Lee’s film, “Red Hook Summer,” focuses on a Brooklyn preacher (Clarke Peters), his grandson (right) and the boy’s friend.
PARK CITY, Utah — Shot entirely within 10 blocks of a Brooklyn housing project, Spike Lee’s powerful “Red Hook Summer” launched at the Sundance Film Festival with a profanity-filled attack on Hollywood from its feisty filmmaker.
The film centers on a 13-year-old, iPad-wielding private-school student from Atlanta (Jules Brown) who spends a summer with a grandfather he’s never met.
The old man, brilliantly played by Clarke Peters, operates boilers at the Red Hook projects where he lives. He’s also a preacher at a small black church who tries to instill a fear of God in his non-believer grandson, who becomes friends with a local girl (Toni Lysaith).
The film, which touches on such issues as gentrification and racism, met with warm applause. Afterward, there was debate about a surprise twist.
At the post-screening Q&A, Lee launched into what he later apologized for as a “motherf – – king rant’’ about why he personally funded the movie, which he said cost less than $1 million, instead of seeking studio financing.
The fireworks started with a question from comedian Chris Rock, who was in the audience along with Cuba Gooding Jr. and US Attorney General Eric Holder.
“You spent your own money, right?” asked Rock, who isn’t in the film. “What would you have done differently if you’d actually gotten a bunch of studio money? What else would have happened? Would you have blown up some s – – t?”
His voice rising, Lee said: “We never went to the studios with this film, Chris. I told you, we’re gonna do this motherf – – king film ourselves! The plan was to make the film, bring it to Sundance, and . . .”
Lee paused and apologized to Sundance director John Cooper, who was standing nearby, for seeming to assume his film would be accepted by the festival. “Sorry, John. We were gonna show it to you first,” said Lee, who has had just one other film screen at Sundance.
As the audience sat, stunned by his outburst, Lee said he and screenwriter James McBride conceived the project after becoming frustrated waiting for Universal Pictures to greenlight a sequel to “Inside Man,’’ his biggest commercial success.
Lee said he used his own money because “I didn’t want to hear no motherf – – king notes from the studio telling me . . . about what a young 13-year-old boy and girl would do in Red Hook. F – – k no.
“They know nothing about black people. Nothing!”
The film’s supporting cast includes Lee himself, playing a middle-aged version of Mookie, the pizza delivery man from “Do the Right Thing.” But he said “Red Hook Summer” is not “a motherf – – king sequel” to his 1989 breakthrough film.
“This film is another installment in my chronicle of the . . . great empire of Brooklyn,” he said.
In a calmer moment, Lee asked if there were any Brooklyn residents in the audience. Seeing a sea of upraised hands, many belonging to people of color, Lee exclaimed: “We doubled the black population of Utah! Maybe tripled it!’’