Spike Lee - 'Highest 2 Lowest' [LIVE]

30:41What? It would have been a very different historical. Who are you telling? But no, the late Gregory Hines. Sure. But I wrote from the thing and he wanted more money to add in their budget. Yeah. Well, one of those sliding door things, how things could have been different. I know how much money it was with money we didn't have. Yeah, yeah. Each fall for the last couple of years, one of the classes that I do here is called the movie star. And we take case studies going back to Florence Lawrence, arguably the first movie star, right up through the present and look at case studies of their life and career and just how movie stardom has evolved.

31:21What makes a movie star? And in the upcoming second half of the semester, we're going to be doing that. And the most recent case study is going to be Denzel Washington. And I want to ask you, therefore, while we have you here, what is it that you think, if you had to step back and just look at it as a film expert, what makes Denzel a movie star? this is gonna be a pun he got game that's a great one like you have a checklist check check check check and I know the ladies will say fine

32:01am I lying but he has in baseball you know what they call the 5-2 player tell the audience what the 5-2 What are your tools this? Hitting. One. Running. Two. Throwing. Brains. Hitting for power. How many is that? Four.

32:31Somebody look it up please. Quick, quick, quick. Five tools. Stand up. What's your name? Colin. Colin, stand up. Colin, you have to project for the back. See, last row in the back, project. Hitting for the average, hitting for power, speed, defense, and arm strength. Okay. There you go. All right. Thank you, Colin. Take a bow. Take a bow. Take a bow. Take a bow.

33:03All right, sit down. Sit down. Sit down. So that's Denzel's the movie equivalent. He has the tools. And the greats, I don't care if you're talking about athletes, you know, whatever it is, they have stuff that's God-given that just puts that person, that individual, male or female, over the top. I'm talking about whatever it is.

33:36And he asked me, here's the thing though, and I hope the young people here listen, if you had a talent, well if you don't put the work in, that talent is wasted, and God does not like to waste talent. So of all the young minds in here, not necessarily everybody's here to make films, to be in front of behind the camera. Like my brother said, I'm a professor of film at NYU graded film school. But we show films, but very little we talk about the technique, the film. We got to put the camera here and this and that. The majority of the stuff I talk about is work ethic. I lied. I said I was on the curse.

34:33I'm sorry. But you got to put the motherfucking work in.

34:40And you think you could fake the funk, you know, scam people. But people, the people that know, the people in the hiring positions, they can see that fake shit a mile away. But if you're hustling, I mean, people hustle. You know right away they want it. And they're not going to like think about, oh, well, I don't want to, I don't want, uh-uh. Somebody asks you to do it, you get on it. You don't, well, you're not like, well, let me think. Yeah. You have to, again, this is not just, forget about film. It's talking about, I mean, I hope you, all you hope to have an appointment when you leave here, right?

35:29So no matter what your major is, do we have any Spanish people speaking here? First, yeah, all right. All right, this is for you. This is for you and everybody else. You got to bust your culo.

35:48So that faking the funk and la-di-da, that's not going to make it. Put the work in. And here's the thing, though. Yeah. This is key. When you are doing what you love, it does not work. I'm going to repeat that. When you, here's the thing, sometimes you don't, look, I didn't come out of the crib saying I want to be a filmmaker.

36:16And sometimes, you know, this and that, so you don't find exactly what it is right away. That's very rare, where you know exactly what you want to do at a very own age. But when you do, you find the thing that you don't mind getting up at 4 o 'clock in the morning to go to work. The thing where when you hate all you got, what's the thing? What is that they call it? An alarm. What do you call it? We turn it off? Yeah. What's the name of it? The snooze button, yeah. The what? Snooze. The what? Snooze. Oh, yeah. I'm old. Come on. when you have a job do you hate alarm

37:08but if you have a job you love you don't even need an alarm on my films when we have six o 'clock calls days I really hate nights of murder for me nights of murder especially as you get older but we have a day shoot call at 6 a.m. I don't have an alarm. Don't need it. Because I know I'm going to have fun. And I'm doing what I love. I don't have an alarm. That's great. The body. The mind. If I get up at 5, I know what time I wake up. But I don't need an alarm clock. Because I'm blessed with doing what I love. And not everybody you know is has that well we should emphasize that it's not just the filmmaking not just aspects of it that you've really specialized in you're big music person that comes from i think your dad father your father and it kind of connects even though this might have been in the script at the time you got it that the original kurosawa film here he was a shoe executive Shoe executive.

38:22Here he's a music executive. With the best ears in the business. That's right. That's right. Which people could say about you in terms of the music that you've had in your films over the years. I guess I just want to note, music is also a big, big passion of yours. I mean, you've also, with documentaries, done Michael Jackson and other things. But I guess you want to just talk about how music is such an important thing for you, too, from your dad. Well, I grew up in a musical household. and my father, Bill Lee, he did the scores for my NYU films, did the score for She's Gonna Have It, School Days.

39:01He wrote that song, Straight Nappy, you know, in School Days, Do the Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues. And so I'm a product of my parents, which that's not, I mean, parents influence, you know, can't have a great influence on their... But he hated movies. Let me tell it.

39:27You know what? No, yes. My mother was a cinephile. But my father hated movies. Hated Hollywood films. So I'm the eldest of five. And so I was my mother's movie date. and my father was a sports fanatic so he would take me to games. So all that stuff had a major, major

40:03effect on me but I never grew up thinking I was going to be a... I grew up knowing I was not going to be a filmmaker because I didn't even know what a filmmaker was. I grew up, thought I was going to play second base for New York Mets, but genetics conspired against the game.

40:26And my father at that time, Bill Lee, was the top folk bassist. He's on the first Simon and Garfunkel album, the first Gordon, many were too young, but there's some might recognize these artists. his Gordon Lightfoot album. He's on the famous, classic Bob Dylan song, It's All Right Now, Baby Blue, with My Father's On Bass, and Bob Dylan on guitar and harmonica, just a whole bunch of stuff. But my father was a jazz purist. So when Bob Dylan went electric, everybody went electric. and my father refused to play electric bass and the work stopped so my mother had to work get a job teaching because he was not gonna play electric bass and And for growing up, I had a certain feeling about that because my mother, she was teaching and myself, my siblings, we were crazy.

41:44If you saw Crooklyn, that's autobiographical. That's autobiographical. And I could see the hardships my mother was going through, cleaning and cooking and trying I was trying to raise five nappy-headed, rusty-butt, crazy kids. Even though my father was like, you know, but then they got older, I understood like he was a purist and he was not going to play electric Fender bass. He was going to do it. He was not going to do it. So, in my later years, I understood that, you know. And he had morals and scruples, and there were just some things he wasn't gonna do. And, you know, he was blessed that he had a wife, who, my mother, who understood that and supported his artistry.

42:45And, but here's the thing though, my mother, as I said before, she went to Spelman, and she got cancer. My sophomore year, so, and then she died right, I mean, shortly after that. So she never, I mean, she never got to see nothing I did, you know, but she planted that seed of cinnamon. And it's funny because she taught English. She taught at St. Anne's in Brooklyn Heights. and so freshman year I was sad, lonely the girls of Spelman would give me no run laughter and also in school days half pint, that was me laughter famous line and please don't get insulted by it you acting like, you know, with the white glass You act like you know I'm going to sing.

43:47Anyway. I saw it at the movies. I was having no luck with the ladies. And those women in Spelmoor gave me a hard time. They're like, you're the little cuz I never had. I was like, fuck that cuz. But anyway, I'll write my mother letters every week. What was that sound effect? I heard something like, oh.

44:18What is this, Dolby sound in this?

44:27Anyway, I would write my mother letters. This is my freshman year, more else. How, Lola I am, and all this stuff. She would send me back my letters. And she was an English teacher. and those letters look like she had slit her wrist i mean just read everywhere and she would say love you but i cannot believe i have an illiterate son that goes away now she would therefore be probably pleasantly surprised or happy to know that her became an Oscar-winning screenwriter, in part because of some really unforgettable monologues. Is there a passage, as you think back at your 24 narrative features... 24?

45:18Yeah. Bam! That's spelled D-A-Y-U-N. Bam! What piece of writing are you proudest of? You know what? I wish you would have slipped me that question. A little advance. I can think about that. Oh, I know one. At the end of Do the Right Thing, where Danny Ellis character Sal and I have the big verbal fight in front of a burnt-out Sal's famous pizzeria. That's one. Give me another film. I guess some of the stuff in Malcolm X was not all, some of it was imagined. But a lot of that stuff, those from his actual speeches. Right, right. Well, anyway, we can come back to it. And also, since we're just talking about Do the Right Thing, I want to mention that your producer on that and many others is with us, right?

46:23Yes. John Killick is here. John, where are you at? Yeah.

46:30John Killick. We go way back, way back, way back. We went through the battles and the wars. Give me a original screenplay quickly. I'm going to think of something like that. Original screenplay. Hmm. I mean, he got game. There's some great stuff, right? Oh, there's a lot of... Yeah, that was a real screenplay. A lot of... there's scenes, there's a scene in, he got a game where he's reading a letter, several people cut or having letters and we, and as Lana and the key played his mother, she's, the people facing the camera talking, going back and forth, back and forth, that was good too. Now there are great moments where people are talking in your movies and there's great moments where there are, there's action and you call those people also know as set pieces and the one of the great examples we've just seen in highest lowest is the subway scene on number four train right on a yankee red sox day uh the the parade no no it's not it's puerto rican day well sure red sox well there was a game no no i'm saying on the and the parade both happening on the subway as this is going down You've said, you referenced earlier, French Connection as an inspiration.

48:01Talk about that and also some of your other favorite set pieces from the course of your movies. Well, the right and do the right thing, that's a set piece. And the thing about that, that film takes place in one day, and we shot over the length of eight weeks. So it was really the great Ernest Dickerson. And when you go out to a class, man, you know, So it was hard to shoot one day over eight weeks. That riot sequence is up there. But I'm going to go to the film you talked about, The French Connection. Who's seen The French Connection? Please check it out. Great director, Billy Freakin, starring Gene Hackman.

48:44Well, I went to John Dewey High School in Coney Island in Brooklyn, So the train to stop for my high school was Bay 50th. And that's where this one of the most famous chase scenes, history of cinema, starts. And so Freakin, I mean, he's famous for this. He talked about it to you before he died. Like, they didn't have any permits. They were just, he said, somebody could have gotten killed. No permits, no cops. They were just shooting. And so we went to see the movie. The scene starts in our subway. It's Bay 50th. And so they shot it while we were in class. And in High and Low, Kurosawa's film, there's a big chase scene, but it's on, I think they call it a bullet train in Tokyo.

49:49And so we wanted to at least match what the great master, Kurosawa, did. So here's the thing, though. We really had to show that the character played by A$AP Rocky. Give it up for A$AP Rocky, please.

50:11And I know you ladies are mad at Ayanna. Well, too bad. They got three kids.

50:23Oh, come on now.

50:32Anyway. I know, I know, anyway. So he just got out of prison. He doesn't want to go back. so we wanted to demonstrate that he's smart so here's what I did just devised a plan for the dump of the black Jordan Jumpman knapsack with 17.5 million dollars in Swiss francs he had to put up stuff so he would not get caught So his character being a Yankee guy, Yankee Stadium. So he looks at the calendar, and the Red Sox, the hated Red Sox, coming to the Bronx for a three-game series. So Friday, Saturday night is usually a night game, but Sunday is a day game. So boom. Plus, right away, number four train.

51:41and then you know number four train that goes in Yankee Stadium from Brooklyn, Manhattan to the Boogie Down Bronx. And then historically, working day parades happened on a Sunday too. And many times both happened on the same Sunday over many years. And then I wanted to really jazz it up. We feature late great Eddie Palmieri in the Sousa Orchestra, so they're performing. and there's the chase and Dean Winter, Mr. Mayhem, he's getting the energy of Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle. And we put all that together, and it's the great editing of Barry Brown that really made it propel. So Barry Brown, Ernest Dickerson, there are a lot of people who you've worked with for many years.

52:37The great Matty Lapetique. I want to ask you about somebody else who you've worked with for a long time going back to She's Gotta Have It through most recently I think maybe The Five Bloods Wynn Thomas, a production designer who's done 11 of your films who in less than a month from now is going to be receiving an honorary Oscar for his work something that you have also received

53:08When was on my the first feature length film Spike joined She's the habit he was there and how'd you find each other? He was doing theater in New York and I think the production budget for she might have been$500 All the money was spent on making that Nola's bed. I mean, it was like we had no money. I think I was talking with John. You guys were literally collecting bottles, right? Or maybe that's a little dramatized. You only get a nickel for a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not going to get you that far. But it was that kind of. It wasn't far from that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What we did was, during the set, we would not throw away the bottles.

54:03Yeah, get those. But when all those years, just what makes him so good? He's a great artist. Simple as that. He's going to do what the film needs. And I think that he should be followed not long from now in getting that kind of recognition by your frequent musical collaborator, Terrence Blanchard. Terrence Blanchard, great, great composer. Composer, yeah. Terrence starting out. playing you know he played on the score in school days so did uh donald harris and brantford marsales they all played and they knew my father so you know uh and then once you know my last film my father's score was uh more better blues and then the terrence you know took all yeah took over after that we are going to start now with the uh home stretch of student questions which we're going to start with Corey Martinez, please.

55:07Can you stand up? Can we turn the house lights up? Yeah, let's bring the lights up a little bit, please, on the house and go ahead, Corey. My question is, do you believe artists have a responsibility to reflect or reshape the times that they live in? I don't believe that because there's a different type of artist. You have artists who just want to entertain. I'm okay with that. Let's go to Aubrey Ruffridge. Hello, I'm Aubrey. My question is, you've taken on so many different roles in the production process. Writer, director, actor, producer, the list goes on. Which is your favorite and least favorite and why?

55:51Least favorite what? Of all the roles you've done in films, actor, writer, producer, director, What's your favorite and least favorite? Least favorite is acting. I don't do that no more. You only did that because... Couldn't paint nobody else. And how about between writing and directing? Writing, because I'm alone. Yeah. Directing, you know.

56:20And John Killick can attest, I've been known to yell on the set. All right, John. Occasionally. He's lying. Yeah. When necessary. All right. Alexis. Come car. Oh, they all lined up sitting in the same row. Well, we got a mic. We got to get the mic to them. Systematical, huh? Yeah, yeah. Hi, my question is, what was your I made it moment? What was your I made it moment when you knew you'd maybe was, yeah.

56:55When I got season tickets to my beloved New York Knicks. I knew you were going to say that. But they were not on the court. I move down every year. And I start with my feet on the wood in the world's most famous arena. That's right. Madison Square Garden. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Isabella Cornwell. Okay, so my question is, was there ever a time when you were down about your career and considered walking away from it? And if so, how did you push through that? You know, that's a great question. There were times where I was really down, but I never knew, but I was not allowing myself to quit. So anybody who's made it and says that the very minute they decided what to do, there was no cracks in the sidewalk or this or that, they're lying.

57:56Just straight up lying. You know, anybody, whoever you want to do, there's going to be some rough spots. And so you just got to – it's okay to mope for one day and feel sorry for yourself. But after that, you got to pick your ass up and go. Let's go to Henry Kaufman. Hello. Hi. Hi, Mr. Lee. How you doing? I'm doing good. How are you? Good. It's good to talk to you. Okay, so what is a directorial decision you've made that most people probably wouldn't notice, but you are especially proud of? All right. You just saw Highest Lois, right? Yeah. So Ayanna Lee, who I found on Instagram, why you laugh?

58:48That's funny? Huh? He's saying the movie's against Instagram. The movie's not. First of all, that's Dezo's character. I have to agree with everything people do in the film. But anyway, when we filmed that, we filmed that live. So there's no playback. She did eight takes of that. because we need to do that for all the, so even when the camera wasn't on it, we still had her singing. So the family can react. And so when I wrote, she wrote the song. I knew that that's what we needed, I needed a song at the end. And I always thought that it would just be, for the song and the film, the finale, it would be Ayanna Singer and accompanied by the pianist.

59:55So while my brother, Barry Alexander Brown, is cutting the film, I'm seeing these looks on Denzel's face. And this shows his genius, because his genius made me change something. Denzel, if you heard probably more than once, has the best ears in the business. So when you had those ears, he doesn't have to have her finish the song to know that she can blow. So the first couple line verses, he knows he's signing her. So that's done. So as he's listening, if you watch the film again, watch it again on Apple TV, his face is going through contortions. and that gave me this thought that already he was thinking about the orchestration that he was not going to release this new artist no one's ever heard of singing just to a piano he was like nah, N-A-H and so then I went to Howard Drossin I said Howard this film cannot end with just Ayan and the Pia piano, we got to have a full orchestration.

1:01:15So you might have missed it, but you see the film again, listen to how it's just Iona singing and the piano, but then instrument comes in, and then at the end, that's a 90 piece of orchestra playing. I would have never made that choice if it wasn't for Denzel and what I was seeing on his face. That's right. He's a genius. He's a genius. Another thing. And another thing. The face-off in the recording studio where they're going toe-to-toe, that was not the script. Ah. That was not the script. Game time call. Unbeknownst to me, he started studying Nas' Illmatic album.

1:02:14I didn't know it. Rocky didn't know it.

1:02:20All he put up I knew was his wonderful wife, Paulette, whereas a lot of times she helps with all, you know. The lines, stuff like that. Nice, nice. So, let me see this. No, no. No, no. I just want to, on this film set, these are called sides, where the script is reduced to the side. So, we start the scene, and I'm like...

1:02:56Out of my mind, like, what the fuck? This is not what is written.

1:03:07But to Aesop Rocky's credit, he didn't miss a step. And they were going, it was like a heavyweight battle. in fact he said that the part in the scene where A$AP says what is this a rap battle that's great and again Denzel's genus elevated because first of all that's a very important scene because this is like when they finally you know go at it and that scene elevated, not only did he elevate the scene, but he elevated the movie with that. I've never asked, I've never, I mean, the film came out in August, but I've never, next time I see Dead Zone, I'm going to say, and congratulate him. Yeah, yeah.

1:04:05But that's his, that's another example of his genius. And Rocky was, here's the thing though, a lot of people, not necessarily my films, but I've seen other films where people have to go toe-to-toe with Denzel, and it's ugly. Because not that many people can stand up to the force of nature that Mr. Denzel Washington is. And Ace of Rocky, he was right there. He's from Harlem, uptown. So he was like, I don't want to say it. He was like. You can imagine what I'm saying, all right? Yeah, yeah. William Farjami. Farjami, excuse me. What's your last name? Farjami. Farjami. Is it Italian-American? No, it's Persian.

1:05:02All right. I'm Paisan. So given the explosion of short form content and obvious deterioration of people's attention spans today, how do you think young filmmakers can still manage to grab people's attention while telling important stories? Do you find that even with your students? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:05:33Here's, I'm giving an answer to North. going to be the answer you might want to hear. My generation of young filmmakers, the only reason why he went to film school was to get the equipment, because a rental house would not rent you equipment if you weren't legit. So my generation, the degrees meant nothing to us. All we wanted was the film, the equipment, to make a film. That's going to be our degree. You know, come out with the film. Nowadays, you don't need, everybody has one of these, everybody has a laptop. You have the tools to, you have the two you got the tools so here's another thing I can't talk about this school because I don't know but tuition NYU is no joke

1:06:49and in addition to that you have to come with the money for your films too school gives you equipment you have the facilities to edit but they give you a little bit of money but the rest of that stuff you have to come up with yourself and people graduate NYU own over a quarter million dollars in student loans

1:07:19not everybody can have it's alright he's like this and he's wearing a Nick hat too it'll be alright anyway and I teach there I teach on Thursdays from from 7 to 1 I have student advisement half an hour slots 1 to 2 have lunch in two to five, two to six, we show films, discuss films. But I sometimes, more often the students come in and like they're under verger tears because they're like, Professor Lee, I don't want to get this money. And it's sad. And these are very talented people. But this is just filmmaking. You know, there's no joke, no game, and it's a commitment, and it's the financial equipment.

1:08:26Now, I'm not talking about the Spine's institution here. I'm just talking about NYU, what I know. And I suspect USCFI, UCLA, they're not cheap either. So don't let that kill your dreams. as I said before everybody has a phone everybody has a laptop and people are being discovered all the time by their short films so you gotta make a way simple as that you gotta make a way I'll just add even you as recently as 2014-ish The Sweet Blood of Jesus were using Kickstarter to raise funds for your film it was before Kickstarter It was the precursor for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, whatever you got to make it happen.

1:09:22That's just the thing. Make it happen, make it happen. Last two, we'll first go to Sean Oyer. Thank you again, Spike, for coming out. The last words of your 1988 film School Days and the first films of your 1989 film, Do the Right Thing or Wake Up. Why is that, and do you think that's where the word woke came from in terms of society? The last, I'll repeat some of your question. The last words. Last words of your 1980s. Oh, I'm going to, I wrote it.

1:09:58The last words spoken in school days is. The wake up. Wake up. Let me tell it. Look, you wrote it. Grab the mic from him, please. Get the mic. The last words heard in school days, my second feature film, I spoke in my Lawrence Fishbone. Wake up in the first words of the following film, do the right thing, is spoken by my Morehouse brother, Samuel Jackson. And it's a call, you know, to wake up with the environment we live in, and locally, nationally, you know, worldwide, and be aware of what's going around. And, you know, if that could have been, we could use that again for this film. Because I think that, I know, that in 88 and 89 school days 88 do right thing 89 that the world is worse off presently so it's definitely time to wake up in my opinion absolutely final question is from Hedy Bird I'll be taking this Hi Hello Thank you for coming out tonight My question actually is Quentin Tarantino recently said that he's going to retire Because he believes after his next movie Because he believes that Oh do me a favor Yeah Relax Okay okay Slow down No y 'all good Yeah Well I was going to say Quentin Tarantino recently said that like After his next film He was going to retire Because he believes that Filmmakers lose their spark as they get old But because of your perspectives and experiences does age limit creativity?

1:11:59So basically just that Quentin's argument is that Quentin Tarantino's argument is that as you get older you I'm not answering nothing he has to say. Okay. I cannot speak on it. We don't get along. What happened to Hedy Bird? Because that was a different question that we were going to No disrespect sir but you know that's Okay. Hi, I'm Hedy. 50 years from now, if there's a college class about great filmmakers and they have one session all about Spike Lee, but they can only show one of your movies to kind of illustrate how great you are, which film would you want them to show? Only one? Only one.

1:12:40Only one.

1:12:44Killick, what do you think it is? We can't choose one of our children. Some parents do.

1:12:57Am I lying? Here's the thing. They might love all the same, but parents might like one child or another, if the truth be told. None of you are parents anyway, so you can't talk about it. What did you say, John? Do the right thing. Do you agree, Spike? or Malcolm X those two those two alright well on behalf of all of us thank you so much for being here today we really appreciate it thanks a lot

1:13:50Thanks for listening to Awards Chatter. We really appreciate it and would really appreciate you taking just a minute more to subscribe to the podcast and to leave us a rating and review on your podcast app. And to follow us on Twitter and Instagram, where our handle is at Awards Chatter. On those platforms, we announce upcoming guests and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in.