Because 20 years later, who’s watching ‘Driving Miss Daisy’?” He added in 2015, “Are they going to choose a film where you have the relatively passive black servant, or are they going to choose a film with a menacing ‘Radio Raheem’? A lot of times, people are going to vote for what they’re comfortable with, and anything that’s threatening to them they won’t.” What film won best picture in 1989? ‘Driving Miss motherf-ing Daisy’! That’s why don’t matter. In 2011, Lee, still stung by that experience, told Charlie Rose, “In 1989, ‘Do the Right Thing’ was not even nominated. Adding insult to injury, the film that landed the most nominations - and ultimately won best picture - was “Driving Miss Daisy,” a film directed by a white man about a servile black man catering to a bigoted white woman. (The Los Angeles Film Critics chose the film as its best picture and Lee as its best director.)īut when Oscar nominations were announced a few months later, Lee again was left disappointed: the only acknowledgement of “Do the Right Thing” came in the categories of best supporting actor (Danny Aiello) and best original screenplay (for Lee). in June, it sparked nationwide debate, discussion and further awards buzz. The 1989 dramedy, which chronicles simmering racial tensions that eventually boil over on a block in Brooklyn, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May - and, despite a rapturous reception, ended up receiving not a single prize, to the shock of many and the vocal displeasure of Lee. The Hollywood Reporter: Spike Lee, Gena Rowlands and Debbie Reynolds to Get Honorary Oscars Just a few years later, his films “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986), which premiered at Cannes and won the best first feature Indie Spirit Award, and “School Daze” (1988) made him a major player on the indie scene. In 1983, he won a Student Academy Award for “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads,” his NYU thesis film, which helped to put him on the map. Lee’s long and complicated relationship with the Academy dates back 32 years. Now the question is: what will he say when accepting the honor? At 58, Lee is the youngest male tapped for an honorary Oscar – which historically has been something of a lifetime achievement award – since one went to 46-year-old “Planet of the Apes” makeup artist John Chambers in 1969. What he appreciates is Klein's ability to transcend his own prejudice and finally do the right thing.Spike Lee, probably the most famous black filmmaker in the history of American cinema and long an outspoken critic of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will be presented with an honorary Oscar at the Academy’s seventh Governors Awards on November 14, the organization announced Thursday. Lee understands that casual racism is simply endemic and inescapable in American culture. What's fascinating about CLOCKERS is Lee's willingness-and guts-to present Klein, despite his prejudice, as the film's hero. Is it just a job, or is it racism? For Klein, it's both: he needs the gallows humor to psychologically deal with this culture of depravity. Klein is introduced at the scene of a homicide, where the police handle the gruesome death with a clinical sense of detachment, cracking bad jokes and asking the bloodied corpse questions. Klein views the inner-city with contempt, but deep down he knows all the whores and dealers are human beings, too. On his beat, drugs are less a problem than a lifestyle, murder resolves the tiniest of disagreements, and young mothers valiantly but vainly battle the influence young dealers have on their sons. Most representative of this is Harvey Keitel's Rocco Klein, a white detective who cannot understand the culture surrounding him, which is a culture of narcotics, violence, and black-on-black crime. Instead of characters with overt prejudices and plain racial allegiances-characters that are sterile symbols of bigotry rather than credible humans guilty of it-Lee gives us characters of casual racism. (He chokes up blood the way some of us sweat.) This process is observed by a predominantly white police force that makes hollow attempts to keep order, and refuses to intervene with the community's gradual decline. On the surface it resembles a whodunit, but its main concern is how drugs and violence contaminate entire communities, dramatized in the collapse of one African-American youth's life. It is the first urban drama to depict inner-city race relations with the intricacy such a pervasive cultural issue demands. Upon re-viewing, I am struck again by its complexity. In 1995 I considered Spike Lee's gritty CLOCKERS one of the year's best films recently I spotted its video in a clearance bin and picked it up.
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