PERHAPS WE’VE CAUGHT Spike Lee on a good day. But the allegedly caustic, combative, defensive director is nowhere in sight as he discusses his World War II epic “Miracle at St. Anna,” out Friday. Instead, there is – in words rarely used to describe the legendary New York filmmaker – a sweet, gentle and thoroughly open Spike Lee.
The experience is unsettling.
“Where is the real Spike, and what have you done with him?” we ask.
Brooklyn’s native son chuckles loudly.
“You see, that goes to show you – you can’t believe . . .” He stops in midsentence as if gathering his thoughts. “Look, a lot of writers – I am not saying all, but some – have their own agenda, and they write something that fits within how they perceive you or how they want you to be perceived by their readers or audience. And with me, you get what you give. If you are a reporter and come to me with stupid questions, I don’t have time for foolishness.”
Lee is sitting in a Times Square office owned by Disney, the distributor of “Miracle.” His ‘fro has been freshly clipped by his longtime barber and he’s eating his lunch: a turkey sandwich. Between bites, he chats about the African-American soldiers he celebrates in “Miracle” and the relevance of their story 60 years later.
The film, an adaptation of the lauded novel by James McBride, tells the story of the Army’s 92nd Infantry Division – an all-black, 15,000-man unit descended from the original “Buffalo Soldiers” who faught in the Civil War and other conflicts. It’s a fictionalized account based on real events and people. Some of these surviving soldiers will be on hand when the film premieres tomorrow night in New York.
The story is told through four Buffalo Soldiers – played by Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Derek Luke and Omar Benson Miller – trapped behind Nazi lines in a small Tuscan village, where one of the men rescues an Italian boy. On its face, the film attempts to correct a wrong about which Lee and others have long complained: Hollywood’s failure to portray the contributions of 500,000 black soldiers in almost all of its World War II films.
But its also about faith and Lee’s belief – believe it or not – that love overcomes differences.
“I decided that if I wanted to do a WWII film, it’d be foolish of me to do a film that everybody had seen before,” he says. “So it was those ingredients in the novel that stood out for me. The whole civil war that Italy was going through, the black soldiers and how they felt they were fighting for a country that sometimes – up to that point – did not accept them as human beings. All those elements were inviting.”
THE BATTLE OF BARACK
Wearing his signature tortoiseshell glasses, an off-white seersucker blazer and a yellow polo shirt, Lee is straying from his uniform of late, which consists mostly of Barack Obama T-shirts. He says he owns more than two dozen.
“They are all dirty,” he says, laughing, when asked why he’s not wearing one. But even withhis souvenirs from the Democratic National Convention, the senator from Illinois looms large in the conversation about “Miracle.”
“This film is about hope,” he says. “Barack Obama is the hope for what these black guys fought for back then. A hope that they probably said, ‘Well I might not see it in my lifetime, or my grandchild, but hopefully one day there might be a recognition that I will be recognized as a human being and given full citizenship.’
“America is not the place it was when these guys were fighting. You have to remember WWII – the armed forces were segregated. It wasn’t till 1948 that Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces. That is still not a long time ago, but this country has made great movement toward fulfilling this promise. We are living in the most exciting times in American history. And I’m glad that I’m alive to witness it.”
Lee, a vessel of efferfescent optimism? This can’t be the Spike we know from media reports: the guy who feuds with Reggie Miller from the sidelines, the one who almost never smiles when a camera is pointed in his direction, the one who disses Clint Eastwood. You know, the real Spike Lee, whom Esquire once profiled with the headline “Spike Lee Hates Your Cracker Ass.”
Not to mention that Lee has directed and written some of the most explosive films of the past 20 years: a blistering depiction of racism in “Do the Right Thing” (1989), the interracial love of “Jungle Fever” (1991), the controversial biopic “Malcolm X” (1992), and the caustic black-entertainment farce “Bamboozled” (2000). All of which may have paled in comparison to the harrowing “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” (2006), his documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“Have I made angry films? Yes!” Lee says. “For those specific subject matters there’s a lot to be angry about. But if you look at the breadth of all the films I have done, not every single one is made from the emotion of anger. Anger is not the private domain of Spike Lee.
“Those labels sadly stick, true or not, and they are powerful. And unfortunately there is not much you can do to change them. It’s not a true representation of my work or the great acting that has been done in my films. I’m a New Yorker. My films have reflected the anger, the warmth, the diversity, the love of the New York City that I have lived in. All the stuff good and bad that makes New York City the greatest city in the world.”
A SWEETER SPIKE
Lee, who is married to lawyer-turned-writer Tonya Lee Lewis and has two children, Satchel, 11, and Jackson, 7, has certainly allowed his hopeful side to filter into “Miracle.”
“The biggest difference between this film and other films I’ve done is the religious aspect,” he says, “the spirituality, the mysticism, the faith, the belief in God.”
In one key scene, American, German and Italian soldiers are all seen praying for the same thing – “Please God, let me be victorious and kill these mothaf – – – ers and spare my life, my family’s life,” says Lee, loosely paraphrasing. “I believe in God. I believe in miracles. This film was a miracle that it was made.”
Perhaps not a miracle. But certainly another tough lesson in the ever-shifting ways of Hollywood.
Lee’s biggest commercial success was the 2006 hit “Inside Man,” a bank-heist thriller that grossed $140 million worldwide on a relatively tiny budget of $45 million. The outsize profit was due largely to Lee’s close relationships to major stars and producers, who worked for a fraction of their usual fees.
“Denzel [Washington] gets $20 million a picture – he did not get that,” Lee says. “You had myself, Denzel, Jodi Foster, Clive Owen, [producer] Brian Grazer. All that for $45 mil? That’s a John’s Bargain Basement price if you ask me!”
Still, Lee had a hard time financing “Miracle,” so he went to Europe, improvising last-minute deals he calls “little miracles.” (His most personal project, a biopic of James Brown, remains in limbo because of financing; Lee hopes to cast Wesley Snipes as the Godfather of Soul.)
“I am not complaining. It is what it is – a fight and struggle every time,” Lee says. “And I can’t blame Hollywood. I blame myself for thinking that they would welcome me with arms wide open.”
He is, however, onboard to make more money for an “Inside Man” sequel. “I’m just waiting on the screenplay,” he says.
CEASE-FIRE WITH CLINT
The most controversial thing about “Miracle at St. Anna” isn’t the movie itself. Instead, it was Lee’s harsh words at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, dogging Eastwood for not including black soldiers in the cast of “Flags of Our Fathers.”
“I wasn’t the first one to call him out on it, and what I said was a fact – there were between 700 to 900 black soldiers and Marines on that volcanic island of Iwo Jima,” Lee says. “Did they help raise the flag? No. But guess what, the pole they used to hoist the flag was given to them by a black soldier in charge of a supply dump. His name is Thomas McPhatter, and he lived in San Diego. I interviewed him recently.”
Eastwood responded by telling reporters, “a guy like [Lee] should shut his face.”
“First of all, the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation, either,” Lee shot back. While Lee isn’t backing down on the facts of the war, he does say he’s sorry their exchange escalated into such a kerfuffle.
“I never expected for Clint to tell me to shut up,” he says. Today, the issue with Eastwood is “over, finito, we’re cool. The olive branch was extended.”
It’s a truce brokered two months ago by Hollywood’s ultimate inside man.
“I was at an NBA finals, Lakers versus the Celtics,” Lee says. “[At] halftime [I’m] going to the restroom. I saw Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Eddie Murphy sitting together. I stopped by to say hi and Jeffrey jokes, ‘Leave Clint alone’ and we all laugh.
“But Steven and I went off to the side and discussed it, and I asked him to relay a message to Clint that I meant no disrespect, that I was extending the olive branch,” he adds. “Steve called Clint in the morning the next day. And it’s finito.”
Since Lee believes his intentions are often misunderstood – by fellow directors, pundits and especially reporters – we asked how he would write the headline for this story. So that, for once, the media might get it right.
After first offering “Defend Brooklyn!” he pauses, thinks for a second.
“Wait, I have the headline,” he blurts out. “What about, ‘Native Son: Just Doing His Thing’?”
The right thing – with a hell of an attitude.
Sandra.Guzman@
nypost.com