Five filmmakers who hate Spike Lee: “Spike can go straight to hell”
Spike Lee is undoubtedly one of the most important Hollywood filmmakers to emerge in the last 40 years. He has been a true pioneer in terms of Black cinema, with his movies consistently addressing race relations in America in thought-provoking, entertaining, and often confronting ways.
Over the years, Lee’s films have been showered with awards and entered the cultural lexicon. Throughout it all, he has always been outspoken and charismatic, which long ago cemented his status as a powerful celebrity voice, separate even from his films.
Naturally, though, someone who is never afraid to air his opinions will encounter pushback from time to time. Lee has always been quick to say exactly what he thinks about the work of other directors, for example, and it’s not always positive.
In truth, the man has said some pretty incendiary things about some of Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers – and they’ve generally had no problem going right back at him. Here are five filmmakers who hate Spike Lee.
Five filmmakers who hate Spike Lee:
Tyler Perry
Tyler Perry’s Mabel ‘Madea’ Earlene Simmons has appeared in 12 feature films since 2005, as well as 11 plays and an animated film. Perry says the character, a street-smart, elderly Black woman, is based on the mother and aunt he grew up with, and she has proved insanely popular over the years with Black audiences. However, one black audience member who isn’t a fan is Lee, who dismissed the character and her films as regressive “coonery buffoonery” in 2009. He also accused Perry of perpetuating negative stereotypes about Black people in the films.
Perry wasn’t willing to take Lee’s criticism lying down, though, especially because he has a mountain of evidence showing Black people everywhere resonate strongly with Madea. In 2011, he told the Wall Street Journal, “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.'”
He added, in no uncertain terms, “Spike needs to shut the hell up.”
Clint Eastwood
In 2006, Clint Eastwood released one of the most daring cinematic experiments of his career. Across two movies, he told the story of the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspectives of American and Japanese soldiers, with the second film being almost entirely in Japanese. Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima weren’t box office hits, but both received fairly strong reviews – except from Lee, who noted, “Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total, and there was not one Negro actor on the screen. If you reporters had any balls, you’d ask him why.”
He then claimed, “I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it.”
Naturally, someone like Eastwood isn’t just going to let that criticism go by. When asked about it by The Guardian, he growled, “Has he ever studied the history?” He argued that he was making a film about the famous photograph of a group of soldiers raising the American flag on Iwo Jima – none of whom were Black. Even though he acknowledged there was a detachment of black troops in the battle, the film wasn’t about them. To Eastwood, this meant, “If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people would go, ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.”
With a customary grimace, he addressed Lee directly by saying, “A guy like him should shut his face.”
Wim Wenders
In 1989, Lee went to the Cannes Film Festival expecting to take home the prestigious Palme d’Or award for his breakthrough film Do the Right Thing. To his chagrin, though, the trophy was awarded to Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape instead, and the young firebrand was reportedly none-too-pleased. He supposedly aimed most of his ire at that year’s jury President Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas), and is said to have ranted, “Wim Wenders had better watch out ’cause I’m waiting for his ass. Somewhere deep in my closet, I have a Louisville Slugger bat with Wenders’ name on it.”
In later years, Lee would claim that he never threatened to hit Wenders with a bat but confirmed that he was angry with the director, who he had heard considered the main character of Do the Right Thing “unheroic”. For his part, Wenders said Lee shouldn’t have taken losing to Soderbergh so personally. He also confirmed that he wasn’t the only one who thought Lee’s film didn’t deserve to win, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “He said he’d be waiting for me in an alley with a baseball bat. Well, he should have been waiting for the whole jury because it wasn’t my decision. The film simply didn’t have the support of the jury.”
Boots Riley
The dispute between Sorry to Bother You’s Boots Riley and Lee began when Riley had the temerity to do something few have attempted over the years: take the first shot. He was unhappy with Lee’s 2018 film BlackKklansman, as he believed it distorted the truth to glorify the police as allies in the fight against racism in the ’70s. He felt Lee’s film was particularly tone-deaf because of when it was released, telling The Guardian, “This film was putting out a certain idea of history in the time of Black Lives Matter and the rise of a new white supremacist movement, when the police are actually working with these white supremacist groups.”
Even though Riley clarified that Lee has always been an inspiration to him, Lee didn’t take the criticism too well. In fact, they got into a confrontation at the Independent Spirit Awards, with Lee reportedly cutting Riley down to size by yelling, “I’m Miles Davis, you’re Chet Baker!” As amusing as that juvenile response was, Lee was much more level-headed when he spoke to the Times. He argued, “Look at my films: they’ve been very critical of the police, but on the other hand, I’m never going to say all police are corrupt, that all police hate people of colour.”
Quentin Tarantino
In 1996, Quentin Tarantino cameoed in Spike Lee’s Girl 6, but the following year, any relationship between the filmmakers was shot to pieces. In the wake of Jackie Brown, Lee told Variety magazine that he was uncomfortable with Tarantino’s propensity to use the N-word in his work. He argued, “I’m not against the word, and I use it, but not excessively. And some people speak that way. But Quentin is infatuated with that word. What does he want to be made – an honorary Black man?” Fast forward to 2012, and Lee fired shots again when he claimed he wouldn’t watch Tarantino’s Django Unchained because “it would be disrespectful to my ancestors to see that film.”
Naturally, Tarantino didn’t like the accusation that was implicit in Lee’s comments – that he was racist if he, as a white man, wrote racist characters. He revealed that he and Lee almost came to blows over it, telling Playboy, “Spike and I bumped into each other once after all that crap was over, and I was all set to kick his ass.” He claimed Lee was resentful because, before he came along, white directors would have to seek Lee’s approval to deal with “black stuff” in their films. His embrace of black culture destroyed that separation, and so he felt Lee was being self-serving with his complaints. He said, “I wasn’t looking for his approval, and so he was taking me on to keep his status.”
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