“Until you see someone like you doing something, you can never imagine yourself doing it”: Spike Lee on Malcolm X, role models and the press

James Verniere: How long have you been thinking about making Malcolm X?  

Spike Lee: Since I made Do the Right Thing. I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X – the most important book I’ll ever read – when I was in junior high school. I began to look at the world with a new set of eyes. It showed me how we are portrayed in the media, how African-American stars in sport and show business smile and say all the right things, but never speak out, and how it all ties in.  

Malcolm X often comes down very hard on Christianity, especially on African-American Christian ministers. Do you share his views?  

He had a thing about Dr King, but a lot of that might have been jealousy because King was the object of so much adulation. 

At the conclusion of Do the Right Thing, you quote both Martin Luther King, who speaks in conciliatory terms, and Malcolm X, whose words have been interpreted as a call to arms. What was your point?  

I think we have to get out of this either/or thing. I think black America has to form a synthesis between the two views and make it work.  

In a story in a recent issue of New Yorker, the writer argues that Dr King appealed to the middle class, while Malcolm X spoke to the more oppressed, lower classes, the people in the ghettos. Why was Malcolm X’s message stronger for you, the product of a middle-class background and education?  

I don’t think Malcolm’s message excluded the middle class; he was just strongest among the underclass. To me, Malcolm’s greatest power was that he could make everything so crystal clear, so simple. He’d say, “A plus B equals C”, and you’d smack your head and think, “I never saw it that way before”.   

In the newsclips you use at the end of Malcolm X, I noticed several shots of him smiling and looking cheerful. But the only pictures I remember of him on television or in newspapers when I was a boy made him look angry and accusing.  

Malcolm had his own photographer, and one day he got upset with him because the guy was taking pictures of him looking mean and angry. He said, “I don’t need you to do that. I can get the New York Times to do that”. People have to realise that the media know what they’re doing. They know how to shape a person’s image and make the American public believe it. 

I wonder if we’ll ever see a movie by Spike Lee released without a host of combative headlines and contentious, often negative stories about you to go with it. 

I long for that day. It’s not that I wake up in the morning and say, “What can I come up with today?” I get misquoted a lot. It must look as though I slip somebody some money so I’ll get blasted in the papers and get publicity for the film. But this stuff always just seems to happen.  

You don’t enjoy the attention at all?  

It gets to be a nuisance after a while because I end up having to explain stuff I never said in the first place.   

A cover story about you in a recent issue of Esquire magazine ran with the headline: ‘Spike Lee Hates Your Cracker Ass’. What did you think of that?  

You know, I was on a plane and somebody sitting next to me was reading that story and he turned to me and said, “Did you really say that?” No, l did not say that. I don’t feel that way. I never have. The writer from Esquire (a white woman named Barbara Grizzuti Harrison) turned me off from the first minute of the interview because I guess she felt she had to tell me all about her black boyfriend and how they went to see Billie Holiday and… Right there, I stopped her and said, “C’mon, you’re here to do a job. I’m here to do a job. Let’s talk about Malcolm X. You don’t have to convince me you’re a bleeding-heart liberal. It’s not necessary”. Then she asks, “Do you have any white friends, Spike?” What the fuck is that? What white film director would get asked questions like that?   

Do you think the media are racist?  

Yes. Madonna swears by that old saying, “Print anything you like about me as long as you spell my name right”. I’d rather be out of the papers than see some false shit about how I’m anti-Semitic or how I hate white people. I’d rather not be in the papers at all, whether or not my name is spelled right.  

Those same accusations were levelled against Malcolm X. What do you think his legacy is?  

I think the resurgence of Malcolm is about a void that young people are trying to fill. Ossie Davis said it best when he delivered the eulogy at Malcolm’s funeral: “He was our shining black prince, our manhood”. Young black men today need role models, and it’s a shame we have to dig up a dead man instead of finding someone who walks among us.  

Don’t you fulfil that kind of role for a lot of people? Aren’t you a kind of role model, at least to young black film-makers who’ve sprung up in the last two or three years?  

If I really considered myself to be a role model, it would be a hindrance. It means you can’t have anything negative connected with you – Michael Jordan can’t be photographed drinking a beer. I’m an artist. I can’t wear that straightjacket.  

But don’t you think that the integrity of your work and the discussion it generates make you a role model, someone worthy of the respect and admiration of young people?  

I’m not saying that’s not possible. I just try to lead by example. I think that 20 years from now, black athletes will dominate in golf because kids today have seen Michael Jordan with a golf club in his hand. I remember at the first LA premiere of She’s Gotta Have It, a skinny black kid walked up to me and said, “Hi, my name is John Singleton and I’m in high school now, but I’m going to make movies just like you”. For me, that’s where the reward is, though that’s not to say I’m the father of black cinema. I’m just going down the same road that Ossie Davis, Oscar Micheaux and Melvin Van Peebles went down. Their success made it easier for me, and every success I have makes it easier for others. Young black kids need concrete examples of people like them who make films, because until you see someone like you doing something, you can never imagine yourself doing it.  

So how do you feel now about Matty Rich, John Singleton, Reginald and Warrington Hudlin, Carl Franklin… the new black filmmakers who have sprung up in your wake?  

I think it’s great. I never wanted to be the only one out there. Let them take some of the bricks.  

Do you think this film will appeal to white audiences?  

Yes. I’ve always had a large white following, but it’s been kept quiet because if that gets out, it just empowers me even more. This film is going to crush that old axiom that white audiences will not go to see black people in a movie, unless it’s a musical or a comedy or an Eddie Murphy film. When that axiom dies, studios can no longer tell black film-makers they can’t give them a decent budget because their films are too much of a risk.  

Your budget for Malcolm X was about $34 million, but you only got $28 million from Warner Bros. How did that work out?  

We raised the extra money because I kicked in half my salary and because we got gifts from people like Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey. The important thing is that it looks like there’s a $60 million budget when you see it on screen. I told Warner Bros at our very first meeting that this was going to be an epic on the scale of a David Lean film, and that it was going to cost over $30 million and be over three hours long. And you have to remember that $34 million is not a lot of money for an epic. But whenever I asked Warners for more money, I was told, “But Spike, you made She’s Gotta Have It for less than $5,000. Why do you need more money now?” I’ve had my differences with Warner Bros, but never with the people who market and sell the pictures. Barry Reardon, Rob Friedman, John Dartigue, Charlotte G. Kandel – they are behind the film 100 per cent, and they are going to sell it.  

At one time, Malcolm X was set to be directed by Norman Jewison, but you publicly complained that the film should be directed by a black director, presumably yourself. Why was that?  

It wasn’t a personal thing. Norman Jewison is a fine film-maker, but he wasn’t the person for this job. I’ve never said that only black people can direct black films, and only white people can direct white films. But I think there’s no way that someone who wasn’t Italian-American could have done what Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese did in films like The Godfather and GoodFellas. Somebody else could have done those films, but they wouldn’t have had that flavour.  

As usual in your films, you’ve cast yourself in Malcolm X in a part designed primarily to provide comic relief.

In basketball terms, I’m like the sixth man off the bench – I’m a spot player, a utility man, a person with limited abilities who knows what his role is, doesn’t try to play outside his game, gets the job done and lets the real actors take over – Denzel Washington, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, John Turturro, Anthony Quinn, people like that.  

Your film is being released at a time when racial tensions are peaking in America. What do events such as the Rodney King beating and the riots in Los Angeles say about racism in this country? 

I think the inclusion of the Rodney King video footage in the opening of our film, along with the image of the burning American flag and the words of Malcolm X, say that things haven’t changed much. Things have opened up to some individuals, but not to the masses. There are more black people in the underclass than ever before: under Reagan and Bush, the country seemed to be moving backwards.  

What can this movie do for the masses?  

What can any work of art do? We want people to come out of the film spiritually uplifted and enlightened.  

In the past, you’ve been accused of being a provocateur – a columnist for New York magazine once accused you of trying to incite riots with Do the Right Thing. Do you think that sort of criticism is racist?   

In a lot of ways, yes. How is it that black audiences are going to see a film and then re-enact what they saw on the screen, while the white masses can go in droves to see Terminator 2 with no problem? How many cops did Arnold Schwarzenegger kill in the first Terminator movie? Did we hear any complaints from the police about that? Yet Ice T does a song which is pure fantasy, and the whole world comes down on him.  

Do you think some of your potential white audience might be turned off by the impression that Malcolm X doesn’t belong to them?  

One of Malcolm’s biggest regrets was that he once told a young white co-ed that there was nothing she could do to help improve the conditions of black people in America. Later, he changed his mind. We wrote that scene and shot it, but we had to cut it out… I think Malcolm belongs to anyone who is ready to hear his message.  

Was there any thought of having Alex Haley, the co-author of the Malcolm X autobiography, appear as a character?  

He was a character in one version of the script, but I felt it was not the right thing to do. The film should not be about Malcolm X telling his story to Alex Haley. 

There was also a David Mamet version of the script.  

Mamet wrote that script for Sidney Lumet when Lumet was attached to the project. The script that I rewrote was by James Baldwin and Arnold Perl. Unfortunately, Baldwin is not mentioned in the credits because his sister, who controls his estate, petitioned the Screenwriters’ Guild to remove it. Her objection was that we had rewritten a lot of it, but I think she made a mistake.   

How concerned were you about the reaction of Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam? Elijah Muhammad is still a revered figure to many Muslims today, and Farrakhan is reportedly concerned about how you portray him in the film.  

I flew to Chicago to discuss the film with Farrakhan, and he let me know that he’d be watching very closely. He wouldn’t say anything until he saw the film. But he didn’t want us to trash the image of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He let me know that he would be very upset if we did.  

And how would his “upset” manifest itself? 

I might find out. He hasn’t seen the film yet, and there are things in it I know he’s not going to like.  

Despite some striking similarities, your film isn’t JFK. You don’t speculate about who killed Malcolm X, you present the assassination as a matter of fact.  

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Nation of Islam was behind the assassination. The five assassins were from Temple Number 25 in Newark, New Jersey. That’s not to say that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad ordered the lulling, but somebody in Chicago gave the word. And the FBI and the CIA were also involved – they knew it was about to happen but stood back and did nothing to stop it. 

You have no problem stating that as fact?  

It’s common knowledge, and there are recently released FBI files to support it.  

Why do you have such vocal critics within the black press? Such influential New York journalists as Armond White and Stanley Crouch are among your most vehement detractors.  

It would be presumptuous for me to think that all black critics are going to love my work. Black people are among the most disunited people on earth – I mean, Stanley ‘Crotch’ wrote a story about Jungle Fever in which he mentioned my height about ten times. What’s that got to do with anything? 

Have you had a chance to think about your next movie? 

I’m going to rest, refuel and crank up again. I don’t know what I’ll be doing next, but it will be a small film.  

What do you see as the future for you and African-American film-makers? Is it risky for directors to pigeonhole themselves by making films for a specific market?  

I don’t think there’s one specific film any black film-maker should be making, because there’s not one monolithic audience out there. Every film-maker should be allowed to make the film he or she wants to make. But I hope each of us strives to make great cinema, because if not, we’ll just be another trend, and we’ll soon be over.