in his filmography and the language used in Django Unchained and Jackie Brown, saying he was “infatuated” with the N-word. Tarantino famously responded to this statement, claiming that Lee was racist towards white people for implying that he couldn’t use these words.
And among his many public disputes, the director has been on the receiving end of a long and bitter feud with Tyler Perry, with the actor not holding back in his blunt criticism of Spike Lee.
It all started after the release of Madea’s Big Happy Family in 2011, one of many in the film series about the Madea family which was directed by Perry. Lee was famously unimpressed by the films, stating that Madea’s character was “coonery buffoonery” and that it perpetuated negative stereotypes about Black Americans.
When responding to this criticism, Perry said, “I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee. Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, ‘This is a coon; this is a buffoon.’ I am sick of him talking about black people going to see movies. This is what he said: ‘You vote by what you see,’ as if black people don’t know what they want to see”. However, Lee has defended his statement, maintaining that fellow filmmakers should be able to critique each other’s work, as long as it’s “given in a loving spirit”.
Lee is celebrated for films such as Do The Right Thing, BlacKkKLansman and Malcolm X, which tackle issues relating to the Black American experience and the inherent oppression and racism within the United States, explored through provocative imagery and confrontational narratives. Many have praised Perry for his advocacy of Black stories, with a more light-hearted tone to his work. However, Lee has implied that his work is regressive and does a disservice to the stories of Black Americans.
Perry, though, has defended the perspective within his work, explaining, “When someone says, ‘You’re harkening back to a point of our life that we don’t want to talk about it or we don’t want the world to see,’ you’re dismissing the stories of millions and millions of Black people. That’s why I think it’s been so successful because it resonates with a lot of us who know these women in these experiences and Uncle Joe and so on and so forth.”
However, despite the intensity of this disagreement, the pair have since resurrected their friendship, with Perry naming one of the sound stages at his Atlanta studio after the iconic director. Sometimes, you’ve just got to do the right thing (sorry).
