Spike Lee Takes No Notes

"I make the films I want to make. And I'm not coming up with a Driving Miss Daisy, Green Book approach."

- Zak Cheney-Rice

OVER SPIKE LEE’S more than 40 years of directing feature films, he has earned a reputation as a provocateur and a savvy self-promoter. His “joints,” as the Brooklyn-bred auteur brands his movies, have sparked ludicrous fears of rioting (Do the Right Thing), unsettled audience notions about race and sex (Jungle Fever), and landed him in blockbuster Nike ads alongside Michael Jordan (“Money, it’s gotta be the shoes!”). His new movie, Highest 2 Lowest, aspires to no such distinction. Lee's lively reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime drama, High and Low, just seeks to stage an entertaining morality play. But this is Spike Lee we're talking about, which means his dramatization of a kidnapping plot involving a high-flying record executive, played by Denzel Washington, and a destitute superfan seems destined to be read as something more—whether the director intends it to or not. Sitting in the Fort Greene office of his production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of global cinema memorabilia, framed vinyl records, and New York Knicks artifacts, Lee is alternately as charming and prickly as ever.

I'm a fan of the original High and Low, so I was excited to see your interpretation.

I want to say this right here from the jump: This is not a remake. This is a reinterpretation. I was introduced to Akira Kurosawa when I was doing NYU graduate film school. And a lot of people don’t know this, but the thesis of She's Gotta Have It came from [Kurosawa’s 1951 film] Rashomon. In Rashomon, there's a rape, and the audience is left there questioning, “Who's telling the truth?” So I just hijacked that shit.

What has kept you returning to Kurosawa?