Nobody Puts Spike Lee in the Corner

I can’t help but love Spike Lee, I mean there are things about his movies, that as a black woman I don’t agree with, but I love the fact that he challenges the notions of race. He isn’t afraid to make a statement in films that no one else is making. I think he did a beautiful job with Malcom X not because it was a story of a great black man, but because it was a good film (which I would take Denzel Washington winning an Oscar for any day over Training Day but that’s neither here nor there).

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the Slate interview conducted by Lee Seigal, specifically Lee’s arbitrary answers to certain statements. Such as:

Slate: But then you look at a lot of these movies that make so much money: Barbershop, Beauty Shop, and Marci X, which I know is not a big favorite of yours.
Lee: Marci X didn't make any money.

and

Slate: Do you think there's a difference between a black acting style and a white acting style?
Lee: No, I'm not gonna—no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not. Nope.
Slate: Because I look at a great actor like Jeffrey Wright—do you like his stuff?
Lee: Yeah, I love Jeffrey.
Slate: And I see that he's not an actor in the mold of, say, Brando, or Sean Penn. Wright disappears into his characters like a British actor, and I see a lot of African-American actors doing that—Cuba Gooding, I think, does that also.
Lee: You're putting Cuba Gooding in the same league with Jeffrey Wright?
Slate: No.
Lee: Oh, thank you.