“Better watch out ’cause I’m waiting for his ass”: Spike Lee’s grudge against Wim Wenders
Back in 1989, at the Cannes Film Festival, it was widely believed that Spike Lee would be taking home the prestigious Palme d’Or award for his effort with Do the Right Thing. After all, Lee had blown the cinematic world away with his tempestuous comedy-drama that focused on the racial tension of Brooklyn on the hottest day of the year.
However, Lee was up against some stiff competition from the likes of Shohei Imamura’s Black Rain, Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train and Jane Campion’s Sweetie that year. By the time the judging was said and done, though, it was Steven Soderbergh’s directorial debut, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, that emerged victorious, much to many Cannes-goers’ surprise.
Few figures were as shocked by the decision as Lee himself, though, and when the news came in, he laid the blame at the feet of one person, that year’s Jury President, Wim Wenders. In fact, when Lee caught wind of Soderbergh’s Palme d’Or win, he reportedly said, “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.”
Years later, during an interview with David Breskin, Lee said that he somewhat regrets his exact words, if not the actual sentiment behind them. “It was really anger at Wim Wenders, that’s who. I just said that. I would never hit him in the head with a bat.” What Lee had been most pissed off by was the fact that he heard that Wenders had considered the main character of Mookie (played by Lee) to be “unheroic”.
In turn, Lee thought about what kind of heroism was present in Soderbergh’s film, which tells of an emotionally troubled man who videotapes women talking about their sexual experiences and fantasies, including the wife of his college friend and her sister. Lee asked himself, “The James Spader character in Sex, Lies, and Videotape, what’s heroic about jerking off with an 8-millimetre camera? I didn’t understand that thinking.”
Evidently, Lee had thought that Do the Right Thing was deserving of the Palme d’Or, which earned widespread critical acclaim, including nominations at the Academy Awards for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ and ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for Danny Aiello, as well as bringing in a healthy box office of $37.3million from a $6.2m budget.
Lee said that he had absolutely no beef with Soderbergh but always felt that Wenders had “commandeered” the 1989 Cannes Jury, which included Peter Handke, Sally Field and Krzysztof Kieslowski, to make the decision to award Sex, Lies, and Videotape with one of the most coveted prizes in cinema. Wender himself, though, refused to accept sole responsibility.
“He said he’d be waiting for me in an alley with a baseball bat,” the German director had once said. “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. He just had the bad luck to be in such a great year.”
Wenders went on to say that he had “sleepless nights” over the decision the jury had to make and that Lee shouldn’t have taken the loss “so personally”. Still, looking at the films’ respective legacies, it’s clear that Do the Right Thing is a more notorious film, so even if he didn’t win back in 1989, Lee largely emerged victorious in the long run, only at the cost of his relationship with Wenders.
