The Spike Lee Reader


Book Description

Spike Lee's films have raised a multitude of questions about cinema, from attempts to outline the nature, or "essence," of a black cinematic aesthetics, to a revisioning of American film as a whole. They have sparked critical inquiries into the nature of genres, the role of the auteur, and the mechanics of an active text and an oppositional spectatorship. They have asked us to reconsider spectatorial pleasure; to revel in their polyphonic visual and aural fields. They consider not only race, but also the often blurred interconnections among race, gender, sexuality, and class. In short, they have encouraged, and, in some cases, forced us to interact with what's on screen and, perhaps more importantly, with each other, whether it be in the theater, the caf, the classroom, or the street corner. Taken together, the essays in The Spike Lee Reader will spark dialogue and encourage a continuing consideration of the depth and complexity of Spike Lee's career. Contributors include Christine Acham, Toni Cade Bambara, Mark D. Cunningham, Anna Everett, Krin Gabbard, Ed Guerrero, bell hooks, Michele Wallace and many others.




Fight the Power!


Book Description

Shelton Jackson «Spike» Lee is one of the most culturally influential and provocative film directors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bringing together seminal writings - from classic scholarship to new research - this book focuses on this revolutionary film auteur and cultural provocateur to explore contemporary questions around issues of race, politics, sexuality, gender roles, filmmaking, commercialism, celebrity, and the role of media in public discourse. Situating Lee as an important contributor to a variety of American discourses, the book highlights his commitment to exploring issues of relevance to the Black community. His work demands that his audiences take inventory of his and their understandings of the complexities of race relations, the often deleterious influence of media messages, the long term legacy of racism, the liberating effects of sexual freedom, the controversies that arise from colorism, the separatist nature of classism, and the cultural contributions and triumphs of historical figures. This book seeks to stimulate continued debate by examining the complexities in Lee's various sociopolitical claims and their ideological impacts.




Spike


Book Description

This career-spanning monograph is a visual celebration of Spike Lee's life and career to date. Featuring hundreds of never-before-seen photographs by David Lee, Spike's brother, this book includes behind-the-scenes, insider images that underscore his creative process, and his significant impact on the culture at large. Print run 15,000.




Spike Lee


Book Description

The provocative filmmaker describes his early achievements in the 1986 film, She's Gotta Have It, through his contributions to such movies as Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, in a personal portrait complemented by numerous firsthand accounts that also discuss the role of race in his work and his relationships with famous stars. Reprint.




Spike Lee


Book Description

Since his first feature movie, She's Gotta Have It (1986), gave him critical and commercial success, Spike Lee has challenged audiences with one controversial film after another. Lee has made a broad range of movies, including documentaries (4 Little Girls), musicals (School Daze), crime dramas (Clockers), biopics (Malcolm X).




Spike Lee


Book Description

Since the release of Do the Right Thing in 1989, Spike Lee has established himself as a cinematic icon. Lee's mostly independent films garner popular audiences while at the same time engaging in substantial political and social commentary. He is arguably the most accomplished African American filmmaker in cinematic history, and his breakthrough paved the way for the success of many other African Americans in film. In this first single-author scholarly examination of Spike Lee's oeuvre, Todd McGowan shows how Lee's films, from She's Gotta Have It through Red Hook Summer, address crucial social issues such as racism, paranoia, and economic exploitation in a formally inventive manner. McGowan argues that Lee uses excess in his films to intervene in issues of philosophy, politics, and art. McGowan contends that it is impossible to watch a Spike Lee film in the way that one watches a typical Hollywood film. By forcing observers to recognize their unconscious enjoyment of violence, paranoia, racism, sexism, and oppression, Lee's films prod spectators to see differently and to confront their own excess. In the process, his films reveal what is at stake in desire, interpersonal relations, work, and artistic creation itself.




Black Klansman


Book Description

The #1 New York Times Bestseller! The extraordinary true story and basis for the Academy Award winning film BlacKkKlansman, written and directed by Spike Lee, produced by Jordan Peele, and starring John David Washington and Adam Driver. When detective Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a P.O. box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a white man. He figures he’ll receive a few brochures in the mail, maybe even a magazine, and learn more about a growing terrorist threat in his community. A few weeks later the office phone rings, and the caller asks Ron a question he thought he’d never have to answer, “Would you like to join our cause?” This is 1978, and the KKK is on the rise in the United States. Its Grand Wizard, David Duke, has made a name for himself, appearing on talk shows, and major magazine interviews preaching a “kinder” Klan that wants nothing more than to preserve a heritage, and to restore a nation to its former glory. Ron answers the caller’s question that night with a yes, launching what is surely one of the most audacious, and incredible undercover investigations in history. Ron recruits his partner Chuck to play the "white" Ron Stallworth, while Stallworth himself conducts all subsequent phone conversations. During the months-long investigation, Stallworth sabotages cross burnings, exposes white supremacists in the military, and even befriends David Duke himself. Black Klansman is an amazing true story that reads like a crime thriller, and a searing portrait of a divided America and the extraordinary heroes who dare to fight back.




Do the Right Thing


Book Description

The phenomenon of Spike Lee continues with this revealing and engaging look at his outstanding career, his creative process, and the screenplay for his dynamic movie Do The Right Thing. Spike Lee burst full formed into the screen world with his award-winning, commercially successful independent film She's Gotta Have It. In the few short years following this stellar debut he has established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the film industry and in American popular culture. This book reveals Spike Lee as a Hollywood iconoclast and gifted visionary and takes us though the dramatic sequence of events that brought the movie Do The Right Thing to fruition. It is a testimonial to his developing genius, written in the stingingly funny and informed language of Spike Lee.




Please, Baby, Please


Book Description

Go back to bed, baby, please, baby, please. Not on your HEAD, baby baby baby, please ... From moments fussy to fond, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife, producer Tonya Lewis Lee, present a behind-the-scenes look at the chills, spills, and unequivocal thrills of bringing up baby Vivid illustrations from celebrated artist Kadir Nelson evoke toddlerhood from sandbox to high chair to crib, and families everywhere will delight in sharing these exuberant moments again and again.




Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes


Book Description

The legendary figure who launched the careers of Spike Lee, Michael Moore, and Richard Linklater offers a no-holds-barred look at the deals and details that propel an indie film from a dream to distribution.