In the Room with Spike Lee

“First of all, I think that’s a stupid statement.” I’d made it halfway through the first question of my conversation with Spike Lee before he stepped in to set me straight. The statement in question was the opinion of some critics that the director and writer is “obsessed with race,” and he didn’t care to wait and see how I might contextualize the quote before responding with a sternness that knocked me back on my heels a bit. The topic of race has certainly pervaded Lee’s work throughout his thirty-year career, and has often been at the center of his many public controversies, including feuds with prominent filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino to Tyler Perry. But for anyone to accuse a man who is black—a fact that American society ensures will dominate his identity for life—of being obsessed Let’s just say his indignation wasn’t unwarranted. Sitting in a back office at the Fort Greene headquarters of Spike’s production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, we discussed blackness, from its weight and influence in his youth to its notable absence in modern-day Hollywood boardrooms. If a single message emerged over the hour or so that we spoke, it’s that one can’t expect to understand a man, much less an entire race, by observing him from afar.

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