Spike Lee
1957 ~

Lee, Shelton Jackson ("Spike") (b. March 20, 1957, Atlanta, Ga.), African American film director, writer, and actor.

Raised in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, Lee is the eldest of five children born to Bill Lee, a jazz musician and composer, and Jacquelyn Lee, a schoolteacher. Both of his parents came from well-educated families, and Lee's childhood was rich in art, music, and literature. Like his father and grandfather before him, Lee attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. It was at Morehouse that he first began to "dib and dab in super-8 filmmaking." These early experiments led to his enrollment at the Institute of Film and Television at New York University (NYU).

One of the few black students at NYU's film school, Lee attracted controversy with his short film The Answer (1980), a response to D. W. Griffith's classic silent film Birth of a Nation, which has become famous as much for its racist politics as for its cinematic excellence. Later student works included Sarah (1981), a loving depiction of Thanksgiving in Harlem, and Lee's last-year film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1982), which garnered an award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as well as screenings at prestigious film festivals.

For his next project Lee returned to a script he had written while at Morehouse. School Daze (1988) focused on conflicts between fair-skinned, upwardly mobile African American "wannabes" and darker, more Afrocentric "jigaboos" at a historically black university. Lee, who has appeared in nearly all of his films, costarred with Laurence Fishburne and Giancarlo Esposito in School Daze, which received mixed reviews but was financially successful.

Attention from Do the Right Thing, combined with Lee's popular commercials for Nike and other products, made him a recognizable celebrity by 1990. With the increased exposure, Lee's comments on race relations, politics, other filmmakers, and even basketball sparked heated responses from many quarters. Despite the occasionally negative press, many credit Lee's visibility and the success of his first three films with inspiring a wave of African American filmmakers. Young directors such as John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood, 1991) and Matty Rich (Straight out of Brooklyn, 1991) began finding the financial and institutional support that had eluded Lee only a few years earlier.

Lee's next two films — Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991) — were less well received critically, though each made money. In 1992 he released his most ambitious film, Malcolm X, a sweeping biography of the slain civil rights leader. Malcolm X attracted at least as much controversy as Do the Right Thing, particularly within the black community, some of which saw Lee as coopting the Black Muslim hero's image. Lee, who had used security personnel from the Nation of Islam to guard the sets on previous films, responded with typical bravado. The film, starring Denzel Washington, received mostly favorable reviews, but was criticized for its length and simplistic political message.

Since Malcolm X, Lee has made a number of movies — Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), Get on the Bus (1996), and He Got Game (1998) — but none has attracted the critical or commercial attention that his earlier work did. Lee also continues to film commercials and music videos, and commands a film studio (40 Acres & A Mule, named for a broken promise the U.S. government made to former slaves after the Civil War [see Forty Acres and a Mule]) and a clothing store in his home neighborhood in Brooklyn. An avid basketball fan, he attends most home games of his beloved New York Knicks and has written a memoir on the subject. In addition, he has published books as companion volumes to his first five films.

Contributed By: Kate Tuttle