Here in the palatial digs of Generator 21 World Headquarters we like to sit around our spacious offices sipping brandy and contemplating our next world shaking exclusive story. Yes, any day now we could be subject to a hostile takeover from Rupert Murdoch in an attempt to turn G21 into a right-wing, sensationalistic, scandal mongering rag. Of course we'll all get great stock options, fat buy out checks and sordid sexual liaisons with courtesans of the female or male gender (depending upon one's orientation,) and cottages in Nantucket so what the hell will we care?
So, while we're waiting, I'm Searching For Spike. As in Spike Lee.
You know: that little Black guy who just seems to piss off White folks every time he releases another movie.
He's got another one on the way that exposes the seedy side of recruiting fresh dark meat for the nation's collegiate basketball mills. He Got Game might be good Ebonics and horrible English, but in hoops jargon, it's all good. Lee reteams with his favorite actor, Denzel Washington, and both are badly in need of a hit, particularly Spike.
In his first film for Touchstone Picture ( a division of the Mouse House, or Disney, if you please) Spike will be trying to rebound from his long-running string of box office disappointments. Not since 1992's Malcolm X has Lee both slamdunked the critics and put the fannies in the seats with an all-out smash. Crooklyn, Clockers, Girl 6, Get On the Bus all fell short of expectations, and though his documentary 4 Little Girls, about the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, was nominated for an Academy Award this year it never even played in many cities.
So what? Spike Lee's failures are more interesting than most directors' successes.
Given a choice between James Cameron's monument to sentiment, excess and bloat, Titanic, and the meandering improvisation of Mo' Better Blues, I'll vote for good looking confusion over Hollywood glitz every time.
Interviewing Spike has been an ambition of mine since I got into this business. It's not that I think I'm going to be the one guy that asks him The Question He's Never Been Asked or anything grandiose like that. More likely than not, I'd just be another geek offered 10 or 15 minutes to ask him specific questions about a specific movie he's trying to push and that's it. Only a few lucky writers, with extraordinary access or a established prior relationship, get to transform interviews into conversations. If you don't know what the difference is, think about how you felt at the job interview before you actually got the job. World of difference between being just another slob off the street and actually being on the inside, isn't it?
Ever try to get in contact with a celebrity? It can be as easy as making the right call to the right person to make the connection and BOOM! You're in da house! Then again, it can be like peeling a onion to its last layer. You've got to go through procedures, protocol, and vast amounts of bullshit. And, if at the end of it you haven't gone completely nuts, you may be ushered into the Presence for a few moments to ask your insipid questions.
So far [in my Search] it's been mostly the latter. Except for the "ushering into the Presence" part. The procedures, protocol and vast bullshit....that's been in abundance.
Through the movie critic of the local daily newspaper I sought any insider information he might be able to provide about the Spikester, or circumventing the intricacies of Touchstone Pictures' publicity department.
He said I probably had a better chance of landing a interview with Lee because we're both Black.
Yeah, and we both married women that we both have to look up to, so what's your point?
During the press junket for Malcolm X Spike Lee pissed off a lot of entertainment editors by his request that they send Black reporters to interview him about the movie. To some that sounded sort of reverse-racist, as if White reporters couldn't be hip and down about Malcolm X. In reality, Lee had been badly burned by a crappy cover story in Esquire provocatively entitled, "Spike Lee Hates Your Cracker Ass." Written by some oh-so-earnest Good White Liberal, the [article] spent more time wallowing in angst over Spike's refusal to relate to her as someone who befriended Billie Holiday Back in The Day, than [it did] asking pertinent questions about the film.
Spike's bullshit detector, or paranoia, over White journalists peaked at the time, and he hasn't quite forgotten (or forgiven) the heat he took over Do The Right Thing from morons like Joe (Primary Colors) Klein. [Klein] claimed the movie would bring about riots in the street.
An interesting side effect of Lee's slightly petulant request for Black reporters was that some actually got gigs at places where the only people of color in the office were the ones emptying trash cans at the end of the day. Premiere's cover story on Malcolm X was written by a homegirl named Veronica Chambers who became a editor at the magazine before moving on to Newsweek.
I found work as a contributing writer to the Arts section of my daily newspaper, The Columbus Dispatch. "The Big D," as we call it, claims to have operated for 126 years as "Ohio's Greatest Home Newspaper." Big freaking whoopee ding-dong. It is with a certain amount of justifiable arrogance that I can say I was most likely the first Black person to appear regularly in the Dispatch's Arts section. I didn't get my job through the New York Times. I got the job [because of] a letter I wrote to the editor defending Spike Lee's call for Black writers.
To paraphrase Garrett Morris in his Chico Esquela routine from Saturday Night Live (in the non-suck years of the show), "Spike Lee has been very, very good for me."
Now if I can just find a way to get the brother's attention for all of 15 minutes. Easily said, but it's looking more and more like the sequel to Mission: Impossible.
BARE KNUCKLES: JEFF WINBUSH goes in "SEARCH OF SPIKE" - Part One of Two.
POWERSBOOKS on "KAKUTANI OF THE TIMES."
POLICY MATTERS: ADAM SMITH, Associate Director of the Beltway's Drug Reform Coordination Network, looks at the "THE 4-20 DEBATE."
TRIO: THOMAS HART says "ADDICTED? AREN'T WE ALL?"
LONDON CALLING! FLISS USSHER provides a seering, intimate portrait of young "birds" Dying To Be Cool!
G21 WORDSOur BOB POWERS extends his critique to film this week with a review of the new Nicholas Cage/Meg Ryan film, "CITY OF ANGELS."
JENNIFER BLUE's PLANETARY MADNESS looks at YOUR influences!