Bamboozled - When Spike Lee Stuck It To Blackface

A box office bomb on its release, reappraisal is long overdue.

In the wake of his long-overdue Oscar win for the BlacKkKlansman screenplay and the success of his Netflix project Da 5 Bloods, it’s easy to forget that Spike Lee hasn’t always been in vogue. In the late 1990s, the much-feted director of Do The Right Thing (1989) and Jungle Fever (1991) was experiencing something of creative slump.

Perhaps exhausted after finally bringing his epic Malcolm X (1992) to the big screen, Lee’s movies were either ill-conceived – phone sex comedy Girl 6 (1996) – underappreciated – his stunning adaptation of the Richard Price novel Clockers (1995) – or misunderstood.

Always a ballsy filmmaker, Spike’s determination to make movies about the Million Man March (1996’s Get On The Bus) and David Berkowitz’s 1970s New York murder spree (1999’s Summer Of Sam) ought to have been rewarded with more than just lukewarm reviews and public outcry.

A die-hard Knicks fan who’s enjoyed a successful commercial relationship with Michael Jordan, it must also have broken Lee’s heart when his 1998 basketball movie He Got Game fouled out at the box office.

No matter the indifference, Spike Lee kept on working. Indeed, as synonymous as he’s become with controversy, the writer-director-producer deserves far more recognition for his work ethic.