The conspiracy-theory petard Update: Lee believes Wright’s HIV conspiracy theory, too

This is how scared White People have Black People. I was sitting in my office with Mike Tyson and Don King–my office, at Eddie Murphy Productions. The only two people who work there are white are my managers who work for me. And we got on the subject of white people, and the government, and shit like that, and what happened is, we started whispering, “the White man …” They got you so scared you whisper in your own house about the motherf*cker.

Eddie Murphy

If anybody wants to buy this lovely article:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1354613

copyright 1996

funky chicken on May 2, 2008 at 10:39 AM

Your are also likely to run into Spike Lee at a business gathering talking about entrepreneurship, or at a seminar expounding on Afrocentricity, or speaking about filmmaking to high school kids in New York or college students in Chicago.

Prior to the 1986 release of his first feature film, She’s Gotta Have It, few people outside of Brooklyn and Atlanta had heard of the eccentric young Brooklynite and Morehouse College graduate. Just three years and three films later, Spike Lee is now considered to be one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers in the country. His impact on the movie industry and on the nation’s larger social consciousness is both startling and pervasive.

Just who is this 32-year-old independent filmmaker who gets the attention of Hollywood because of the dollars he brings in, and the attention of moviegoers because of the realities he brings out? Who is the real man behind the intentionally provocative, naturally entertaining movies? Who is this wiry, 5’6″ wunderkind who is just as comfortable directing and producing as he is performing, as comfortable with the brothers on the corner as he is in the boardroom with business executives? Just who is this man who lives in stone-washed jeans, sweatshirts and T-shirts and Nike gym shoes? And why are so many people talking about him and his cinematic images?

Ask the introverted Spike Lee these questions and he simply says, “I’m a filmmaker.” But he is much, much more than that. Anita Baker says, “Whereas I bring passion to a lyric, Spike brings it to film.” Branford Marsalis says each of Lee’s movies is “an artistic statement.” But film is just one of his tools for communication. He is also a strategic thinker, a clever businessman, and a savvy marketer. In addition, Lee, who considers himself a social activist, is greatly concerned about the state of Black America. As Ruby Dee, the noted actress who stars in Lee’s latest film, puts it: “Racism usually erodes self-confidence; it seems to have triggered his.”

Even before Do The Right Thing opened, the merits and potential impact of the film, which focuses on racism, were being hotly debated in the media. One Black journalist critical of the film wrote: “Lee never masters the issues. He leaves them hanging, incoherent and confusing.” White movie critic Roger Ebert, who strongly supports the film, countered: “You cannot live in America in 1989 and not know that every frame of this film, disturbing as it is, reflects the truth.”

“People can’t expect me to have all the answers,” Lee retorts. “That’s not my goal or my agenda.” As a filmmaker, he says, his intention is to present racism and other problems so that discussions can start and solutions can be found. He says he wanted to call attention to the blatant racism that continues to permeate the country. In his Brooklyn neighborhood, as around the country, he sees the desperation, the poverty, the hopelessnesS.

Lee emphasizes that contrary to popular belief, Black people have not “arrived,” despite the fact that Michael Jackson is the No. 1 rock star, Eddie Murphy the biggest box office draw, Bill Cosby the No. 1 TV star, Mike Tyson the world heavyweight champ, and Michael Jordan the greatest basketball player in the world. “And we are a long way from it,” he says. “The Black underclass in America now is larger than it has ever been. So, you can’t get lulled to sleep just because Eddie Murphy is huge.”

Spike Lee article from 1989

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-8010825.html

From 2006:

Demonstrating once again (as if any demonstration were necessary) that “civil rights” has come to mean an entitlement to inclusion (as opposed to a bar on discriminatory exclusion), movie maker Spike Lee “has attacked the Hollywood studios for not including African-Americans as executives.” (HatTip to Drudge)
He tells US style magazine Complex, “You go to any studio, the (only) black guy you are going to see is the guy at the gate. In Hollywood, there is not one African-American who is an executive that has gatekeeper position that could greenlight a picture.
“They’ll make a movie with Denzel (Washington) and Jamie (Foxx) and Eddie (Murphy), but only because they can make money off them.

http://www.discriminations.us/2006/02/spike_lee_attacks_allwhite_hol.html

funky chicken on May 2, 2008 at 10:50 AM

Back issues of Spin Magazine:

Oct 1990 G Spike Lee (guest editor)
inside: Eddie Murphy/B-Boys/2 Live Crew/Aids $8.00

I bet that’s an interesting one. I used to subscribe to Spin around that time, and that could be the issue I remember. I wonder if it’s archived anywhere?

funky chicken on May 2, 2008 at 3:22 PM