Spike Lee

Spike Lee is an American director, writer, producer, and actor became the pre-eminent chronicler of black life in America through the lens of independent film throughout the late 20th century and early 21st century. Over a three decade-plus career, Lee's films, or "joints" as he often called them, were brazen cherry bombs aimed at mainstream society, tackling such thorny issues as racism, crime, poverty, media manipulation, and religion with style, grit, and urgency.

Love him or hate him, Lee proved time and time again that you simply cannot discount him. Born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957 in Atlanta, GA, Lee was raised in an artistically inclined, Afro-centric family. His mother, Jacqueline Carroll, was a professor of arts and black literature, while his father, William James Edward Lee III, was a jazz musician and composer, so it is perhaps no coincidence that Lee and all of his younger siblings would end up pursuing careers in the arts and taking part in his feature films: his brothers, David and Cinqué, grew up to become a photographer and an actor/filmmaker, respectively, while his sister, Joie, became a screenwriter, producer, and actress.

After spending the first few years of his life in Georgia, Lee and his family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he would spend his formative years. It was here that his mother nicknamed him "Spike." After attending John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, Lee enrolled in Morehouse College, a historically black university. While at Morehouse, Lee made his first student film, "Last Hustle in Brooklyn" (1977). He also took film courses at Clark Atlanta University, and eventually graduated from Morehouse with a B.A. in mass communication. Upon returning to NYC, Lee was accepted into the graduate film program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a Master's degree in film & television.

Lee's thesis film, "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads" (1983) caused major waves, becoming the first student film to be showcased in Lincoln Center's prestigious New Directors/New Films Festival, and winning Lee the Student Academy Award. That same year, Lee founded his production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, a portend of Lee's proclivity for provocation. In 1986, Lee released his debut feature, "She's Gotta Have It" (1986). Shot for a few thousand dollars in sultry black and white, and featuring a narrative device borrowed from Akira Kurosawa's classic "Rashomon" (1950), the film followed three young black men as they compared and contrasted their experiences dating the same woman. Critics were wowed by the film, and Lee was instantly pegged as a filmmaker to watch.

His sophomore effort, "School Daze" (1988), was a dark comedy partially inspired by Lee's tenure at Morehouse College, which notably featured the first instance of what would become Lee's visual calling card, the so-called "floating" dolly shot. For his next film, Lee swung big, taking a look at one swelteringly hot day on one block in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, as tensions between black residents and the white owners of a pizza joint reach a breaking point. "Do the Right Thing" (1989), was hailed as a masterpiece immediately upon its release, was a prime contender for the Palme d'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and was predicted to be a major player in that year's Academy Awards.

To the chagrin of many, "Do the Right Thing" was snubbed for a Best Picture nod, and Lee was shut out of the Best Director nominations, leaving him to make due with a Best Original Screenplay nomination. To add salt to the wound, Lee felt that that year's Best Picture winner, "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989), was based on safe racial stereotypes meant to coddle white people. As the nineties began, Lee went in to full-on prolific auteur mode: he would release one film a year for the entire decade, except for 1993. First up was "Mo' Better Blues" (1990), in which Denzel Washington played a troubled jazz musician loosely based on Lee's father, beginning a fruitful collaborative partnership with the leading man.

Next up was the interracial romantic comedy "Jungle Fever" (1991) starring Wesley Snipes, followed by the sprawling biopic "Malcolm X" (1992), in which Washington turned in a powerhouse performance as the civil rights activist. Critics praised the film as Lee's best, and one of the best films of the decade, but once again, the Academy shut him out: no Best Picture or Best Director nominations (and Washington lost Best Actor to Al Pacino's hammy, scenery-chewing turn in "Scent of a Woman" (1992)). Lee took 1993 off to get married to lawyer Tonya Lewis.

In response to yet another snub, Lee turned out a trio of middlingly-received pulpy crime dramas: "Crooklyn" (1994), "Clockers" (1995), and "Girl 6" (1996), before releasing another civil rights epic, "Get on the Bus" (1996). Lee followed this up with his first documentary, "4 Little Girls" (1997), a probing documentary on the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, AL. This earned Lee his second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Documentary Feature. Lee's third collaboration with Washington, "He Got Game" (1998), was a sobering tale of black fatherhood and the escapism of basketball, while "Summer of Sam" (1999) was a bloated look at the tumultuous summer that overtook NYC in 1977.

His first concert film "The Original Kings of Comedy" (2000), was better received than his next narrative film, "Bamboozled" (2000), a media satire shot for cheap on digital video about a modern televised minstrel show, which critics dismissed as impossibly broad and unrealistic (though today it looks prescient). Lee bounced back with another well-received documentary, "Jim Brown: All-American" (2002), as well as one of his most acclaimed narrative films, "25th Hour" (2002), in which he slyly transformed a tale of a convicted drug dealer (Edward Norton) experiencing his last day of freedom into a look at the post-9/11 grief and trauma that had engulfed all of New York City.

In true Lee fashion, he then followed up one of his most acclaimed films with one of his most derided films, "She Hate Me" (2004), in which an enterprising young man starts a business impregnating wealthy lesbians. Critics savaged the film, and audiences stayed away. Luckily for Lee, the same could not be said for his next film, "Inside Man" (2006). A taught, socially conscious heist thriller starring Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, and his longtime collaborator Washington, the film was a hit with both critics and audiences.

"When the Levees Broke" (2006) was a sprawling, angry documentary look at the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, while the baffling WWII drama "Miracle at St. Anna" (2008) received perhaps the most scathing reviews of Lee's career. After revisiting the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with the documentary "If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise" (2010), and returning to his low-budget indie roots with the divisive coming of age drama "Red Hook Summer" (2012), Lee turned out a duo of ill-advised, underperforming genre film remakes: "Oldboy" (2013), a new take on Korean auteur Park Chan-wook's revenge saga, and "Da Sweet Blood of Jesus" (2014), based on Bill Gunn's hallucinatory, Afro-centric vampire romance, "Ganja and Hess" (1973).

Lee got some of his groove back with "Chi-Raq" (2015), an ambitious update of the Classical Greek comedy "Lysistrata" set in modern-day Chicago, in which all of the characters spoke in rhyme. That same year, Lee was given an Academy Honorary Award for his contributions to film, usually a sign that an artist's glory days are behind themHowever, Lee proved he was still a vital force with his next film, "BlacKkKlansman" (2018). Based on the true story of two police officers, one black (John David Washington, son of Denzel), and one white (Adam Driver) who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in 1970s Colorado Springs, the film told a highly entertaining story, while sucker punching audiences in it's final moments by drawing parallels to the current fraught political climate.

Critics praised "BlacKkKlansman" as one of Lee's best, the film earned $90 million at the box office on a $15 million budget, and Lee was awarded the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Sweetest of all, however, was the fact that "BlacKkKlansman" finally earned Lee those elusive Oscar nods for Best Picture and Best Director.