Spike Lee
☼ Born on 20 December 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Biography
Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. At a very young age, he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from artistic, education-grounded background; his father was a jazz musician, and his mother, a schoolteacher. He attended school in Morehouse College in Atlanta and developed his film making skills at Clark Atlanta University. After graduating from Morehouse, Lee attended the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. He made a controversial short, The Answer (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), a ten-minute film. Lee went on to produce a 45-minute film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983) which won a student Academy Award. In 1986, Spike Lee made the film, She's Gotta Have It (1986), a comedy about sexual relationships. The movie was made for $175,000, and earned $7 million at the box office, which launched his career and allowed him to found his own production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. His next movie was School Daze (1988), which was set at a historically black school, focused mostly on the conflict between the school and the Fraternities, of which he was a strong critic, portraying them as materialistic, irresponsible, and uncaring. With his School Daze (1988) profits, Lee went on to make his landmark film, Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie based specifically his own neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The movie portrayed the racial tensions that
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emerge in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood on one very hot day. The movie garnered Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay, for Danny Aiello for supporting actor, and sparked a debate on racial relations. Lee went on to produce and direct the jazz biopic Mo' Better Blues (1990), the first of many Spike Lee films to feature Denzel Washington, including the biography of Malcolm X (1992), in which Washington portrayed the civil rights leader. The movie was a success, and garnered an Oscar nomination for Washington. The pair would work together again on He Got Game (1998), an excursion into the collegiate world showing the darker side of college athletic recruiting, as well as the 2006 film Inside Man (2006). Spike Lee's role as a documentarian has expanded over the years, highlighted by his participation in Lumière and Company (1995), the Oscar-nominated 4 Little Girls (1997), to his Peabody Award-winning biographical adaptation of Black Panther leader in A Huey P. Newton Story (2001), through his 2005 Emmy Award-winning examination of post-Katrina New Orleans in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) and its follow-up five years later If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise (2010). Through his production company 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks, Lee continues to create and direct both independent films and projects for major studios, as well as working on story development, creating an internship program for aspiring filmmakers, releasing music, and community outreach and support. He is married to Tonya Lewis Lee, and they have two sons, Satchel and Jackson.
In the role of actor
Premium Classics: Do the Right Thing (30/06/2020)
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In the role of director
Premium Classics: Do the Right Thing (30/06/2020)
This content is locked and can only be accessed by members of our Patreon To view this content, you must be a member of Sean Kelly on Movies Patreon at $1 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
BlacKkKlansman (12/08/2018)
A black police officer infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan in BlacKkKlansman. In 1972 Colorado Springs, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) becomes the first black man to become a police officer at the Colorado Springs Police Department. At first regulated to the records room, Ron eventually gets himself reassigned to the intelligence division. It is there that Ron spontaneously answers a […]
Tales from the Hood 2 (14/07/2018)
A mysterious figure tells four stories to a bigoted industrialist in Tales from the Hood 2. Portifoy Simms (Keith David) is invited to Dumass Beach Industries to help with the programming of the “RoboPatriot” crime fighting robots by telling a series of stories from the hood. In Good Golly, Audrey (Alexandria DeBerry) breaks into a museum to steal […]
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A young woman fights for peace among the street gangs of Chicago in Chi-Raq. In the south side of Chicago, a violent gang war is in progress between the Spartans lead by Demetrius “Chi-raq” Dupree (Nick Cannon) and the Trojans lead by Sean “Cyclops” Andrews (Wesley Snipes), with tensions reaching their peak when the 11 year old […]