The director Spike Lee accused of ripping him off: “Find your own shit or use somebody else”
Spike Lee has a polarising reputation amongst his fellow filmmakers. Known for vocalising his most unpopular and incendiary opinions, the director of Do the Right Thing and BlakKklansman has been condemned on several occasions by some high-profile Hollywood creators. For example, filmmaker Tyler Perry once told him to “go straight to hell” after the director criticised his signature character, Madea, for peddling racial stereotypes.
After Lee accused Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist western Django Unchained of being disrespectful to his ancestors, its star, Jamie Foxx, said that Lee needed to re-evaluate his priorities. “He didn’t like Whoopi Goldberg, he doesn’t like Tyler Perry, he doesn’t like anybody, I think he’s sort of run his course,” the actor said. “I mean, I respect Spike, he’s a fantastic director. But he gets a little shady when he’s taking shots at his colleagues without looking at the work. To me, that’s irresponsible.”
Like any self-respecting firebrand, Lee has ignored the pushback. The Oscar-winning director has been making critically acclaimed films since the 1980s that have inspired countless filmmakers, and he’s pointed this out on multiple occasions, including in a characteristic jab at a fellow director.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, Lee was asked about the young director Justin Simien, who made the film Dear White People in 2014 and then expanded it into a Netflix series several years later. “Were there any lessons you took from that film-to-series transfer?” the interviewer asked. Lee bristled at the suggestion.
“Nah,” he said. “He’s taking lessons from me! It’s the other way around. Here’s the thing, though, and this is the first time I’m going to publicly talk about this: I love my man’s film, and in a lot of ways, I took it as an homage. But now that’s enough. C’mon now. We get it. All right, find your own shit or use somebody else for a reference. Hopefully, in the second season of Dear White People I won’t see me all up in there.”
Simien’s 2014 film is a satire set at a fictional Ivy League college in which racial tensions run high when a student starts a radio show criticising the white student body. It features many hallmarks of Lee’s work, and Simien was more than happy to give credit where credit was due. “Spike is really, for me, the only black auteur that we have that is at that level where he’s made films that have really made money and had a huge cultural impact both artistically and financially,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014, adding, “Spike is kind of the enduring auteur giant. Truly he’s just like a hero, an absolute hero in that regard.”
However, by the third season of Dear White People in 2019, that sentiment had curdled. In the first episode, one of the characters goes meta, saying, “I mentally deleted all my Spike Lee references when he started shit-talking young black directors.”
When Vanity Fair asked Simien about the remarks, he said, “It’s stated pretty plainly in the show…. I think Spike is someone who we love because he’s so outspoken. He always says what he feels even when it’s the quote-unquote wrong time. That’s why we love Spike. That’s the energy he gives us. But I think sometimes he feels smaller than he really is…. A lot of people to walk through the door he opened. But he also can heckle the people who were trying to walk through that door. And not just me. You know?”
