Spike Lee Does Not Bite

Ranging from Samuel L. Jackson's crackhead thug in Jungle Fever to Delroy Lindo's malefic drug dealer in dockers, Lee has not hesitated to portray certain members of the black community as mesmerizingly unappealing figures. And when they have not been villains, they have often been clowns (the preposterous black fraternity members in School Daze, the boom box-toting lunkhead in Do the Right Thing, Wesley Snipes's cheating spouse in Jungle Fever, Lee's one-dimensional pussy hound in She's Gotta Have It). While certain white critics have gotten all hot and bothered about the alleged anti-Semitic portrayals of the jazz club owners in Mo' Better Blues, hardly anyone has noticed how regularly, and mischievously, Lee has used his films to criticize or at least satirize members of his own ethnic group. It's as if white America has said: it's OK to cast your fellow African-Americans in an unflattering light, because you're black and that's your turf, but for God's sake, leave our ethnic groups alone. In other words, only us drunken Micks can make films about us drunken Micks: only us racist Italians can make movies about us racist Italians.

As a matter of fact, one of the things that is most remarkable about Lee's films is how accurately he portrays white people. Name a film where a yuppie schmuck has been brought to life with more precision than Tim Robbins in Jungle Fever. Tell me that Nicholas Turturro and his candy shop henchmen in that film aren't the spitting images of the boys from Bensonhurst. Or that Danny Aiello and Harvey Keitel don't fit the bill as the Racists with Hearts of Gold in Do the Right Thing _and _Clockers, respectively. For a clearer idea of Lee's achievement, try to imagine a major white director making a movie about people from Bedford-Stuyvesant and coming within 10 miles of the target. Jim Jarmusch? Oliver Stone? Brian De Palma? The Woodman?

"What people don't realize is that when you're a minority you know everything about the majority culture, because you're bombarded with that every single day." Lee patiently explains to me while looking out the window at Brooklyn Hospital, "So I think that Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans know everything about white culture, because that's all we see. That's always on television, radio and in the newspapers. The reverse is not the same."

Since he's so good at it, I ask Lee if he could make an entire movie about white people. I suggest that after the less-than-blockbuster box office take for Crooklyn, Clockers and Girl 6, it might be a good idea to pull a The Age of Innocence and make a movie completely outside the range of his normal experience.

But Lee doesn't take the suggestion in the spirit it was intended.

"It would have to be a good story," he snaps. "But I'm not going to do that to validate myself to show that I'm not a racist. I get asked that all the time: 'When are you going to do a film with white people in it?'"

It just so happens that Spike has had plans to make one. The project, Reliable Sources, postponed for now, features a script by Joe Eszterhas and deals with a reporter involved in a hostage situation.

"I think the majority of those characters are white," says Lee.

Lee's problems raising cash for his long-planned Jackie Robinson biopic in the wake of the cost overruns on Malcolm X. and the far-from-thrilling response to Crooklyn, dockers and Girl 6 are no doubt a big part of why he has just finished making a quickie film for $2.8 million. Get On the Bus deals with 15 black men who trek from Los Angeles to Washington in October 1995 to attend the Million Man March. Funded by African-American men such as Wesley Snipes and Danny Glover, it stars Ossie Davis, Isaiah Washington, Richard Belzer, Charles Dutton and a host of other fine per-formers, all of whom worked for scale. The characters include a gay couple, a policeman, an elder states-man, and a father and son who are shackled together by court order. The obvious question: what kind of movie can you make for $2.8 million?

"A very good one," Lee explains. "You just don't have a lot of the toys. You know, you don't stay at the best hotels--all that stuff that really has nothing to do with filmmaking. All the money has to be on screen."

Although at first glance Get On the Bus might seem like a "typical" Spike Lee project, it actually bears little relation to his other films. Yes, Lee uses the same directing techniques over and over, and yes, he relies on the same cadre of performers, and yes, he lets them drone on and on till both you and they are blue in the face, but thematically-- and in terms of overall mood--no two of his movies are alike. More important still, in his determination to show that African-American society is not a monolith. Lee makes some films about poor people, some films about middle-class people, some films about the famous and successful. Yet somehow, nobody seems to notice the rich variety of his work. I ask Lee if it bothers him that his nine very different films are generally thought of as nine variations on the same theme.

"It doesn't bother me." Lee claims. "I know that people try to pigeonhole artists because of films like Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X and Jungle Fever. There are some people who think my number-one interest in doing films is dealing with racial issues in this country. That's very important to me, but I don't really think I make any one type of film."

Noting that Quentin Tarantino appears briefly in Girl 6, I ask Lee if he envies Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez the cultural canonization they have earned while making movies that are basically about how much they like other movies. By this I mean: if Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, El Mariachi, Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn have a message, it went over my head. But again, Lee senses a trap.

"Who says that I only like message films?" he asks. "Why do you even ask me that question? Because I like a film and it's not a message movie, and that's something to note? I went to see The Rock and enjoyed it. Yes, I do like movies that don't necessarily have a message to them. Spike Lee goes to the movies sometimes just for entertainment. I've never said that every film has to have a message in it."

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