Word: spike
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...passion for filmmaking, not racial anger, however, that drives the director. "Spike has an appreciation, a love and an inherent understanding of cinema," notes Barry Brown, who worked on editing Lee's films for the past four years. Lee's cinematic preferences run the gamut, from Hector Babenco's Pixote and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets to musicals such as The Wizard of Oz and West Side Story, a taste inherited from his mother. Lee, who has been called a "black Woody Allen," says he admires Scorsese's work. But suggest that he has been cinematically influenced by others...
...movies; he loved sports. But Lee's parents were creative people who exposed their children to the arts, instilling in them a deep appreciation of culture. His father Bill Lee, a bass violinist who played with Odetta, scores all his films. His mother, who nicknamed Shelton Jackson Lee "Spike," taught black literature until her death in 1977. Reared in a home where there was a long tradition of education, Lee credits his family with being the major influence in his life...
...Civil War), a renovated three-story firehouse in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, Lee is relaxed working with a coterie of close friends, many of whom go back to his days in college and film school. Those who know him say he is usually quiet, sometimes temperamental. "Spike is warm, but if you expect him to say, 'You look so wonderful,' you can forget it," says Ross, who is co-producer of Do the Right Thing. "At the same time, he will throw two Knicks tickets on your desk and say, 'I can't make the game tonight...
...Right Thing is a financial success, Lee will be playing in another league. Future movies will bring bigger budgets, probably accompanied by pressure for more control from the big studios anxious to protect their investments. Independence may be harder to retain. "Then the fights will come," says the director. Spike Lee is ready...
...Spike Lee, whose films intentionally raise social and political questions, has made this summer's most controversial movie, Do the Right Thing, about race relations in a hot New York City neighborhood. His movies don't just aim to please; they expose stereotypes and vent his anger...