Spike Lee Does Not Bite

That's good, because now we can segue into a chat about a form of pure entertainment that happens to be one of Lee's passions: basketball. Spike Lee has made eight films since his professional debut in 1986, and yet to date this self-confessed hoops addict has never made a film about basketball. Would he like to make a film about the subject?

"I would love to."

"And what would it be?" I ask.

"Hey, it'd be better than Eddie" Lee says, cracking a smile for the first time. "It'd be better than Celtic Pride."

Well, yes, that's a given, but couldn't he be a bit more specific?

"I don't know, because I don't have the story yet."

"Could you make a movie about Dennis Rodman? Has it crossed your mind?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's not interesting to do a movie about Dennis Rodman."

"Why not?" I ask. "He's an interesting man."

"Many people are interesting." Lee replies. "But that doesn't warrant a movie."

"He's a very interesting man," I press on, but Lee has deep-sixed this subject. "Dennis Rodman you could do a five-minute feature on," he says.

You would never, ever guess from talking to this man of few, and carefully chosen, words that his films are long and talky. Indeed, Lee has a hard time advancing his plots with images; everything is done through humongous gabfests. In some of his films, the cameraman seems to wander off for long naps, leaving his equipment running on automatic pilot. In this sense, the director Lee most resembles is not Woody Allen--another short, bespectacled, narcissistic New Yorker with Knicks courtside seats whose acting leaves something to be desired--but French filmmaker Eric Rohmer, the master of film as one meandering conversation. Indeed, one of the most noticeable features of Lee's films is his affection for the kinds of any techniques, blackouts, weird setups, and characters talking, talking, talking directly into the camera that French people love. He has probably done as much as any American director to make Godardian techniques part of the filmmaking mainstream. Which is probably his single greatest crime against humanity.

There are a few things that rescue Lee's films from their pacing problems and almost hysterical garrulousness. For one, he has the ability to coax great, great performances out of his casts. Another is that he gives his actors terrific dialogue. And he almost always includes one or two electrifyingly funny scenes: the ghetto-blaster duel in Do the Right Thing, the string of black pickup lines in She's Gotta Have It, the "Zulu dick" conversation in Jungle Fever, and just about the entire script of School Daze.

Back on the negative side. Lee's heavy-handed sermonizing, his gnawing fear that the audience still hasn't gotten the point, has led to interminable finales in Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Jungle Fever, Mo' Better Blues and School Daze. A friend of mine says she heard that the Hughes brothers once suggested that Spike Lee needs to go to Film Ending School. I could not agree more. Speaking as a mildly pretentious, wishy-washy. Caucasian suburbanite, I can say that nothing Lee has ever said about white people has offended me in the least, not even his request to be interviewed by black journalists because he is weary of being subjected to hatchet jobs by mean-spirited white people like me. Frankly, I can see no difference between Lee's attempts to handpick sympathetic African-American journalists and white movie stars' insistence that Vanity Fair and Premiere dispatch the usual blow-job brigade. But his inability to wrap up his films really gets on my nerves. In late-20th-century America, these, not allegations of covert racism, are the things that bother white people like me. What a society.

But when I bring up this finale problem in the context of Mo' Better Blues. Lee insists that the film cannot end on a downbeat note, with Denzel Washington's washed-up trumpet player staggering out into the rain. Instead, he feels the film must end with the older, wiser musician teaching his son how to play the instrument, but then allowing him to cut his lesson short and go out and play football. In Lee's view, this shows that the character has grown emotionally. Glumly, I realize that I'm not going to get anywhere by suggesting that Lee's finales leave something to be desired. So I simply drop the subject by noting that anyone who would force his child to play the trumpet is by definition a monster incapable of personal growth. Lee seems amused. I seize the opportunity to ask if he ever pays attention to outside criticism of his work.

"It depends who's giving the criticism," he replies. "There are people I respect, and I listen to them; other people I don't listen to. I have an inner circle of friends, people who are very honest with me, people who I respect who are filmmakers. If something doesn't work, and they tell me it's not working, then I better check it out, because there might be something to that."

Federico Fellini once said that his idea of the perfect vacation was to make a movie. For him, all the fund-raising and promotional rigamarole was drudgery, while the actual process of filmmaking was fun. I ask Lee if he shares Fellini's attitude. He does not.

"To me, making movies--which I love--is still hard work," Lee remarks. "It's not a vacation."

"Is it harder work than stuff like, say, giving this interview?"

"Giving interviews is harder," Lee says. "Especially press junkets where you do 50 interviews a day and everybody's asking the same question."

"Did you ever interview yourself?" I ask.

"No."

"Can you think of a question you'd like to be asked?"

"No."

"So you can see how hard it is."

"It's not hard. It's just that people are lazy. They don't take time to do their research, and they just ask the same questions."

I now wind up our little chat by asking Spike Lee a whole series of questions I am sure he has not been asked. I really want to prove that I am not a lazy reporter, and have actually done my research. So I ask him if he would give Mickey Rourke, the man who, at least indirectly, blamed him for the Los Angeles riots, a job.

"He was great in Diner, but that was a long time ago." Lee says. "But if there was a pan for him, I wouldn't hold that against him."

But what about those nasty accusations?

"Mickey Rourke is not a social scientist," Lee answers. "You have to consider the source."

We proceed. In answer to my wildly assorted, thematically incongruous questions. Lee will not be making a film about '60s activist H. Rap Brown, he will not be making a film about Richie Parker, he will not be making a film about how awful Peter, Paul and Mary were. In answer to the question, "Has the idea of making a movie about Sammy Davis, Jr. ever crossed your mind?" Lee gets a bit peeved.

''Why do you keep asking me questions about what movie to make? Why do you keep suggesting films for me to make?"

"Because they're movies that I would like to see you make," I reply. "That's all."

Sadly, however, Lee has no interest in making them. He thinks that H. Rap Brown would make a good film subject, but has no interest in making it himself. He feels the same way about Sammy Davis, Jr. In other words: yes, I can, but no. I won't.

"Would you like to do an action film?" I ask.

"It would have to be a good script," he answers. "It would have to have substance. It couldn't just be car crashes and special effects."

"So you're never going to gel to the point like some of these guys who start out making great films and then they just go and work for the studios putting out product?"

"I hope not," he says, clearly tired of this interview.

I hope not, too.

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Joe Queenan wrote about Irish cinema for the August issue of Movieline.

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