Do the Right Thing

Thursday, May 1st: Spike Lee is not angry. But he thinks that “anger is good” and cathartic. The outspoken and controversial director of such independent films as Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Summer of Sam, and When the Levees Broke, was in Denver to talk to UC Denver film students. Interviewed on stage by NPR film critic Howard Movshovitz, Spike ironically got angry when Movshovitz mentioned that he films anger very well–on Movshovitz’s way to a larger point about Spike’s lyricism–provoking this angry tirade: “It’s easier to paint Spike Lee as an angry black man that’s on a rage 24/7. That’s an easy thing to say… I’ve had many interviews and they’ve asked me ‘Why are you so angry?’ As if all my films—and it’s not just my films, it’s me as a human being—as if I stay in a constant state of anger and it’s not the case. On the other hand, blacks have a lot of things to be angry about. Any anger that we show is justified. Not that I think that we should be burning s**t down. Anger is good… We have one of the lowest life spans because of hypertension, diabetes: we’re catching hell. And a lot of this stuff is if you keep all this stuff in, you’re just gonna combust. So, I’d rather scream than have an ulcer or heart attack.” Read on …