School Daze: Spike Lee 101

The recipient of both popular and critical praise, Spike Lee has emerged as one of the greatest American filmmakers living today.

Yet, despite his numerous accolades and rock-steady reputation amongst cineastes, many of Lee's best films remain unseen, relegated to art-house oblivion because of their complex and often incendiary nature. In fact, the director's standing in the public eye seems contingent upon his well-documented outbursts at Knick's games as opposed to the success or failure of his latest film.

Lee brings his candid observations about race and society to Cohen Auditorium tonight. A look at his films gives clues about what he may speak on.

Lee's talent is evident nonetheless: the filmmaker has produced, directed, written, and acted in nearly 15 full-length films, as well as created innumerable shorts, TV series, documentaries, commercials, and music videos during his 20 year long career.

It was 1989's "Do the Right Thing" that cemented Lee's reputation as a preeminent talent. Before '89, Lee had made a number of short films while still a student at NYU's well-regarded Tisch film school, in addition to two feature length films: the sex-comedy "She's Gotta Have It," which won the Prix de Jeunesse at Cannes, and the college-centered "School Daze."

"Do the Right Thing," which takes place during the hottest day of the summer in an African American neighborhood in the Bronx, centers on Mookie (played by Lee himself), a pizza delivery boy for the white-owned Sal's Famous Pizzeria. As the heat rises, racial tensions mount, and Sal's is destroyed in a riot spurred on by the death of a young African American man at the hands of a white police officer.

The movie, which introduced many to Lee's typical thematic concerns like race relations as well as his high-energy, stylized directing, earned as many supporters as it did detractors. Some accused Lee of racism, as the titular "Right Thing" is left open-ended: was the film trying to justify the rioting and destruction of Sal's, or disparage it?

In fact, the questions Lee's film raised were not as simplistic as most made them out to be. In "Right Thing," Lee revealed himself as a master in tackling complex, thorny issues such as racism; that his film offered no easy answers and demanded its viewers to confront the problems it presented head-on was its greatest achievement.

Lee went on to make equally provocative films after "Right Thing." 1990's "Mo' Better Blues," was a homage to jazz, which featured Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes as rivals in a New York jazz quartet, while 1991's "Jungle Fever" took interracial romance as its subject.

In many ways, Lee's next film, the biopic "Malcolm X," was his masterpiece. At almost three and half hours, and partly filmed on location in Mecca, it's by far the director's most complex and ambitious work. When Warner Bros. stopped financing the film after Lee refused to cut a half hour out, the director asked prominent friends for donations to finish the movie.

"Clockers," released a year later, is Lee's great undiscovered triumph. Essentially a crime drama with racial overtones, "Clockers" features John Turturro and Harvey Keitel as cops investigating the murder of local drug dealer, and Mekhi Phifer as a good-hearted kid caught in the middle.

Lee's successive films expanded and extrapolated on his by now familiar subjects. "Get on the Bus" focused on a cross-country trip to the Million Man March. "4 Little Girls" was a documentary about the death of four adolescents as a result of a hate crime. "He Got Game" took the politics of high school basketball as its subject, and the temptations that face a young black athlete. "Bamboozled" was a satire on the representation of African Americans in media. And "Summer of Sam," although focusing on Caucasian characters, featured the hot, stifling New York summer that has become a Spike Lee trademark.

"25th Hour," Lee's latest film, continues the filmmaker's social critique and kinetic visual style. One of his best-received films, "25th Hour" marks a critical and popular highpoint for the director. Yet, Lee has had such a long and fruitful career already that you'd be hard-pressed to call it a comeback.