His public tantrum was unseemly, ungracious, and embarrassing — but it may pay off.
New York Knicks fans will never forget the 1994 playoffs, when Spike Lee, an ostensibly grown 37-year-old man who had leveraged his celebrity into scoring a courtside seat at Madison Square Garden, decided to make himself the center of attention late in the game. Lee, only a few feet from the action, got up and moved around and shouted at players and generally made a complete ass of himself. Lee had inexplicably made it his personal mission to taunt and distract the rival Indiana Pacers’ star shooting guard Reggie Miller. Then things got even worse: Miller responded by turning up the heat on his game from “smoking” to “molten.” Miller scored 25 points in the fourth quarter as the Pacers came from behind to win the game. The Daily News ran a photo of Lee with the caption, “Thanks a Lot, Spike.” When the series moved to Indianapolis, Lee made his typical horrible move of mixing evil with entertainment, telling reporters (falsely) that Indiana was the birthplace of the KKK and that he would be staying at “the governor’s mansion,” in “the slaves’ quarters.”
What Hollywood Keeps Getting Wrong About Race
Wesley Morris joins us to talk about “Green Book”, the latest Oscar winner to focus on a white character’s moral journey in an interracial friendship.
Three decades ago, the highest honor at the Academy Awards was given to a movie about a white passenger learning to love her black chauffeur. Sunday night, the same award was given to a film about a white chauffeur learning to love his black passenger. We look at Hollywood’s obsession with fantasies of racial reconciliation.
.. “Green Book” focuses on a white driver, played by Viggo Mortensen, and a black musician, played by Mahershala Ali, in the 1962 South.
Wesley Morris examines why tales of interracial friendships born out of employment are repeatedly rewarded at the Oscars.
“Green Book,” a segregation-era buddy film, won this year’s Academy Award for best picture, prompting anger from those who criticized the movie as a simplistic take on race relations.
Listen to an episode of “Still Processing” that revisits Spike Lee’s film “Do the Right Thing,” which was snubbed by the academy in 1990, the year the racial reconciliation fantasy “Driving Miss Daisy” took home the top honor.