Spike Lee: the Impact of She's Gotta Have it

This paper will primarily deal with the impact and making of Lee’s first film, She’s Gotta Have It. I will also give a brief introduction to the history of Black American filmmaking, and make a few reflections on the future of Black American filmmaking. Following a chronological outline, the first part of the paper will be the historical background, the second part will deal with the making of and the ideas behind She’s Gotta Have It, the third part will deal with Spike Lee’s career - sparked by the success of She’s Gotta Have It, and the last part will deal with the new wave of Black directors.

I have decided to exclude a discussion of Black actors in film, mainly due to the size of the paper, but also due to the difference in impact actors and directors have on the Hollywood system. Nelson George validates this narrowing of the subject in his book Blackface; Reflections on African-Americans and the Movies:

...Eddie Murphy has asserted that the wave of post-1987 African-American films is ’a spinoff of my shit...’ Well, that’s simply not true. From his debut in 48 HRS. in 1982 to 1986, the year of She’s Gotta Have It, the only gigs in Hollywood came via rap films...and music driven projects...Murphy like [Richard] Pryor, was a movie star who generated revenue but did not create opportunities for filmmakers...If you look at films that were distributed and funded post-Eddie and post-Spike, it’s clear where the spark for this wave (good or bad) was ignited...It is directors who create movements in cinema...

I agree with George, and will only briefly mention Black Hollywood stars like Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, and Sidney Poitier. They were after all at times the only Black representatives in Hollywood.

Spike Lee is an important part of the history of Black filmmaking. He has managed to change the way Hollywood view Black Americans, and their place in the movie industry. He has been able to pick up where directors like Oscar Micheaux and Melvin Van Peebles left off, by refining their methods and ideas. Lee has ten years into his career succeeded in his mission to give more Blacks access to Hollywood.

Oscar Micheaux started the race for putting the Black experience on the screen. He realized that if there was to be an unbiased portrayal of Blacks in film, a Black director had to make the movies, Black people could not wait for Hollywood to make them. This was later realized by Micheaux’s successors Melvin Van Peebles and Spike Lee. Clearly, there is a lineage between Micheaux, Van Peebles, Lee, and John Singleton.

Micheaux is a key figure in Black American cinema. He was the first director to make films exclusively with the Black audience in mind. His films centred around Black life and Black experiences, this was later picked up by Melvin Van Peebles in the early 1970s. Micheaux financed his movies by selling advance bookings to Black theaters. The larger part of Micheaux’s work has disappeared or been destroyed, and will never be seen again. Most of his films were clearly exploitational, containing sex scenes with no direct relation to the stories, but some dealt with the trials and tribulations of Black life. He produced and directed more than 30 independent feature films, and seven long novels, all of them released over three decades, starting in 1918.

When Micheaux stopped making movies, there was no one around to continue where he left off. For years, there were no movies about Black life by Black directors. In 1971, director Melvin Van Peebles had had enough. He decided to make a movie reflecting the lives he had witnessed, growing up in predominantly Black areas of inner cities. He invested $100,000 of his own money, got $50,000 from Bill Cosby, and managed to eventually gather $500,000 to make a film that he titled Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song. The film came off to a slow start, but ended up making $10 million.

The success of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song, sparked what is known as the blaxploitation era. The blaxploitation films were all made on low-budgets and were released during the first half of the 1970s. Ephraim Katz describes them as typically being "crime thrillers laden with violence and sex." Edward Guerrero sees three factors behind the arrival of the blaxploitation films: 1) The heightened social and political awareness of African-Americans, 2) The discontent with Hollywood’s portrayal of Blacks, and 3) The lack of money-making movies during the 1960s. In other words, Hollywood saw that a film aimed at an audience they had long been neglecting was making money, and realized that there still was "new" money to be made

When the blaxploitation era ended in the late seventies, so did the jobs for Black directors in Hollywood. The way Hollywood portrayed Blacks took a step back, turning stereotypical. Close to all Black roles in Hollywood produced movies in the 80’s were in the "so-called buddy movies," this goes for all of Eddie Murphy’s successful movies to the Lethal Weapon series. It was as if Hollywood were afraid of making movies with Black themes, and on the rare occasions when they did try - Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America - they failed. The portrayal of Black life took place in the independent arena.

"Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It opens in New York, and the world of Black film changes forever." The words are Nelson George’s, and describes the importance of Lee’s film. She’s Gotta Have It has been seen as a landmark by both critics and aspiring directors. Lee himself says: "’I’m not the first African-American filmmaker. Those who torched this path for me were people like Oscar Micheaux...[and] Melvin Van Peebles. I just picked it up’." The magazine Filmmaker recently hailed She’s Gotta Have It as "one of the most successful no-budgeters of all time, not just on the basis of its own financial returns...but also by virtue of the career it launched," and listed it as the third most important independent film ever. The film, and the much read companion book, has proved to be an inspiration to both Black and White filmmakers. Lee’s work proved that it was possible to make a career in independent film.

Spike Lee did not shy away from using the talents of his family when he made the film. His father Bill scored the film, his sister Joie played one of the parts, and brother David shot the still photos. She’s Gotta Have It was made on an astonishingly low budget of $175,000, that Lee managed to scramble together from friends and relatives. The film was shot in the attic of a restaurant during twelve intense days, and Lee did the editing in his own apartment. The film ended up grossing $7.5 million in the US and Canada.

When She’s Gotta Have It was released in 1986, Hollywood had been ignoring the Black experience for years. Independent filmmakers had continued to portray Black life, but most of these films got no or little attention. Until She’s Gotta Have It came along that is.

One of the things Lee wanted to accomplish when making the film was to show ordinary Black people, as a contrast to the superficial characters played by Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. It was also a reaction to the stereotyped portrayal of Blacks in films like The Color Purple. Lee’s characters were to be everyday Blacks, speaking and acting the way Black people do. Lee managed to put Black romance back on the screen, something that had not been done since the end of the blaxploitation era. Maybe the absence of Black love in films during the first half of the 1980s was the reason that the MPAA X-rated the film the first three times they reviewed it.

Spike Lee is the son of jazz musician Bill Lee and a schoolteacher. He was born in Atlanta, but grew up in New York, where he got his master in film at the New York University Film School. His final film at NYU was a short film titled Joe’s Bed Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, the film received the Student Award of the Motion Picture Academy.

After releasing She’s Gotta Have It in 1986, Spike Lee has directed another nine feature length films for theatre release: School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), and Get on the Bus (1996). He has also directed more than 30 music videos, close to 30 commercials, as well as nine short films, written six books, all about his first six films - She’s Gotta Have It through Malcolm X.

Lee declared from the start that he did not want to keep on working as an independent filmmaker once he had finished She’s Gotta Have It. He always wanted to get access to Hollywood, and to working with the major studios. In the course of going from independently produced films to films produced for major studios, Lee’s work has become more radical. At the same time he has managed to keep getting paid, and making provocative movies. Spike Lee realized that if you want to change the way White America view Blacks, it has to be done via pop culture. The success of his films has not only secured his own future in filmmaking, it also set off a wave of new Black filmmakers.

Do the Right Thing, Lee’s third feature length film, is an important landmark in the history of Black filmmaking. The film was hugely successful, making three times its production cost in its first twelve weeks. Guerrero claims that "there can be no doubt that the popular reception and box-office power of Do the Right Thing opened the door for the rush of Black films to come in the 1990s"

Five years into his career, Spike Lee was already the most successful Black director ever. Not only shown by the fact that he had put out five films in five years, he had also got the rights to direct a movie about Malcolm X, based on his autobiography. Before Lee, the mere mentioning of making a movie about the controversial civil rights leader was provocative, handing the project to a Black director was unthinkable

Lee’s tenth film, Get on the Bus, was made on a budget of a mere $2.4 million all of them contributed by successful black men. This is more or less the same way Lee financed She’s Gotta Have It in 1986. Lee felt that if he wanted to make a film about the million man march, the money should come from black men. The film was later sold to Columbia Pictures for $3.6 million. Lee said in an interview with Matthew S. Scott in Black Enterprise that "there are going to be projects that Hollywood just don’t want to make...But just because they don’t want to make them doesn’t mean that those films shouldn’t be made." The men backing the project later decided to form 15 Black Men Produc-tions, the first Black film production company. They aspire to produce two Black films a year. 15 Black Men Productions consists of: Spike Lee, producer Reuben Cannon, Merryll Lynch Vice President Reggie Bythewood, writer/producer Lem Daniels, lawyer Johnnie Cochran, Black Entertainment Television CEO Robert Johnson, San Antonio Spurs forward Charles Smith, Taco Bell senior Vice President Olden Lee, music executives Jheryl Bush and Larkin Arnold, investment banker Calvin Grigsby, and actors Danny Glover, Will Smith, Wesley Snipes, and Robert Guillaume.

Lee uses his own production company, 40 Acres & a Mule, to produce his movies, and his shop Spike’s Joint sells the merchandise related to his movies. He also used 40 Acres & a Mule when he worked as executive producer for three movies; Drop Squad, New Jersey Drive, and Tales From the Hood, all of them released during 1994 and 1995. Producing these three movies fulfilled an old dream of Lee’s, to give young aspiring Black directors a hand on their way to Hollywood.

The impact of She’s Gotta Have It and the attention Lee has gotten ever since, along with the works of a few pioneering Black filmmakers, started the new wave of Black film that had its peak in 1991. Originally 19 films by Black directors were announced, some were delayed and others cancelled, but by the end of 1991, 15 Black films had reached the theaters. Still, this was more Black films released in one year than ever before.

Fellow Black directors, such as Mario Van Peebles - the son of Melvin Van Peebles - said in an article in Time that "if it weren’t for Spike I wouldn’t be here." This was in 1991 the year of the new Black wave. Lee welcomed the competition, but at the same time he had a hard time with being called a hero. He has claimed that he really did not do anything new, he simply continued the work of previous Black filmmakers.

Ernest Dickerson, who has worked as Spike Lee’s cinematographer since day one, made his directorial debut with Juice in 1992. The film was an urban drama, featuring the late rapper Tupac Shakur, Dickerson has later directed Surviving the Game, featuring rapper Ice T, and the television series spin-off Tales From the Crypt Presents Demon Knight. Dickerson’s work with Lee gave him the experience he needed to embark on a career as director.

One of the most influential films to come out of the "post-She’s Gotta Have It era," is without doubt John Singleton’s coming-of-age drama Boyz N the Hood, again a film featuring a rapper - Ice Cube. The film reached popularity with both young and old Blacks. It managed to stay away from being a pure "gangster film," and at the same time not being overly "preachy".

John Singleton has since Boyz N the Hood put out two films, Poetic Justice - starring Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur - and Higher Learning, again with Ice Cube in one of the leading roles. His next film, Rosewood, is a true story about a series of lynchings in a small successful predominantly Black town. The film will be released in early 1997. Singleton has also started preproduction on his next project, a modern-day rendition of the blaxploitation classic Shaft. To my knowledge this is the first time a film by a black director is remade. Singleton is slowly building a portfolio of films that will guarantee his place in the history of film.

So, what makes this new Black wave of directors different from the blaxploitation era? Edward Guerrero sees one difference in the cause for the emergence of the two waves of Black directors picked up by Hollywood:

The blaxploitation boom emerged from a period of militant political activism fuelled by the rising identity consciousness and social expectations of African Americans at the end of the civil rights movement...In contrast, the Black movie boom of the 1990s has materialized out of a climate of long-muted Black frustration and anger over the worsening political and economic conditions that African Americans continue to endure in the nation’s decaying urban centers. It is however still too early to say if the new Black wave is lasting, or if it will fade away due to exploitation like the blaxploitation era did.

By the end of the 1960s, the only presence of Blacks in Hollywood were through actors and especially through the works of Sidney Poitier. The blaxploitation era started as a reaction to this. The new Black wave in many ways follow this pattern. For years, up until the release of She’s Gotta Have It, the only prominent Blacks in film were Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor, both actors. Spike Lee showed that it was possible to make money on Black themed movies.

Lee is somewhat ambiguous to the Black films that followed his success, and the so-called ’hood-films in particular. He has himself been hesitant to make a film set in the urban ghettos, afraid of contributing to creating a new stereotype of Blacks. When he finally decided to make Clockers, a film about drug dealing Black youths, he hoped that it would be the last ghetto film ever

The second half of the 1990s is going to be crucial to Black filmmaking. Spike Lee has been able to continue to make films on a regular basis, and so has John Singleton. The challenge will be to keep the rest of the Black directors in business. Richard Corliss points this out in a Time article discussing the new Black wave, saying: "...Having proved that they can tell the stories they lived, they are now challenged with spinning more universal human metaphors onto celluloid."

Spike Lee took the ideas of Oscar Micheaux and Melvin Van Peebles and refined them. He, like Micheaux and Van Peebles before him, makes his movies for a black audience. He made his first film the same way Van Peebles made his most successful film, using his own money and money borrowed from friends and relatives. He also managed to do what both Micheaux and Van Peebles failed to do, he managed to cut deals with the major Hollywood studios. Lee’s ability to deal with major studios has opened the gates to Hollywood for other Black directors like Ernest Dickerson, Mario Van Peebles, and John Singleton. He has also managed to continue to put out movies on a regular basis, so far he has released ten full length films in ten years. There is no sign of him stopping, he will continue by any means necessary.