Quote

We've got to turn this backward thinking around where ignorance is championed over intelligence. Young black kids being ridiculed by their peers for getting A's and speaking proper English: that's criminal.

Spike Lee

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Spike Lee
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: March 20
Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Mascot
Screenwriter
Television Actor
Television Producer
Atlanta
Georgia
Sheldon Lee
Shelton J. Lee
Shelton Jackson Lee
Mars Blackmon
Thinking
Ignorance
Backward
Turn
Peers
Getting
Criminal
Turns
Proper
Black
Criminals
Kids
Speaking
Around
English
Championed
Young
Intelligence
Ridiculed

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I don't like to use the word 'remake', I think reinterpretation is a better word. It's just a matter of respecting the source, and then trying to make your own film, and trying not to be inhibited by being so beholden to every single thing... We respect the source, but we make changes to it.
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A spine to my films that's become more evident to me is that many are about the choices people make, and the reverberations of those choices. You go this way, or that way, and either way, there's going to be consequences.
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I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street.
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I collect names for characters. Names are valuable they can be your first source of insight into a character.
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I want to tell stories, I don't really try to get boxed in by a specific genre.
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Music is, for me, a great tool of a filmmaker, the same way cinematography, the acting, editing, post-production, the costumes are. You know, to help you tell a story.
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I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night.
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I've got Sometimers. Sometimes I remember and sometimes I forget.
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Our greatness, our talent has never been the question. It's been a matter of grappling for control over what we do.
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As we move toward the millennium, the year 2000, the most powerful nations are not those that have nuclear bombs, but those that control the media. That's where the battle is being fought that is how you control people's minds.
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If you can't take a hit, you're not going to last long, that's for sure.
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Right now a lot of people are still choosing to go to Toronto instead of shooting in New York City, something I haven't done and something I hope I'll never have to do.
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I get offered to do stuff where the money's nice but it's not something I want to do - I get offered a lot of commercials too.
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It gets dangerous when you start allowing people to validate your work.
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Don't think that because you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep. I am still here, like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest.
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You gotta make your own way. You gotta find a way. You gotta get it done. It's hard. It's tough. That's what I tell my students every day in class. I've been very fortunate. Some people might call me a hardhead, but I'm not going to let other people dictate to me who I should be or the stories I should tell. That doesn't register with me.
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When I went to school, you had to take art, you had to play an instrument. You had to play an instrument. But it's all degraded since then. I do not know what kind of nation we are that is cutting art, music, and gym out of the public-school curriculum.
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For me, I believe in God, God is real.
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Fight the power that be. Fight the power.
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