Spike Lee on Weekend Edition

Posted by Maximum Fun on 5th April 2006

Here’s a wonderful interview with Spike Lee from NPR’s Morning Edition. He talks a bit about The Inside Man, and is as stand-offish as he often is. He’s such a cool cucumber, he just refuses to be anything but serious and aloof about his work, but he cracks, eventually. He gets to some real answers to tough and interesting questions, like the rape scene in She’s Gotta Have It, which he says is the one scene in his films he regrets. When he’s asked whether he’d cut it out for DVD, he offers an emphatic no: “That would be the punk move.” He compares it to Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, or the Mammy in Gone With the Wind: “It’s done. It’s done.”

He closes with a great plug, “Thank you, and I really feel good about Inside Man, and I hope people come out and see it.” He’s nothing if not a straight shooter.

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