On This Day in History, March 20: Films Spiked With Controversy
Spike Lee was born Shelton Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Ga., the son of a musician and a teacher. He moved to Brooklyn at the age of 2 with his family.
He was educated at Morehouse College in Atlanta and at NYU’s film school. After forming his own production company, Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks, in Brooklyn, he made a number of motion pictures focusing on the contemporary black experience and interracial conflict, many of them set in Brooklyn.
He first gained attention in the late 1980s for his films She’s Gotta Have It (’86), which was compared to Woody Allen’s work by the New York critics, and Do the Right Thing (’89), a controversial study of racial tension. In Do the Right Thing the state of the nation is seen as a slice of life in Brooklyn, where the residents of one block swirl in and out of Sal’s (Danny Aiello) pizzeria, the focal point of the street. The pace and the uneasy racial dynamics are shrewdly stepped up as the summer temperatures and tempers soar to a shocking climax, acknowledging that people, when pushed, choose sides. Lee acted in this film as well as wrote and directed it. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.