The Big Picture - The Importance of Spike Lee

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Some filmmakers interpret the past. Some capture the present. Spike Lee does both, and he sees the future. There has never been a more urgent moment for the director’s work: In this episode, we spotlight a 2019 conversation with Wesley Morris about 'Do the Right Thing' (9:53), interview Lee's longtime composer Terence Blanchard (35:32), and revisit a conversation with Lee's editor Barry Alexander Brown (65:01). Plus: Sean shares his top five (OK, top six) favorite Spike Lee movies. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Wesley Morris, Terence Blanchard, and Barry Alexander Brown Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Spike Lee. We're going to be talking about him all week on the show, and with good reason. Sadly, there has never been a more urgent moment for the director's work. We've spent the past two weeks in a collective state of horror and anger over George Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, just one of thousands unjustly killed by police. It's hard to look at what happened to Floyd and not think of Radio Raheem, Bill Nunn's character from Do the Right Thing. Our country is fucked up and needs to change. No American filmmaker has had the foresight or insight about that need for change quite like Spike has. Some directors interpret the past, some capture the present. Spike does both and he sees

the future. We spent some time in the past few weeks returning to some of Spike's movies in anticipation of his new film, To Five Bloods. It's a staggering body of work, as wide as it is deep, as warm and inviting, as provocative and laden with traps as ever. Spike isn't the totality of the Black filmmaking experience, and I don't want to suggest that. But for 40 years, he's told stories about that experience that have been seen more widely and discussed more feverishly than anyone, and they still haven't been seen enough. Think of the conversations you've been having with loved ones this month about the problems that people are forced to look at more closely. Police brutality, systemic racism, locally

sanctioned violence, gentrification, tribal loyalty, the failures of government, personal sacrifice versus public good, hiring practices, power, art, and money. Spike was ahead of most Americans for decades on these issues. But while the stories he tells are frequently polemical, his movies are quite nuanced. They rarely tell you exactly what to think, instead foisting contradictions and crises into viewers' laps and making them decide. He crafts extraordinary dilemma movies, inspired by the noir and westerns and social dramas that he studied at NYU. And even though he doesn't force a conclusion, his movies are frequently an intelligence test. Over the years, critics and audiences have repeatedly shown their ass immediately upon exiting a Spike movie. For a person like me, seeing his work at a young age opened me up. It helped me see beyond my keyhole-sized view of the world.

But it's not like Spike wasn't relatable. He was the avatar of New York Knicks fandom. He was a regular presence on TV and Jordan commercials. He was directing music videos and frequently courting controversy in the movie world. He consistently challenged fans and detractors to re-examine their beliefs, and he always destabilized our comfort. At 63, he is still very much a vital filmmaker. 2018's Black Klansman was among his most honored films and marked his first competitive Oscar win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Spike is a Hall of Famer on this show, and his work accounts for some of my favorite movies ever made. This episode is dedicated to those movies and will include conversations with a couple of his key collaborators, as well as a

part of a conversation that Wesley Morris and I had on The Rewatchables last summer about Lee's 1989 masterpiece, Do the Right Thing. That movie redefines the term rewatchable. In it, you can see and hear the pain and conflict we're talking about right now. Watch it again if you haven't lately. Later in the show, I'll have a conversation with the jazz musician and film composer Terrence Blanchard, a longtime contributor of Spike's. They've teamed up on 15 films, including Defy Bloods, and he is truly one of the great writers of music for movies. I also wanted to reshare a conversation I had with the film editor Barry Alexander Brown in February 2019 after he received an Oscar nomination for his work on Black Klansman. They've been together since Spike's first movie, She's Gotta Have It.

Like so many great filmmakers, Spike works with the same crew over and over again. Not just Terrence and Barry, but production designer Winn Thomas, costume designer Ruth Carter, casting director Robbie Reed, and that incredible troupe of actors you've seen over and over again in his movies. Denzel Washington, of course, John Turturro, Ozzie Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Roger Guinevere Smith, Arthur Noscarella, Delroy Lindo, Isaiah Whitlock Jr., Al Palagonia, Debbie Mazar, Ruby Dee, the list goes on. Later this week, we'll be back with a review of Spike's The Five Bloods, which will be available to watch on Netflix on Friday. It's the story of four Black Vietnam veterans who return to the jungle for some unsettled business. It's a reunion of sorts of some of those actors, and for Spike, it's a

kind of mission statement about missions. Lastly, we like to make top five lists on this show. Spike has made more than 30 feature-length films, many of which are indisputable classics that cover every style and format under the sun. Drama, comedy, crime films, romances, documentaries, sports movies, farce, satire, musical. He's really done it all. I would recommend virtually every movie

he's ever made, but before I share my top five, here are a few places you can watch his movies, just in case you're trying to bone up on some of the ones you've missed along the way. HBO Max has got a few. Check out He Got Game, Black Klansman, When the Levees Broke, Four Little Girls, If God is Willing and the Creek Don't Rise, and Mike Tyson, Undisputed Truth. On Netflix, of course, where you can find The Five Bloods on Friday, you can also find School Days, She's Gotta Have It, his incredible debut, Malcolm X, Get on the Bus, and The Much-Loved Inside Man. On Amazon Prime, you can check out some recent films, including Red Hook Summer, To Sweet Blood of Jesus, and Chirac. Cinemax has Miracle at St. Anna, his World War II film. Showtime has She Hate Me. But there are a lot of

gaps there. There are a lot of gaps there. There are a lot that are not available anywhere else. So I would encourage you, if you can, and you're curious, to go out and spend some money on them. Choosing a top five is really hard. I left off a lot of movies I love and a lot of movies that I've revisited and found I like more than I realized. I didn't add Jungle Fever to this list. I didn't add Malcolm X to this list, Triumph that it is. I didn't add Chirac. I didn't add the original Kings of Comedy. I've even come around on Girl 6 and He Hate Me, Lee's often maligned sex comedies. But anyhow, we have to make a top five. So here's my five. Number five. Mr. Dunwoody,

please sit back and allow me to paint a picture. Okay, I'm all ears and my nose is a close second. Now, I have been doing extravagant satire that makes a very specific tonal choice early on and sticks with it throughout. This is really the kind of movie that is completely confounding on first watch, but has also become a classic recently being reissued by the Criterion Collection this year. When a black TV executive Pierre Delacroix, played by Damon Wayans, is threatened by his white jive talking studio boss, played by an insanely going for it Michael R Michael Rapaport challenges his future. He responds by reinventing the minstrel show for the new millennium. It's never really a funny movie, but it's always bracing and absolutely haunted by the past. This feels like an artist pushing the absolute

limits of his patience and ours. I would encourage you to check out Bamboozled. Number four, the aforementioned Inside Man. What were you planning on doing if you actually got the plane and the pilots, huh? You don't want a plane. You never did. Number four, the aforementioned Inside Man. Interesting experience for Lee. This is sort of a paycheck job, originally conceived as a Ron Howard movie. This is really what happens when you let an auteur with a vision make his version of Dog Day Afternoon. Obviously, Lee is hugely influenced by Sidney Lumet. It's very cool to see him working in Lumet's mold. It's got a super slick Denzel

performance, plus the most loaded cast in recent memory, including Jodie Foster nibbling all over the scenery. It's really a taut, clever genre movie that just so happens to have some fascinating insights into New York cops and criminals what am i supposed to do tell a homicide i can't talk right now i gotta go bag up some ounces for my boss rodney little number three i'm cheating a little bit but i'm pairing crookland and clockers two movies that i returned to last night they were made essentially back to back but what did he want it's not much you know, it's same old, same old. He asked about me? No.

One is a personal reflection of Lee's family life, co-written with his sisters, and is really one of the most touching movies I can recall. I don't remember it having the impact it had on me last night that it had when I first saw it, but I'm very glad to recommend it, and I would encourage people to look for Crooklyn. Clockers is almost the inverse. It's still a story of family. It's still a story of community, but it's also a story of crime and what happens in New York, how people are policed. It features incredible performances from Mekhi Pfeiffer, Harvey Keitel, John Turturro,

and especially Delroy Lindo, who is absolutely one of the best actors of the last 30 years, and you realize that when you go back to Spike's films. Crooklyn and Clockers, check out both of those films. Number two, 25th Hour. Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giandini, really well-slung baseball bats, trying to audition for the Supremes. Spike's movies, of course, are closely associated with Black America,

but the protagonist in this movie, which was made shortly after 9-11 and written by David Benioff and based on his own novel, is a guy named Monty Brogan. Monty is played by Ed Norton, and he's a mid-level drug dealer whose father is an Irish fireman. The Brogans are an eerily familiar family to me, and Monty, with his flunky high school friends and beautiful but maybe untrustworthy girlfriend,

finds himself at a crossroads on the last day before he goes away to prison for a long time. You've heard us talk about this movie a handful of times on this podcast. It is truly one of the most impactful movies of the 21st century. And it also, I think, helped people recontextualize Spike, not just as a filmmaker making films

for a very select audience, but somebody who is working with a broad canvas and is really one of the most important filmmakers that we have and probably will ever have. Number one, of course, is do the right thing. As I understand it, this is a free country, man. You can live wherever you want. Free country?

Man, I should fuck you for saying that stupid shit. Hello, Joe, man. Your Jordans are fucked up. Damn, man. Maybe the best are fucked up. Damn, man. Maybe the best movie of the 1980s, maybe the most essential text on what it is to live and be a citizen of New York. Just an immensely powerful movie. I don't want to say too much more about it

because I hope you'll listen to what Wesley Morris had to say about it last year when we spoke. So without further ado, let's jump into this All Spike episode. Thank you for listening. The tagline of this movie is, it's the hottest day of the summer. You can do something, you can do nothing, or you can do the right thing. What's your relationship to do the right thing right now? When did you see it? How do you feel about it 30 years now? When did you see it? How do you feel about it 30 years later?

When did I see it? I saw it when it was out. I can, Oh, you know what I remember about do the right thing. This is a roundabout way of telling you what my priorities might have been as a, how old would I have been? 13 year old. Um,

that was the weekend that weekend at Bernie's we can look that up but I'm almost 100% sure great double feature that weekend at Bernie's opened the same weekend or maybe it was either the weekend before or the weekend after and

I can remember being much more fascinated it was two weeks before okay I can remember being much more fascinated. It was two weeks before. Two weeks before. Okay. I can remember being much more fascinated by Weekend at Bernie's or seeing Weekend at Bernie's than I was about to do the right thing. Also, the controversy, I grew up in Philadelphia and the controversy about that movie had made its way to Philadelphia. And it was like, you were risking your life if you went. And I, at that point, was seeing movies by myself. Like, I wasn't going, I didn't go see movies with my friends. I'd see them with my mom and my sister every once in a while and my dad when he would take us with his family. But for the most part, I would say I watched most of the movies that I saw in a movie theater alone. Or, you know, I didn't go with anybody.

There were other people in the theater. I have to be honest. What I remember about Do the Right Thing was watching it. I remember two other viewing experiences, not the theatrical one. One was watching it in 1990 with, now I want also to make clear, I read every single thing written about that movie that I could get my hands on.

That's what I was going to ask you was, were you aware of a kind of reaction community to movies or are you just a kid that saw everything well it was so controversial that like my mom watched like three hours of news when i was a kid right so she'd watch the five o'clock news the 5 30 news the six o'clock news the world news tonight so that's what that's only seven that's only two hours of news but that's a lot of news um And I grew up in Philadelphia. We have, by the way, Philadelphia, WPVI,

best local news in the country. Like we, they don't redo anything. They give you 90 minutes of new news and it's just great. Anyway, I remember it being like a news story and at some point i think the news storyness of it so overwhelmed me that i don't really it sort of has supplanted the memory of like the fear of going to see the theater i see it at the movie theater i think it was at the sam eric you know the chestnut i never saw i know I saw it on Chestnut Street.

I just can't remember which theater it was, but I saw it in downtown, Center City, Philadelphia. But I remember watching it in social studies class with Mr. Kazemple, who showed us movies. No kidding. Yeah. And I can remember- Provocative movie to show in, were you in public school?

It was a private school, complicated private school, but not a public school. And trusted us. I mean, all my classmates were, we were mostly black. There were a couple of white kids and we talked about it. And we, I remember being really confused by, and like electrified in a, in a confused way by the ending.

Right. I think we'll spend a lot of time on the ending here. Like classic Spike Lee faction. There are actually three endings, but the, the, the very last shot, not the whole, actually all of the endings are tough. The idea that Mookie just wants to get paid and Sal's being like,

you burned down my pizzeria. Well, you want me to pay you? I built this place with my bare fucking hands you want your money? here take your fucking money let me throw in these bills at Mookie and then Mookie picks up the money

and they proceed to have a like talk about the weather kind of conversation and it's weird. That was so confusing to 13-year-old me. And that was forgotten in the way that the movie was written about.

Because the movie, the way that critics and columnists at the time wrote about the movie was as if there was a black man was killed by the police. That man was dragged off. Mookie throws the trash can through the window. The riot ensues. They burn the place down.

And then you would imagine that it just cut to black. And then the movie was over. Oh yeah. You know, the way that people talked about the way that it would incite a feeling, it didn't talk about how there was this kind of elegiac. There's a coda. And then,

you know, a kind of, there's two cod of elegiac there's a coda and then you know kind of there's two codas and then there's the you know the very famous text on the screen from martin luther king martin luther king jr and malcolm x and the kind of contrast between those two ideas other thing that confused me i had never like the idea that that those two men they aren't even pitted against people the The read on that moment was that Spike Lee, it told you everything about who was writing about our movies at that time. Because people were assuming that Spike Lee was endorsing Malcolm X and not Martin Luther King. They missed the whole point of the movie, which is that it's a complete dialectic, right?

There is a one hand and then there's another hand. And he never, ever loses sight of that at any moment in this movie. It is almost a perfect philosophical text in that way. I completely agree. I think that to write about that in that way, to even understand the movie in that way, and I think a lot of people just didn't understand the movie at the time, even though it was, as you say, a new story every day,

was that it requires nuance is a new is meant to be is purposefully meant to hold two thoughts at the same time and if you can't get on board with that then you can't i don't know we should probably just say maybe if you're listening to this and you haven't seen do the right thing please run out and go see do the right thing oh stop one of the most important american movies of the last 40 years um you know it's set all in one day in Bed-Stuy. It largely takes place in the apartments of the denizens on the street on one, basically on one street and in one pizzeria and all of the goings on there, all of the figures there.

It's a major ensemble cast. It features the discovery of some of the best character actors still working. It's one of the most beautifully shot films I've ever seen. Ernest Dickerson. Oh yeah. Astonishing use of color,

communicating weather in a way that is hard to do sometimes. And just this, or like, just his use of camera angles to,

to establish character. Dutch angles out the ass in this movie. He's tilting the camera at all times. But only when it matters, right? Only when you have to be uneasy. It isn't a trick. It is an actual literary device.

It's a cinematic device, right? No question. Here's how the movie is described on Wikipedia. Here's the synopsis. Tell me how you feel about the way that this is positioned. I'm still adjusting to whatever. All right. Salvatore Salfragioni, played by Danny Aiello,

is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out, Giancarlo Esposito, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's wall of fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. I don't really think that that's what this movie is about. That is an incident in the movie. But is that what Do the Right Thing is about? Because that doesn't even feature the word Mookie.

Yeah. Who is Spike Lee's character. But Sean, if you think about it, that is the movie, right? Like there is a version, there's a bad version of this movie.

That is that right. The, it is not so much that the synopsis is inaccurate. It's just that when you boil it down to what the movie is actually about it's that it is the it is the the thing that that having that pizzeria in that neighborhood comes to mean to the people who've always lived in it and the idea that that that sal and his two sons pino and Vito, are they from Bensonhurst? Yes, they are. And which is another part of Brooklyn. Um, primarily Italian. Yes. Although I don't know, is it still? I think so. Okay. Maybe Polish as well. Um, and the idea that these guys will come from Bensonhurst, which,

you know, not exactly a welcoming place for, for black people, um, at the time. And. Which I think is explored in Jungle Fever a couple of years later. Oh yeah. Is that the part of that story? Yes. And you know, that synopsis is pretty great. Now it, it obviously omits.

It describes things that happen in the movie. It omits all of the color and flavor and seasoning and texture and wonder and sound and all the things that make the atmosphere, everything that makes the movie great is not in that synopsis. But the actual politics of the movie are encapsulated in this one relationship. And it really is a movie about capitalism in so many ways. And it really is a movie about capitalism in so many ways. And it really is a movie about ownership and disenfranchisement. And it really is a movie that's about a thing that if you live in a major American city or even like a less than major American city, like a midsize American city, like a mid-sized American city,

this is a, in a small town, if I'm thinking right, like this is a thing that you are actively being forced to deal with, which is like, what foothold in my black neighborhood do I actually have? And who is given one just by virtue of who they are? And that, I mean, this movie is basically, that's what the movie's about, right? It could have been even more explicitly about that. And so it's funny that like, that is like a needle in a haystack explanation of this movie to me,

but it's a gold needle if you think about it. So I think a lot of times on this show, we're looking to locate movies that are comforting. Rewatchable means we're going to return to something because it makes us feel good. So you and I and a couple of other folks had a conversation about Beverly Hills Cop recently. Now there is a lot to unpack about Beverly Hills Cop.

Oh yeah. And there is probably some social import that you can glean from it. But a lot of it is basically extra textual. You have to work a little bit harder to say, this was important because. A lot of the movies we do on this show are like wedding crashers. It's fun to watch the movie Wedding Crashers and to say the lines and to talk about whether something was funny or not.

Oh, that montage. Yes. It's one of the great montages. Great stuff. This movie is different from that. Now, I will say, as I rewatched it again this week, I've probably seen it 10 or 15 times in my life.

It was kind of comforting. It was fun. There's a lot of fun to be had in this movie. But it is also, not only is it important, but it's working hard to be important. And it's working hard to disrupt important. And it's working hard to disrupt your feeling of ease and comfort.

And, you know, at the risk of exposing myself a little bit, I was just in tears watching the end of the movie again, which is a feeling I've had watching it before, which is just an irreconcilable feeling that you have. Was it Radio Raheem's death?

I think it's pretty much everything. Yes, as soon as he is grabbed, the movie obviously goes into a new state of panic. And there's no way to clarify, there's no way to fix it. Even if you know what's coming, there's no way to fix it. And it feels like a problem.

And it's not a solvable problem in the country, obviously. It's not a solvable problem in the movie. No one, for a movie called Do the Right Thing, I think a lot of people felt like, why didn't anybody do the right thing? Now, there are a lot of other people who are like, well, Mookie does do the right thing. And that's part of a complex part of this conversation.

Right, right, right. I am a proponent of nobody does the right thing, right? Like there's no, that neighborhood, I mean, it was shot in a real part of Bedford-Stuyvesant, which is a neighborhood in Brooklyn. And it was shot in a real block and everything, like I still think, you know, he had a big, Spike Lee had a big party at that location.

And I didn't go, but I thought about what it would mean to, like I was near there. What was I, I don't know. It doesn't matter what I was doing. I made an effort and didn't wind up doing it. But what I was thinking about was what would that neighborhood

look like right now like 30 years after that incident what is in the spot where sals was do they is it has it been memorialized i mean spike lee himself i think complicated that question because he made a movie called red hook summer right okay six or seven years ago yes yes in which the mookie character appears and he's delivering pizza for a pizzeria called Sal's that has ostensibly relocated to Red Hook. So maybe Bed-Stuy has changed a little bit, but that idea that we can't necessarily get away from who we really are and what we're about and who we're close to and where we grow up and how that influences who we are is he, he's not,

he hasn't resolved that either. You know what I mean? And he kind of went out of his way to say that Red Hook Summer was not a sequel to do the right thing, but that was not a, that was a choice with purpose. Oh, sure. Mookie is still here. Mookie is still doing this work. Brooklyn is Brooklyn. You know, Brooklyn's not going to change. And no, that's like a, that feels like a central to the, to the idea that he's getting after. And the under the sort of underlying thing about that, what that incident in that neighborhood on that day comes down to is like, it isn't just about Brooklyn. It's like, that is, that is an American, that is an American problem, and it still is. And the great thing about the movie is that it feels,

I don't know if you feel this way, but it just feels timeless to me. I mean, there are things about it that are clearly 1989 things, but that story and the way it's delivered to us is timeless and the reason that you can keep watching it is because in a weird way you want to see you want there's two things for me at least i want to see how he did it like i still don't know how he did it. I don't, it is a magical event, this movie, and a magical achievement. But the other thing is, I watch it because I feel like, you know, it's so, like, again, it's like a perfect work of philosophy,

and you return to it to understand something about us as people, and, like, America as a society and New York as a specific place within that society. And what about us has such a capacity for love and contempt? I mean, that is even built into the movie, right? Like, the first time you see Radio Raheem, you know, he's excited to show Mookie his new, like,

knuckle, like, his big, what do we even call it? The story of love and hate. Right. I mean, the love and hate rings. But what are those rings? Like, what do they have actual name? Brass knuckles. Are they really, though? They're not. But, I mean, that's not a mistake either, that they could be mistaken for those sorts of things. Right. Well, right once once the dude's dead and in handcuffs or whatever like exactly he had a pair of brass knuckles it's a love and hate exactly that feels purposeful too

that i felt provoked and you know obviously all the so much of the text of the movie is inspired by everything that happened in howard beach in new york a few years earlier um the death of a graffiti artist living in new York at the time. Well, this I'm going to have to read. Like there's a whole, like starting in 1984, there's Eleanor Bumpers who was shot and killed by the police. Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller in 78, Edmund Perry in 85, Yvonne Smallwood in 87, Michael Stewart in 83. This was the same summer that the Central Park Five were arrested for not raping

that woman. Yep. That poor woman. This is a, it's a zeitgeist film in the truest sense of the word. Right. It was capturing a feeling that was happening in the city, a frustration, a fear, an anxiety, a rage, that was the result of a series of horrible things

that happened to real people. Right. And that's risky and hard to do. I think you, did I say Yusef Hawkins? You did not. Yusef Hawkins also is that year. It's not a thing. Jungle Fever is dedicated to Yusef Hawkins, who also, I think, dies in 89. Right.

And most of those people, the film is dedicated to that you just listed. Right. And do the right thing. Right. And, you know, what complicates it is, and we'll get to the category soon, I promise, is the way that the movie was positioned by white media. I mean, the David Denby review in New York Magazine more than any other, and Spike has cited this over and over again, is one of the worst pieces of film criticism that I've

ever read. It's like a very poorly considered misread of a movie in recent times. I'll read very briefly from this piece. I found that in the library. I remember the day that I read that. It's June 26th, 1989. Here's what he writes. The explosion at the end of the movie,

an outburst intimate in scale but truly frightening, should divide the audience, leaving some moviegoers angry and vengeful, others sorrowful and chastened. Divided in himself, Lee may even be foolish enough to dream alternately of increasing black militants and of calming it. But if Spike Lee is a commercial opportunist, he's also playing with dynamite in an urban playground, the response to the movie could get away from him. He continues, If an artist has made his choices and settled on a coherent point of view, he shouldn't be held

responsible, I believe, if parts of his audience misunderstand him. He should be free to be, quote, dangerous. But Lee hasn't worked coherently. The end of this movie is a shambles, and if some audiences go wild, he's partly responsible. Lee wants to rouse people to, quote, wake them up. But to do what? Those matching quotations from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. are little more than a confession of artistic and moral impotence. My guess is that Spike Lee thinks that violence solves nothing,

but he'd like to be counted in the black community as an angry man, a man ready, despite his success, to smash things. The end of the movie is an open embrace of futility. What? Well, it is an open embrace of futility, right? Like, the movie is not— For you to be like—

There's some, like— Maybe. A stopped clockedness to this, right? Sure. My favorite Spike Lee critique, whenever anybody has anything, like, quote, constructive to say about Spike Lee, they always include his success. They always include the idea that he, like,

there were a complaint about all the money that he's made, and at this point, he hasn't really made that much money. No, this is his third film. But he, the critiques of him as a sort of cultural figure for a lot of his early success when he was a superstar

artist were about money and how much money he was making. And we should, let's talk about that though, because he was a famous person in part because of Mars Blackman, in part because of Michael Jordan and the commercial work that he did. And so he's not the same as Ernest Dickersonerson who is his dp here who went on to be a filmmaker who does not have a huge public profile so that is also being factored into all criticism of him right but it's also typically usually when it comes up irrelevant to the matter at hand

like his is like changing our relationship to to basketball, to tennis shoes and sneakers? Has nothing to do with the ideas in this movie. Nothing to do with Mo' Better Blues, whether Mo' Better Blues is a good movie. Yeah. But it's a thing that comes up a lot when they write about whether the movies are good or not. Maybe he should spend less time making commercials with this Michael Jordan person and better, more time writing screenplays. It makes sense.

Yeah. I mean, in the Denby piece, and there was a Jack Kroll piece in Newsweek, and there was also a Joe Klein. The Joe Klein one is the, and Stanley Crouch too. I did not reread Stanley Crouch's piece.

Stanley Crouch was another, Stanley Crouch is one of the few black people who, who wrote about this movie and wrote scathingly about what it did and should do. Armin White was, I think, another person who didn't like this movie. I can't remember now. I think Armin White is another person who did not like Do the Right Thing. I could be wrong about that. The way that Klein positioned it was in opposition to David Dinkins' mayoral campaign. Yes.

He said that this could threaten David Dinkins. This is going to be a problem for Dinkins. Which is obviously kind of the opposite of what Spike was trying to get at. I mean, much of these criticisms are literally the opposite of what he's trying to do. They're not even watching a movie at this point, right? They are watching, and this is the sort of thing that just drives me crazy about the degree to which black people, black artists have had to fight to be taken seriously as artists who have ideas that aren't telling you, white person, how to be a good white and are acknowledging that the shit is

complicated and part of the complexity is that it can't be resolved because the work that we need to do to resolve it, nobody is really willing to do. And I don't think that the tragedy in a weird way of this movie is a tragedy of, of having nobody be able to like offer a history lesson, right? There's something about Smiley being the representative of both sides of this,

of both sides of the equation between violence and nonviolence. He's walking through the movie holding a Malcolm X postcard on the one hand and a Martin Luther King Jr. postcard. They're on the same card. Oh, they're on the same card. It's a photo of them together.

Doesn't he rip them at some point? He like puts magic marker around them and draws he makes little bosky outside of them that's exactly right um and the idea that you have this person the person who's representing the great they're in the same what movie are people watching obviously the point so they exist together they have to exist together and again, this is just a perfectly made movie from top to bottom. The person holding this photo is what in classic theater you would call the village idiot. And this is a sort of disabled, you know, mentally challenged man played by the excellent Roger Grinevere Smith. And this sort of the inability to articulate, Smiley's inability to articulate with anybody's patience anyway, what is happening in this photo and to be able to talk to people about

Malcolm and Martin working together. There's no, the one person equipped to give this history lesson, nobody has the patience to listen to. And at the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, that character was not in the original script. And the only reason that Smiley's in the movie, and he is a key figure in the movie, he's like the living metaphor of the movie,

is because Roger Guinevere Smith, who knew Spike and lived around the corner in Bed-Stuy, came to the set every day and begged and begged and begged and begged to be in the movie.

And he created the character and Spike put the character in the movie. So it's a sign that while Spike is brilliant and while he's one of the foremost movie directors of his time, sometimes luck

and relationships are a huge part of this too. If you don't have Smiley in the movie, it doesn't work as well. It doesn't work as well, no. So it's just a fascinating thing. Any other general observations you want to make about the movie

before we go to the categories? I just, I appreciate it. Oh man, thank you for having me. Terrence, I'm having a conversation with people who've worked with Spike over the years, and obviously you guys have a new project together. And I'm curious if you could take me back to the first time you encountered Spike and what you guys bonded over. First time I encountered him, man,

I was just a session player on some of his earlier films, like school days and do the right thing. I think what we bonded over was I walked into the session with a Lakers jersey on. Big mistake. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know at the time. And I had a hat.

Man, I think they had just beaten the Celtics. I had the purple and gold Converse. And as everybody was walking in, he looked at me and he goes, Lakers fan, huh? I go, yep. Hell yeah. The next thing I know, I was sitting courtside cheering for patrick ewing wow that's how influential he is i guess yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but i mean you know quickly

we became good friends and uh i mean at the time i i really was admiring what he was doing with his craft um and I remember, you know, I used to have a little mantra, a prayer that I would say, let me work with like-minded people in different areas of creativity. And all of a sudden, he popped up in my life.

So it's been a great working relationship. Can you take me back to that period in your life a little bit in the mid-80s when you were working as a sideman? And how does that work where, let's say you're playing in Art Blakey's band and you get asked to participate in a film. Was that something that you had been aspiring to or is that just another gig for someone that does what you do? Well, no, by the time that came around, I already had a band of my own. I was co-leading a band, I think, with Donald no by the time that came around I already had a band of my own I was co-leading a

band I think with Donald Harrison at the time and then I had just left Donald it was just like everything was happening at the right time I just left the band with Donald Harrison I was getting ready to form my own band and Spike asked me to do more better blues so and I was going through an ambusher change because I needed to change the way that I played, man. And it was like going back to the beginning. So I literally had time to sit at home and practice, coach Denzel Washington, work on more better blues and get stronger by the time it was time for me to go back out on the road with my own group. So a lot of it was just like perfect timing. I couldn't have asked for a better situation. Can you tell me a little bit about influencing the character of Bleak? And obviously that's your

sound when we see Denzel playing in the film. What part of telling that story do you have in making that movie? Well, a lot of it was interesting because, you know, I got a chance to work with Denzel and it was a new process, man. I never coached nobody to act like they were playing the trumpet before. So I remember making videos for him and that didn't really click too well. But I started writing out on a piece of paper just fingering for the trumpet, you know,

for each particular scene. That was when we had a breakthrough because that gave him something that he could practice at his own pace and then build up to what it was. We were playing on, on the tracks. Um, the problem was he actually started playing the horn, you know,

it didn't sound good. No, no, no, it wasn't. No, he actually sounded a lot better than you would horn, you know? It didn't sound good? No, no, no, it wasn't. No, he actually sounded a lot better than you would think, you know, and he started improvising a little bit, you know, during the scenes. And I remember he did something in one of the scenes and I was on set. He goes, oh man, you'll fix that later on. I'm like, what? Okay, thank you.

You know, but it was great working with those guys because, you know, Spike was looked at us as being these mythical kind of weird characters who wanted to play this music that nobody wanted to listen to in their minds. But the movie, I thought was a great movie, a lot of great acting in it. And it was an honor and a pleasure to work on it. We have some hilarious moments, man, you know, with Robin Harris when he was shooting some of his scenes. It was interesting. Whenever somebody shot their scenes, the other actors would be in the trailers, right? Robin Harris was the only guy that whenever he shot his scenes, everybody was on set trying to find a place to hide so you couldn't be in the shot you know but everybody was

on set for him it was crazy he's so missed i feel like he would have been in so many other great spike roles over the years oh man and and he was a sweet guy man just a nice guy man it broke our hearts spike called me up and told me what happened, man, I just couldn't believe it because he was such a nice guy and he was right there positioned to just really just take off. We definitely missed. I felt like your time on Mo' Better Blues was obviously pivotal for what you were going to do with Spike going forward. Obviously, Duke Ellington and Miles and Quincy, and there have been a lot of jazz composers who have worked on films over the years. Was that something that you had studied before Spike asked you to come on as a composer?

Man, I had no idea. Really? No, man. I was trying to be Miles Davis, dude. You know, I wanted to be the cutting-edge renegade in the jazz world. You know, I wanted to break down barriers of creativity. You know, not break down barriers in the jazz world. I wanted to break down barriers of creativity, not break down barriers in the film world. But when I started playing on some of the earlier sessions when Spike's father was doing music, I was really intrigued by the process. And I've always wanted

to compose for bigger ensembles. I studied composition since I was 16 years old, you know, so I had plans to write pieces for orchestra and larger ensembles all the while. So this was a great opportunity for me to do that. And it literally just happened by accident. You know, I'm still like mystified by the entire thing because it wasn't like I said, I walked up to Spike and said, hey, man, I want to write music for your movies. I would never do that. But it was interesting how it all went down. How did he broker that conversation with you about Jungle Fever? What was that like? It actually started with Mo' Better Blues. You know, we were taking a break and I was getting ready

to do my first solo project for, that's what I was telling you about Perfect Timing. I was getting ready to do my first solo project for Columbia Records. And I just sat at the piano,

man, and I started playing this tune that I was working on for the kids that were massacred in South Africa. It was called Sing Soweto. And Spike walked by and he said, man, what's that? I said, oh, it's something I'm working on.

He goes, man, I like it. Can I use it? And I said, sure. But at the time when we used it, we just recorded me playing melody, solo, acapella. And then he shot the scene with Denzel. The scene when Denzel's on the bridge and Mo' Better Blues. And then when he got it back to the editing room, you know, they tried to do a bunch of stuff to it. And then Spike called me up.

He goes, hey, man, we think you can write a string arrangement for this, you know. And it's one of those moments, man. I grew up in a church, man. I've always prided myself on being an honest guy, but that day I said, I lied my ass off. I said, sure, no problem. I immediately got off the phone, man, called my conversation teacher, said, man, I got this gig. I got to write this piece of music for a film. I don't know what to do. And then Roger Dickinson, who's my mentor, he said, trust your training.

And so I wrote the arrangement, brought it back, and I handed the music to Spike's dad because his dad was a composer on the film. And Spike's dad said, no, man, you wrote it, you conducted. I went, okay. Now, immediately, my mind went back to high school when I studied a little bit of conducting, where I remember that one was here, two was here,

three was here, and four was here. So I had that together. This hand didn't know what to do. But we got through it. You know what I mean? And afterwards, Spike said, you know, you have a future in the business. And then he called me to do Jungle P. So going forward on films like Jungle Fever, other films that you'll work on with him,

when do you come into the process? Because obviously Moe Better Blues, he heard you playing something and then you ended up writing it and the film was midstream. But on but on jungle fever is he handing you the script is he waiting until he's done shooting to show you what he has how what is your relationship like uh creatively spike always sends me scripts he's you know he sends me stuff before he starts to shoot you know always you know i get a phone call, Terrence, Spike, I'm sending you something, I'm sending you something tomorrow, man. Check it out. Just, just check it out. And then he won't even say anything else. He said, just read it, you know? Um, and then depending on the film,

I remember when we got to do Miracle at St. Anna, um, that's such a beautifully shot film. He would send me, he first started to send me just stills from the set. And I was just totally blown away by the way it looked, you know. And I gathered all the stills and I made it my screen server, screen saver, I'm sorry. And pictures would alternate back and forth. And then I would come in the morning and I would just try to write some ideas based on what I was seeing. And then once he started to edit things, he would send me little snippets of the scenes.

Now we got to the point now where, you know, he'll send me a script, I'll read the script. And once he starts to get a cut, you know he'll send me a script i'll read the script and once he starts to get a cut you know he'll send me a cut we'll sit down and talk what about the inclusion of other music in his films because do you do you have an awareness of if there's diegetic music or if there's pop music going on in the movie and kind of what relationship what your writing has to have to that music oh yeah definitely i mean like with with five bloods you know he immediately told me he was going to do marvin gaye and when when he told me that i went wow well i know that's going to be amazing but

the the way that things have worked with us is that he doesn't want me to try to mimic or rearrange any of that stuff. Our goal with the score has always been to make these stories broader stories for other people to enjoy. The songs and the source music give you the time, the flavor, and the tempo, the aroma of what's been going on. But then my job is to broaden it out and make sure that the score is memorable. He always says, man, I want people to sing your themes while they're walking away from the theater. So I'm always trying to create melodies that will stick. Um, and then the other thing too, is just make, like I said earlier, it's just to make sure that,

you know, these stories are, these are important stories and we want these stories to be around for a long time, you know? So I'm not trying to write in a genre or anything. I'm trying to write music that will last. Do you guys talk about the themes and the characters when you're, when you're doing some of the writing or is that all for you to interpret? Oh, no, no, no, no. What happens, what happens is when he starts to send me scripts and I start to see things, you know, and it's, it's a pretty funny process between the two of

us, man. I wish I could have chronicled all of the films because they've been pretty hilarious in that I'll write musical themes, you know, I'll look at the film and I'll start to get some ideas for things and I'll start to put things down just on a piano for him and I'll record them. And inevitably, he will listen to them and then he'll say, OK, man, I hear this as the main theme or I hear this as so-and-so's theme. And we go through it like he never picks what I initially heard. Never, never, never. I'll never I'll never forget the one that I can remember because I tried to give him a little hint was uh when we did the inside man uh there was a theme that I wanted it to be the love theme which would only be heard near the end of the movie it's not going to be

throughout the film it's just one little area but I heard it as a love theme so instead of just doing it with piano i did it with piano and flute like as if to say hint hint hint and then he goes no man i hit it as the main theme no okay okay but but you know the thing that's been cool about that man it's made me learn how to arrange and how to take those things and make them malleable and shift them around. So immediately I had to figure out how to take this thing that I thought was going to be a love theme and make it into something that was going to be a substantial theme for the film. Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like a lot of times he uses music to counterpoint what he's saying. So it's not necessarily that right on the nose feeling that you're looking for.

Oh, not at all when we did Miracle at St. Anna I had to redo the entire front of the movie you know it's a battle scene you know

I was excited I started writing this act music and everything and he goes no no no no no he says I wanted to be you know

more emotional more melodic I had to go back and redo the entire thing he says I want you to go counter to what it is you're on screen. You've written so many scores over the years. I mean, I think 40 films at this point, and you're so in demand, not just with Spike, but with other filmmakers. This is going to seem like maybe an unsophisticated question, but how do you not run out of ideas?

Because I feel like the film score format is, is, you know, ultimately a little bit more narrow even than, than jazz at least. Well, Sean, that's,

that's, that's, that's not going to work. That's, that's been my fear my entire career. You know what I mean? I literally, I think what it is is you have to learn how to divorce yourself away from it you know what I mean and allow new things to pop into your head and you have to really look at the film

and get a vibe from what's happening on the screen you know I liken it to you know this is the thing that's been weird about my career that I love. My jazz career has informed my film career and the film career hasn't informed my jazz career. The thing about my jazz career that really helps inform film is that, man, I remember making some recordings and we were doing one record. I never forget. We were in the middle of a really good take with the band, and the computer crashed, right? And the band that I had, well, all of the bands, all the musicians that I played with,

all of these guys were really creative. So I remember going, man, that was a great take. Damn, I wish we could have kept that, thinking that these guys would come back and play something similar to that. No, we did another take. They threw all of those ideas away and went to a whole totally different direction. And I think that's what you have to do when it comes to film.

It's like, you know, you work on one project and you know, when you're on a project, man, that's your life that you're dealing with for six to eight weeks, you know? But I think when you,

when you enter into a new project, you have to really just throw all of that away and go, okay, let me, it's like starting from scratch. You know, sometimes, depending on the film, if I'm not writing for orchestra, most of my time is spent creating sonic palettes for the film, you know,

that I'll use as a set of sounds to help create the score. You mentioned that you studied that kind of composition when you were in school. It does seem like in the last 15 years or so, the film work has gotten a lot more symphonic and a lot more orchestral over time. Was there a reason for that change,

or did one movie kind of kickstart that transition? I think a lot of it, as far as my career goes, a lot of it has to do with Spike. You know, that's what he wanted. Spike has always, always, always fought to find money to do proper scores for his films. And I think it's influenced a lot of young filmmakers in terms of, you know, the grandeur, you know, of the experience of watching one of his films. You know, I think about a miracle at St. Anna,

I mean, there's a couple of shots, wide expansive shots where the soldiers walking across the field and I love scoring those scenes because it just gives me a chance for the music to just be broad. And Spike is a guy that never, I laugh at it because, you know, he really loves music and he's not shy at like mixing the music up a little loud you know oh yeah i was watching some films uh last night and my wife continued to insist that i turn the tv down because the score comes up way high in the mix when you're watching his movies which is great though i love that um you brought up miracle at saint anna a couple times uh do you have like a

favorite experience of working on any of these movies with spike you know it's funny man um i attribute i attribute this just a genius but a lot of times when i'm asked that question the answer is the latest film we've been working on because he's always trying to push the envelope and he's always trying to do something different. You know, when we did Black Klansman, man, I kept saying that was the culmination of all of the years we've been working together.

You could just see it. I could feel it. I can just see the growth in myself and the growth in him and just how things have evolved over the years. Well, with The Five Bloods, I'm saying exactly the same thing. You know, I was so, so impressed with what he did with the Five Bloods because coming off of an Oscar win for him, you know, it could have been easy for people to just sit

back, you know, and relax. It's not the way he is. It's not built that way. You know, he still pushed forward, man, and worked hard. This film is an amazing film. And I'm not saying that lightly. You know, that opening sequence of the film, I told him just a couple of days ago, I said, man, I think that's going to go down in film history as being a classic opening sequence of one of these wartime films. I think it's just brilliant, you know, and the way that he's been able to, and he's been the drama and in the midst of that drama, give you a little break by incorporating comedy. But not cheap comedy, you know, sensible comedy that makes you think, you know, that's still appropriate for the story.

And he's brilliant at casting people who can pull that off. You know, these guys that are in this film, man, they are great actors, great actors, and they did an amazing job. As I was watching it, the previous score that I thought of a bit was 25th Hour because of that drum sound that you have in the composition. Do you guys talk about that? Do you say, like, let's get a little bit of what we had going in this film? Or, you know, do you have a shorthand like that? Or is it always about doing the next new thing you haven't tried before?

Well, there's a shorthand. The shorthand is, you know, make it big. That's not very helpful. No, no, no, no, no. It is. I mean, we've been I know what he likes, but I mean, sometimes with Spike, he'll say, so what haven't we done yet? That's what he'll say, you know.

And we try to make sure that we're not repeating ourselves. You know, we talk about that a great deal. But other than that, man, it feels like we're both on the same page in terms of what we're trying to do, you know, with these stories. One of the things you got to realize with Spike's movies is that a lot of his films are based on real people, you know, even if they're fictional. You know, the ideals are still based on real people.

So we're always trying to shed light on what those lives are experiencing, you know. And with this film, man, I just say this, man, the opening sequence set the tone for me for the film. But it took me five days to write the music. It was only four minutes, four minutes and 49 seconds, I think. Is that unusual for you? Oh, yeah.

I'm rather quick, you know. But, man, it took me a long time because there was so much detail in the sequence, you know, and I wanted to make sure that I didn't drop the ball, drop the energy. You know, it's like a tennis match where they have so many lobs going back and forth that are amazing. You know, you think the point is about to end at a certain period. Next thing you know, no, it's still continuing. But that's what the opening sequence is like. And once I plotted it out, I spent a lot of time orchestrating it. But here's the thing, though.

Once that work was done, it just set the tone for the rest of the film. I think it's really some of your best work. I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you. You and Spike are synonymous with each other in a way that very few composer-director duos are. You know, Hitchcock and Herman and Spielberg and Williams. But by the same token, you are a solo artist in your own right and have a whole other career. I'm curious what that's like, just in terms of how you like to be known and want

to be known, where you have all of this work that you are solely responsible for, but then you are also a part of this ongoing project with these filmmakers. How do you define yourself and see yourself between those two things? It's hard, man. It's hard, Sean. When I first got in the music business, I was a jazz musician. I was a person who just wanted to perform with his band and travel the world and make records. But now, with everything that I've done with all of the film work, with the teaching work, with the operatic work, and with my band, which now is an electric groove-based band, it's all about a journey, I guess, for me. It's about not standing still. It's about always trying to discover something and just trying to move forward and have fun along the way.

You know, I think, you know, Jim Brown said something in one of the documentaries, we spiked myself a bit about him years ago, where he said it would be a shame to go through life without ever finding out what truly turns you on. You know, and I look at art and music in a similar fashion. You know, there's so many things to experience. I don't want to pigeonhole myself to be one thing and just do that one thing for the rest of my life.

That doesn't get me excited. The thing that gets me excited is the fear of the unknown. You know, first time somebody asked me to write an opera, man, I was scared to death, you know, because I'm like, opera, me? Really? You know, but having gone through one, I got excited for the second one. And now having done that, I'm looking for more opportunities and different things to do that'll help broaden my experiences even further. I read that Fire Shut Up In My Bones is apparently playing the Metropolitan Opera. Is that still, even though everything that's going on, is that still in the works? Oh, it's still in the works. I mean, Peter Gale is really adamant about bringing it to the Met.

And I was just totally floored by the entire thing. You know, I grew up hearing opera. My father was a baritone and never sang professionally, but loved operatic music. And I know he's looking down on me now, telling me I told you so. That's very cool. Have you and Spike talked about doing anything in the future? You guys started working on the next one? You know, no, but he did. No, that's not the way Spike works.

But he did just recommend me for a project that's, we haven't really solidified everything, but it's a really cool project. If it comes through, man, it's going to be something amazing to work on. But the way Spike works, you know, we will text back and forth throughout the football season

about games. We'll text back and forth throughout the NBA season about games. And then in the midst of all of that, he goes, Terrence, I'm sending you something. You'll get it Tuesday. I'm like, okay, good. We start shooting in February, you know, stuff like that.

That's it. It's not a lot of talking. Did he convert you to Nick's fandom? Or are you still with the Lakers? Oh, my God. Man, it was amazing you know because next thing you know I'm screaming for Patrick Ewing you know John Starks I'm like man come on so because I was doing that magic run you know and those are my guys I know and then here

comes the Bulls you know because we thought like that there was that moment right between after magic we thought Patrick and those guys would really going to want to do it. And they did a lot of great things. Don't get me wrong. Because, I mean, they got to the championship round and they did some great stuff. And then against Houston, they got to the finals. So, you know, it was great times back then. I was telling somebody because I was doing another interview and somebody asked me about it. I was telling them the other day, I said, man, I remember, I know Spike doesn't remember this, but I remember going to one of the games, sitting next to him on the floor,

and he kicked my Cracker Jacks all over the court, man. Jumping up, screaming for Pat, you know. But nobody saw that. And the ref came over, man, and just like started screaming at me. Hey, man, you blah, blah, hey man and i was getting ready to go i was like nah okay man my bad won't happen again it's some good insight into watching the knicks with spike um but it was amazing watching those guys that team because those guys were amazing athletes man people don't really understand the level of talent that those guys have achieved.

I love those themes too. Terrence, thanks for doing this. I end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? Obviously, you are a filmmaker in a way. So is there anything you've been watching lately that you've liked? I've been watching a lot of news lately.

The last thing that I've seen is the multitude of different types of people out there fighting for the rights of the oppressed. It's a beautiful thing to witness. It feels like there's a sea change in our country that's long overdue. Let's hope that the momentum keeps flowing along, keeps flowing along, you know, because I think this is a moment in time where we really can affect some change. And it's been a beautiful

thing to see. I've been watching my daughters, my kids go out there and be involved. I've been watching so many young people, man, not staying by. I think a lot of people are just fed up and it just warms my heart to witness it. That's amazing. Terrence, thank you so much for doing this. Thanks, Sean. I appreciate it. Delighted to be joined by Oscar nominee Barry Alexander Brown. Barry, thank you for being here. It's my pleasure. Barry, so you're nominated for Black Klansman,

but this is far from your first film with Spike Lee. Oh, far. You have worked on virtually every Spike Lee movie. Not quite every. No, that's not true. Is it 19, 20? I was trying to count it correctly. I think I was, you know, I don't really know.

Somebody the other day told me it was 20. But if you count everything that we've done together over all these decades, it comes out to be over 100 projects. Oh, that's incredible. You know, I mean, maybe far over 100. I mean, commercials, music videos, even little things that we did early on for MTV, these little one-minute things. So you were involved in all of those things over the years?

Yeah, a lot of them. A lot of them. And has your role changed? Because I feel like in the very early stages in the sort of she's got to have it era, maybe your role wasn't as clearly defined as it would be, say, on Black Klansman. I don't think it's clearly defined even now. Well, let's hope you understand it. What is your role? I don't think it's clearly defined even well let's help i mean you know hey um spike and i we came up together right and also spike doesn't look at

me as just an editor because he knows i can do a lot of things i mean we wrote a a pilot together for cbs 20 years ago. So I write. And he also knows that I'm a filmmaker on my own. This is not your first Oscar nomination? No, I was nominated as a producer and director

of a documentary on my first film. And so, Spike knows, you know what? I can handle a lot of stuff off. You know,

and just like, I came in to do his Netflix series, two episodes on She's Gonna Have It. And it hit him pretty quickly. Oh, you know what? Barry can do the ADR because I've done a lot of ADR directing over the years for a lot of movies. And so the actors for the series were showing up for ADR and and I was directing them, and they were like, who are you?

You know, one of them said, man, Spike must really trust you if you're here instead of him. Is that incredibly uncommon if you have in sort of post-production when you're recording ADR, the director is usually there instructing the actors? Yeah, but Spike's got me. Yeah. This is how I mean. Sometimes Spike is in the ADR session. But the guy is, he's so busy.

He's busier than anybody I know. You know, if he can hand it off to somebody he trusts and he trusts me, you know, there it is. Tell me how you built that trust. When did you guys meet? How did you form the relationship you have? We met in the summer of 1981 in atlanta georgia through mutual friends and then we were both back in new york in the fall and i had helped start first run features film distribution company for independent american filmmakers american films

and i was the president of the company and so we needed somebody to check prints and clean them and get them ready to ship back out. And our office was very close to NYU where Spike was going. And he was the only film student I knew. I thought, this is a perfect part-time job for a film student. And I asked him if he wanted to do it. He said, yeah. So Spike was making, this was the early 80s. He was making $100 a week., he was making $100 a week,

and I was making $200 a week. Amazing. As a president. How did you learn that he was going to become such a, maybe not an important filmmaker, but a filmmaker in his own right? You know, we got to know each other over the next few years. I would say, you know, it took us a while to be really friends, but if you look from 81 to 83, he was working part-time. We started talking about movies. We started talking about entertainment. We both love Broadway musicals,

especially the old Broadway musicals. We both love them. At those days, if you talked to any of the other independent filmmakers in New York, and you would say, yeah, I love Oklahoma. They would go, what? What's the matter with you? But you talk to Spike, he'd go, yeah, you know, and, you know, West Side Story and on and on and on, right? And there was something about just entertainment that we both admired and both felt like, man, Donald O'Connor in doing Make Them Laugh.

If you can't appreciate that, I think get out of the business. But I could talk to Spike about that in those days. And so there was certainly politics that were very similar and certain things about just cinema in general that was very similar for both of us. And then there's this appreciation for just entertainment that just drew us together. I'm interested in your career at that time because, as you said, you'd already been nominated for the award home for Best Documentary. And so you were already an established documentary. I was not established.

That was not true. What does not established. That was not true. What does that mean? That was not true. You know, we made this film in Madison, Wisconsin. It was about Madison in the 60s. Now, this was over 10 years later. And that film was where I learned to make movies. You know, it was sort of my college.

It was sort of my film school. Spike went to NYU, but I made The War at Home. And so the film came out and it took off like a rocket, like a rocket. I mean, when we were making the movie, people were saying, good friends were saying to me, what makes you think you're a filmmaker? Well, because you saw so many movies, you've read so many books. You should stop. This is ridiculous what you're doing and so then the film came out did very well you know and we got nominated for the oscar and i was not prepared for it i was not prepared i was not i was very young and i kind of emotionally

crashed i felt like a fraud um i felt like a fraud is that because you didn't necessarily know what film to make next or how to proceed? I definitely didn't. I definitely didn't because, you know, I wasn't coming up to the business. You know, nobody would hire me. So I hired myself to make a movie. So I was definitely not established. And I didn't know what to do with it when it happened.

And I didn't even know emotionally how to take it in. It was too big. It was just too big. And I kind of emotionally crashed for a while. And I didn't do anything for a couple of years. I put myself into first-run features, which was not the best idea. I'm not a businessman, you know,

but it was a safe place to be for a while. Did you sense when you were making the documentary that you had a knack for editing, that that was something that was one of your skill sets? I didn't think so. Really? I didn't think so. No. No, I didn't.

I didn't even take an editor's credit on my first film, even though I cut most of it, because I thought, well, no, this is, I'm not an editor. And I didn't even think I was an editor for a very long time. And I was then in the early part of the 80s. I was doing smaller documentaries, you know, on almost no money and cutting them because I couldn't afford an editor. And then it was my friends like Mira Nair and Spike Lee who said, you know, I want you to cut for me.

And I thought, really? Especially when Spike, she's got to have it, did so well. I'd cut one scene in that movie because he cut the rest of the movie. And then when he did School Days, he said, I want you to cut it. And I thought, okay. I mean, you really have a budget. You can really hire an editor. And, you know,

I really did feel all the way through school days. And then I did Salon Bombay with Mira. And I also got a foreign language nomination. And then Do the Right Thing with Spike. And then Madonna had me do Truth or Dare. Yeah, that's amazing. I wanted to ask you

about that. And then we, you know, it wasn't until I did Malcolm X that I thought, you know, I might be a film editor. I might be an editor. But that's amazing because you were a part of so many incredibly important and impactful films. And so even in Do the Right Thing, which is obviously now kind of a world historic American film. Yeah. At the time, you were like, I don't know if this is where my life and career is going to go. Definitely not. Definitely not. What did you think it also could be?

Were you like, I'm also, now I'm going to be a school teacher? Oh, no, no. I always was writing. I even worked for the Boston Globe for a while, you know. What did you write about? Well, recently, I'm actually in the midst of doing a fantasy trilogy. I've gotten half of it written. And I've written screenplays before. I don't think I'll ever write another screenplay.

And I've written the screenplay for the film I'm about to direct. And Spike and I, as I mentioned before, we work together. So I always figured that I'd either go back to writing or writing and directing. But editing was such a joy for me. And it's always been a joy. It's fun for me to do. I don't know enough about your craft, so help me understand what you do. How much of what you do is intellectual and strategic and philosophical?

And how much of it is mechanical? Okay, I was once on a panel with Thelma Schumacher and Simon Pollard. Martin Scorsese is great. Yeah. Editor. Yeah, right. And Sam Pollard, who's the other editor for Spike. Yeah. And they were both talking about how they approach a movie, you know?

And it was like, wow, really? You do all this work? You see other movies? You think about what kind of film this is going to be and how it's supposed to move? And not me. Not me. I was shocked.

So what do you do? I am just, I'm instinctive, man. I'm instinctive. The best way I can describe what I do is I fall through a cut. I fall through it. You know, I don't think a lot about it until I'm really looking at the footage. And I don't think a lot about it until I'm really sitting there and cutting. And then it just starts to speak to me. It just speaks to me.

That's really interesting. Tell me specifically about working on Black Klansman. Now, are you getting involved? Are you on the set when they're shooting? No, I mean, I always show up at the set, you know. But even like in Black Klansman, you know, there was a point where we came up with an idea in the midst of the shoot to have the Klan listen to David Duke tapes whenever they're in a car.

Sort of this constant indoctrination, right? And Spike said to me, okay, write that up. So I listened to a bunch of David Duke stuff and wrote out something for Topher Grace to do. And then I went on the set really just to hand out the pages and make sure that everybody had them so that when Topher had a moment that they could do it, then the sound guy knew, the first AD knew,

the producers knew that this was something that had to happen sort of on the fly at some point. Interesting. So, I mean, I assume you're coming in at the script stage when Spike is starting a movie, right? Are you reading the script?

Well, he shows me the script sometimes, but not always. Sometimes he just calls me up and says, I'm shooting in three months and you're cutting. Hey, man.

I love Spike. He says, jump, I say, how high? Are you looking at dailies after the day shooting? Well, you'd like to as much as possible. You know, it used to be when we were doing Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X,

he got Game, Summer of Sam. There was dailies almost every night after the shoot, which were great, and they were projected. Nowadays, you know, people look at dailies in any old way that they get them. You know, it's a digital file. Sometimes people are watching them on their phone. Sometimes people are watching them on their computer, their laptop, their iPad. And so, you know, there isn't that thing about projecting dailies anymore.

So oftentimes with Spike and I these days, like on Black Landsman, it would be on a Saturday. We'd come in, use Saturday to shoot. I mean, not to shoot, but to screen the dailies because he's shooting out of town. How much of these are things evolving then when you have those Saturday sit downs? Are you saying like, we actually, this doesn't work at all, or we need to recut this in a specific way? Are you doing a lot of your work in those sessions? Yeah, I'm taking notes for everything, you know, and Spike is saying things like, yeah, no, no, no, no. Don't use this take.

Don't use this. This take is terrible. I know it's circled, but we've got better takes. Don't even look at this again, right? Or he'll go through and he'll say on a particular camera move, okay, you see this take? This is really where I want to start this scene. I want to start the scene here. Or he'll say, I'm going to get out of this scene here.

And throughout, I'm making my own notes about what I feel, and he's telling me, I like this thing. You see what he did just there? The only thing he does this in, or she does this in, or wait a second, this actor does this, it bothers me. Do not ever use this when he does this thing, whatever it is. And so I think, okay, it doesn't bother me, but man, it bothers Spike. So I got to cut around that.

What do you think is sort of the primary role of the editor? Well, your primary role, a few things. One is to deliver the director's vision. You know, good director, you better be delivering his or her vision. You know, I've been really lucky to have friends who are great, Mira Nair and Spike Lee. I've been lucky to work with both of them on multiple films, and they're great, and they have a vision, and I got to pay attention and get what it is that they're after here. And then beyond that, it is rhythm.

You want to keep a rhythm. For me, film is music, and like the two, you have movements within a film and movements within a symphony, and highs and lows and pauses and points where the tempo is fast. And then there's this other thing that is very hard for me to express, which is just a sense of moments. Are they working? Is this line coming through a moment in a scene? And sometimes it's coming down to recognize, even though somebody has a piece of dialogue, sometimes what they're saying is important to be on them because it has something really to do with that character and something about them.

And sometimes it's about somebody else in the scene. That line has an effect on somebody else. And you've got to be sitting there looking at it and thinking at times, whose moment is this? Whose scene is this? I mean, even though somebody has hardly anything to say here, this scene is all about them. And now we've got to stay here, you know?

And beyond that, I would say that every once in a while, your job as an editor is to improve certain performances. You know, a lot of the actors are great, but not every actor, especially in smaller supporting roles, is great. And so they're important to be there, but now you have to improve a performance. And oftentimes you improve a performance

by using what other people are doing in that scene. Interesting, meaning cutting away from the performer. Yeah. Yeah, capture a moment. Yeah, because I've done films where somebody's come back and said, wow, this particular actress, she was so good in that film. I said, no, no, no. Everybody else in those scenes were really good.

And you just didn't feel like I was constantly on other people. So I thought re-watching the movie Not that Black Klansman had that. We don't have to throw anybody under the bus here. I thought that re-watching the movie there were two sequences that were particularly impressive

to me. The whole movie is great but I wanted to talk to you about both of them. The first is Kwame Ture's speech on the college campus and I thought particularly what you great, but I wanted to talk to you about both of them. The first is Kwame Ture's speech on the college campus. And I thought particularly what you were doing, and I wanted to get a sense of how you guys built that scene, because it's almost like, it's a cliche, but it's almost like portraiture. It's almost like painting, you know, especially when you're cutting out to the crowds and you're showing the people in the audience. So how does a scene like that happen? Is that on the page first?

Well, I mean, the speech itself is on the page. Certainly, but everything we're seeing, is that identified? No, the portraits and things like that. No, that's not in the script. That's something that Spike has in his head. And he took people that were in the crowd in that scene, took them into a room as they were doing this, as they were going through different setups.

He'd grab them and go and shoot them individually, you know, and kind of direct them in very general ways, right? Knowing, okay, somehow we're going to use this. We first cut the scene straight. Just have the scene. It's just, this is the speech. This is the crowd reaction. This is how crowd reaction.

This is how Ron Stallworth has been affected by it. Straight. And then Spike said, now is the time to put in these portraits. Not completely knowing how this is going to work. I mean, he knew, I want to start the first portrait here. And that was as much as he had really in mind. And then he gives me leeway to go. And then he'll come in and tweak that. Whether or not, no, no, no, no, we got to slide this back.

I don't want to cover this line. We can go to here, to this line, and things like that. And I started experimenting with multiple images and multiple faces that are married together and movements and things like that. And I started experimenting with multiple images and multiple faces that are married together and movements and things like that and trying to look through who works together here. What faces seem to work together? And it also goes back to all these years that we've worked, that we've done so much, so many films and so many other projects together is Spike is going to have a pretty good sense of once he explains to me the basic idea, I'm going to be able to take that ball and run with it.

This is kind of a simplistic question, but I think it's helpful to understand what you do. How long does it take to compile and compose a sequence like that? Is it days? Is it weeks? I honestly don't know. No, it's days. Five days? No it weeks? I honestly don't know. No, it's days. Five days? No less. Okay. This can't be that long for me

because I'm fast. I'm a very fast editor. Probably because I don't think much about it, quite frankly. And I just go. And I don't do assemblies. I cut. I cut right from the get-go.

From the very first cut, it's a cut. I'm going for a cut. Because, you know, when we do the right thing, we didn't know. We didn't know you do an assembly. I didn't come up through editing. Neither one of us knew. So you just cut the film and you were like, this is the cut of the film. This is the cut.

Right? I mean, of course, then you move things around and tweak. And sometimes you move it a lot. Sometimes you move it very little. Black Klansman was done very little. There was more tweaks than real cuts. But on December 8th when they wrapped, we still hadn't seen about 50% of the dailies.

And so we took a week to watch that footage. And then I went away and worked all the way through the Christmas and New Year's hiatus to show Spike on January 8th the cut. Because he wanted to see it on January 8th. But I did it. And he knew I was going to do it. I mean, I knew I was going to do it too. But even so, there was a lot of stuff there that was intricate. I like that stuff, well, the Kwame Ture stuff with the portraits really was done in January after he saw that first cut.

But other things like the Harry Belafonte telling the Waco, Texas story. This is the other scene I wanted to ask you about. And the Klan. The induction. Induction. And then the birth of a Nation, and both Harry talking about what it was like in 1950 when that film came out, and seeing how the Klan is reacting to it in the early 70s. I mean, that was another place where I had to get in there,

but not with a lot of time. Not with a lot of time. I mean, it can take weeks to cut it. It had to be days. It's amazing. I think that's one of the kind of the Pantheon to cut it. It had to be days. It's amazing. I think that's one of the kind of the pantheon Spike Lee movie scenes that he's ever made. It's such a great moment in the film. It's great, yeah.

Has it gotten faster for you guys? Or have there been times in recent years when you've been working on a movie where you kind of have to scrap stuff and start over? Or kind of reconstitute what you thought the movie was going to be? It hasn't so much gotten... I mean, listen, Black Klansman was fast. Yeah. And part of the reason it was fast is because I'm cutting on Avid and I love Avid and it allows me to do a lot of things very, very quickly, but even do the right thing.

I mean, we were so green at the time and do the right thing. Neither Spike or I knew that I was supposed to be cutting all the way through the shooting of the film. I didn't cut anything. We saw dailies, and I think during the day I hung out. And then at the end, when he wrapped, then I was supposed to cut. But I cut and did the right thing in six weeks. Amazing.

But the intensity of cutting film rather than cutting digitally. Cutting film for me was intense because I would have an editing room that would have rolls of film opened up to where I wanted to go to. It's a puzzle. It was more physical. Really physical. But they'd be all over the editing room. And I would know where everything is. So nobody could talk to me.

You couldn't say hello to me. Or it was like a house of cards that would fall apart. So I had this great assistant editor, Leander Sales, who when he would see people that were like approaching the editing room, because it was kind of this slightly glass wall that we were in, he would just put up his hand and go, uh-uh. He wouldn't say anything. He would just, no, no, no, no, no, uh-uh, no. He wouldn't let anybody come in because he knew that it was all delicate for me. But as long as I could keep everything there, I could cut the film very, very fast on this eight-plate steam back. And it was by six o'clock every day in those days, I worked between 9 and 6, and I was exhausted. At 6 o'clock, I was physically exhausted. But to some extent, Spike got used to me.

The day was over at 6 o'clock. And so, even all these years later, they don't realize that Avid is so much easier for me. It's not so physically taxing. Still, everybody's expecting, yeah, 6 o'clock, he's going to go. That's nice. That sounds like a civilized life. It is a civilized life. This probably requires you to remove yourself a little bit from the way you see the big picture of this stuff.

But what is it like for, come back would be too strong a word, but for Spike and a film that you worked on with Spike to have such a moment like this, given that you've been with him through all of these movies have been so big. This just seems to be sort of a part of that experience. We've been lucky. And also, I think we've done good work. And work that has lasted so far and do the right thing is still a film that people respond to. And a film like 25th Hour that did not do very well when it first came out but so many people over the years have come up to me to say that's one of my favorite films so i probably was going to do that in this conversation do you have a 25th hour story for me by chance oh god i must have a 25th hour story. I do have a 25th hour story, actually. It was the first film that we did.

I guess the original Kings of Comedy was digital. But the first feature we did digitally was 25th Hour. And, I mean, we went kicking and screaming. Spike and I were kicking and screaming into the digital age. Man, we did not want to go. We did not want to go. We did not want to go. No, no, no. Right?

But finally, it was like, you have to. You know, it just became too difficult to finish the movie. And so the very end of the movie was, and it was all shot in film. And the very end of the film was this sort of fantasy sequence. The Brian Cox monologue. Right. You know, of what's going to happen to him in the future. They had shot it at 30 frames a second rather than 24.

But when they got it transferred, when they transferred it to digitally, they did these, they did draft frames where they just simply made these 30 frames 24 so what does that do to the film then what what it does is that when you get out and and you're going to negative cut the negative cutter comes back and says this is not matching i'm so what how can it not match and then And then we discovered what they had done. They'd done this stupid thing. Because you got 30 frames in a second, but you've cut it 24 frames in a second, right? So you're actually losing six frames every second. And in those days, we still had the 8-plate in the editing room.

Because I think both Spike and I liked it. Old school. It's like the blanket, right? That we could, oh, it's still here. But then we had to get the work print. We had to get the whole end of that movie work printed. And then we had to get it put in sync. And then I had to recut it in film. And quite frankly,

I loved it. I loved it. I was like, okay, I'm not completely in the digital age. I can still handle the work print. And I had an assistant at that time, Kim Chisholm, who had never worked in film. She was constantly trying to play catch up in terms of, how do you do this? How do you do that? You know?

Are you at all romantic about that time and working that way? Or is it just much better for it to be easier? It's better for me to be easier. It's better. It's better. No. There's so many things you can do on Avid that you couldn't do in film. I mean, just you're talking about that scene with the Kwame Ture and those portraits. You know, I could create those portraits in Avid that you couldn't do in film? I mean, just, you're talking about that scene with the Kwame Ture and those portraits.

You know, I could create those portraits in Avid. If we were cutting in film, we would imagine things, but we would have really had to go to somebody else who would then have had to play around with things, with a look and that's how do we marry this and how do we marry that and and it would have been expensive and maybe would have never completely got to wear something but that you really liked but now i can do that and play with it and spike can come in and say i don't like those two people together replace him well the next time he comes in, that guy is replaced. But I look good as a film editor in those days. I look good. I could really handle an A-plate. There was a guy

named Robin who was an editor at CBS. And I did one quick job at CBS. And one day, Robin was sitting behind me and he said, did you ever think of your style as an editor? And I said, yeah. He jumped cuts and goes, nah, no, no, no, no. People are going to be sitting behind you. And you should have style. You should develop a style. I thought, Robin, man, that's the best advice ever. And I developed the style. You'd walk into an editing room and you'd see me cutting those days. You would think, man, he's good.

All based upon nothing more than how I'm handling this. Just sort of your presence, your physical presence. How I'm handling this stuff, throwing it up, going around my neck, blah, blah, blah. You know, I had style. And people were always really impressed by that. And I was thinking, what fools. You're not even looking at the cut. You're just looking at that.

I have an ability to impress you with how I'm handling the film and the sound. When you came in, you mentioned you're working on a film of your own right now. Can you tell me a little bit about it? Yes, I've written a script called Son of the South, and it's set in Montgomery, Alabama in 1961. We're going into production in late March. We're in pre-production right now. I'm on the phone all the time these days when I'm here in L.A.

It's about a guy named Bob Zellner. He was graduating at the top of his class from Huntington College in Montgomery. His grandfather was in the Klan. And a lot of things happened that spring and that summer that made him challenge his beliefs about race. The Freedom Riders came to Montgomery in May of 1961 as he was just about to graduate. And he ran downtown and pulled freedom riders, black freedom riders, out of that riot. And he was shocked to see a riot. And the rioters were his people. He was blonde, blue-eyed, six feet tall, country boy.

And that was the kind of things that he began to witness that summer. And every time he came across something, the words that Rosa Parks said to him in the spring of that year, which was something bad is going to happen right in front of you one day, and you're going to have to make a choice which side you're on because not choosing is a choice. And that's really the theme of the movie. Look forward to that.

Barry, I end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they've seen. So what is the last great thing you've seen? I really love Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse. Yes! You're speaking my language. Why did you like it? Oh, man, that is so smart

and so inventive. Such great characters. And actually, I think it's the best edited film. Yeah, that's interesting. How so? What does that mean for an animated film? People think of animation and things like that and something like that.

I say that and people say, well, it's not edited. I say, wait a second. However you get there, if you draw the edits, it's an edit. If I cut it physically on film, it's an edit. If I do it digitally, it's an edit. But if you draw it, it's an edit. If I cut it physically on film, it's an edit. If I do it digitally, it's an edit. But if you draw it, it's an edit. And you see this stuff, these triplets that they do in the midst of this action, and they never lose you. They never lose you. And it's this sometimes bizarre world they've taken you into. And I'm glad I'm not up against it.

Thank you so much for listening to this special episode of The Big Picture. I hope you'll tune in later this week when Amanda Dobbins will be back. We'll be joined by Justin Charity to talk about Spike's new movie, The Five Bloods. See you then.