Spike Lee In Boston

Over my spring break I took a trip out to Boston, Massachusetts and due to a lucky coincidence, Spike Lee was speaking at a nearby college. After bashing the Patriots and conceding to the Red Sox he told many stories from his life about how he got into filmmaking. His message seemed to mostly be about taking things into your own hands and that there is no overnight success. He also talked about the state of the nation from a state of fear perspective. His most interesting story to myself that I had not heard before was about his making of the film Malcolm X. During the postproduction his studio had cut his funding because he was not making changes they had asked. So the studio hired a Bond company to go in and fire everyone and shut down production of his film. He picked up the phone and chose to call Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Magic Johnson, “his boy” Michael Jordan and others, to ask for a “gift” to continue making his film. And they had a large public appearance announcing that all of these prominent black figures had banded together to release their version of Malcolm X how they wanted it to be. Miraculously of course, the studio then began funding the project again.
After his speech was over he took questions from the audience, and considering that we have to write a paper for this class I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to ask him a question similar to the topic of our paper. I wanted to ask him something like, “what are the differences between studio and independent film making” but as I am not that much of a public speaker I ended up asking him something that he seemed to take as though I were asking him why he sold out to the Studios. He gave me this answer, “To answer your question sir, I like to think of myself as an independent film maker who sometimes uses studios to finance and distribute [his work].” I thought about this answer for a while because I was disappointed with how I asked the question. I began to try to apply it to the stories he told us about his life and I came back to his film Malcolm X. His studio pulled out on him, who had been financing the film so instead of giving into the studio’s demands and making the film they wanted, he did whatever he could to not have money influence his story. So I think what he was saying in so many words was that if the only difference is where the money comes from there is no difference at all.