Spike Lee is a director, writer, producer, editor, cinematographer and actor in America. He was born on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Birth name – Shelton Jackson Lee, and “Spike” – a pseudonym, which the future director chose for himself in his school years. The father of the family is a jazz musician, and the mother worked as a school teacher. The family moved to Brooklyn when the boy was 6 years old, there he studied at the college “Moorhouse” and in parallel with the lectures tried to make movies. It was at this time that Spike created his first short film. In 1982, Lee received a diploma in film school at the University of New York (New York University).
The pen test as a director took place in the 1970s, when Lee co-directed the musical series “Great Performances”. In the early 1980’s filmed his first independent films, including the crime comedy “Joe’s Barber Shop in Bed-Stuy: We Cut Heads” and the film “Sarah”. But the real debut for Spike was a comedy “She needs it in a hurry,” which began to work in 1985. The picture was created by Lee’s own script, and he also shone in one of the roles of his movie. The movie was made in the shortest possible time – just two weeks. The premiere took place in 1986. The comedy had good box office receipts (the budget for filming was 160 thousand dollars, and at the box office he collected more than 7 million). In addition, the young director conquered not only the audience, but also a strict professional jury, for which he received an award at the Cannes Film Festival. After that, the career of young Lee went uphill. Immediately after a successful start, the largest company “Nike” ordered the director of the commercial for its products. In addition, the director was noticed by Hollywood producers and offered to work with them. So in 1988 the movie “School Amazement” was released. An interesting fact is that this is the first picture created at a major studio black director. The next dramatic film of the director (he also became the performer of the main role) “Do the right thing!” came out in 1989 and got nominated for best screenplay and best director at the most famous film festivals (“Oscar” and “Golden Globe”).
In the same year, Spike Lee organized a personal film company. And the next successful movie work was a biographical drama “Malcolm X” (1992). Lee also acted as the performer of one of the roles and co-writer of the script. The story is based on the story of a black Muslim leader, nationalist Malcolm X, the role of which was performed by Denzel Washington. Despite the fact that the audience of movie gurmans ambiguously reacted to the director’s chosen theme, calling him a racist and anti-Semite, the film was nominated for an Oscar.
The list of Spike Lee’s creative achievements includes 52 directorial works, 14 screenplays, 47 projects that were sporoduced by him and 17 films where he can be seen in the frame. Among the films Lee directed are His Game (1998), Sam’s Bloody Summer (1999), The Miracle of St. Anne (2008), appearances in the anthologies All the Invisible Children (2005), Ten Minutes Older: Trumpet (2002) and many others.
In November 2013, Spike Lee’s detective thriller “Oldboy” premiered – a remake of the South Korean thriller of the same name, which was directed by Park Chan-wook in 2003, based on the manga by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya. The same year, Lee released a documentary comedy about Mike Tyson, where the boxer talks about his life (“The Mike Tyson Truth”).
The following year, the first season of the series “The Nightly Show with Jimmy Fallon” began, in which Lee acted as director along with Dave Diomedi. Now Spike Lee is busy creating a thriller “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus”.