Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It

by Spike Lee, Kaleem Aftab

Overview

A candid account of one of America's most provocative filmmakers that belongs on the shelf of any serious movie lover.

Spike Lee tells the cinematic story of the preeminent director, whose pioneering films—from Do The Right Thing, Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X to 25th Hour , Bamboozled, and The Inside Man—helped transform the face of late twentieth-century America. With unprecedented access to the Lee family and new interviews with stars and celebrities—including Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Rosie Perez, Adrien Brody, John Turturro, and many others—film critic Kaleem Aftab chronicles Spike Lee's explosive rise to stardom, exploring such important issues as Black Nationalism, Hollywood stereotyping, and the rise of a powerful black middle class. Lee's prominence in American culture continues in 2006 with the release of The Inside Man and a forthcoming documentary on Hurricane Katrina. Spike Lee tells us as much about the last two decades of American social history as it does about the life of this fascinating director.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393328943
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/17/2006
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	444
Sales rank:	809,614
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Spike Lee’s films have won numerous honors, including two Golden Globes and an Academy Award for Do the Right Thing. He also directed the movie biography of Malcolm X.

Kaleem Aftab is a freelance film writer for the BBC, The Independent, and V magazine. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

"Fresh, judicious."

Washington Post Book World

Lee has documented his trials and triumphs through numerous books already, including a sports-fan's memoir and production histories of five of his first six films. Aftab's retelling -- his remake, if you will -- is fresh, judicious and will likely spur readers to view movies they've missed in Lee's filmography (with the probable exception of "Girl 6"). At the end of this book, Lee thanks his wife for her "laser-hot honesty," but Lee and Aftab should be commended for theirs as well.
— The Washington Post

Abby McGanny Nolan

The work of one of America's more important filmmakers is ill-served by this reverential biography. Aftab arranges the narrative around Lee's films, from breakout hit She's Gotta Have It (1986), through such cinematic touchstones as Do the Right Thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992), ending with the flop She Hate Me (2004). The resulting string-of-boxcars structure is a little disjointed, but it keeps the focus on Lee's often controversial and politically engaged films and delivers a flow of moviemaking anecdotes that give a sense of the director's domineering, manipulative, charismatic personality. Unfortunately, this very authorized biography staggers under the weight of the many lengthy tributes to Lee's genius and his statesmanship as the standard-bearer of African-American cinema. Complaints are sometimes aired about the director and his movies (he does cop to allowing "unreconstructed male chauvinism" to mar his films), but criticisms are quickly shouted down by rebuttals from Lee and a chorus of admiring actors and colleagues. Aftab's poorly organized text often feels like a collection of barely edited interview transcripts, with Lee and his friends' rambling on for paragraphs on end. The outcome is a sluggish, defensive biography of a man who deserves a more incisive treatment. Photos. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Lee leaps from the big screen into the pages of this book with the help of Aftab, who directs the TV and film production house lafamiglia. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

An objective take on the life and works of a groundbreaking, controversial filmmaker. Despite the misleading author credit, this is not an autobiography. Rather, the work is a biography by Pakistani-British filmmaker and critic Aftab, writing here with the permission of his subject, who comments at length on virtually every issue the book covers. Aftab occasionally verges on fan-magazine style ("[Lee's] wedding signaled a new Spike Lee"), but mostly he offers an even-handed portrait in which Lee comes across as talented and innovative, yet also arrogant and hyper-sensitive to criticism. Aftab's most significant thread is that Lee's creation of a production company, Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks, opened up opportunities for black filmmakers and, in its films, presented realistic, trenchant accounts of black characters and the issues they face. Aftab's accounts of Lee at work, directing Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, She's Gotta Have It, etc., offer a wealth of details about the man's methods. Quotes from actors, photographers, writers and producers flesh out the accounts, forming a valuable record of Lee's achievements. Most importantly, Aftab doesn't shy from exploring the prickly issues Lee and his films raise: Is Lee himself racist when he insists, as he did when making Malcolm X, that "white directors can't get it right" when they depict the lives of black characters? Are the depictions of gays and lesbians in Lee's films homophobic and the images of women sexist? Are Lee's films inspired, but technically crude, as some critics suggest? Aftab quotes primary sources who come down on all sides of these issues. The clashing views leave the reader somewhat adrift-Aftab shies fromdrawing more general conclusions about Lee and his films. Solid reporting on a significant body of work. (40 photos)

Kirkus Reviews