(FromL) US actor Adam Driver, US
director Spike Lee and US actor John
David Washington pose on May 15,
2018 during a photocall for the film
"BlacKkKlansman" at the 71st edition
of the Cannes Film Festival in
Cannes, southern France. (AFP PHOTO
/ Alberto PIZZOLIALBERTO
PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images)
John
David
Washington
stars as
Ron
Stallworth
and
Laura
Harrier
as
Patrice
in Spike
Lee’s
“BlacKkKlansman.”
(Photo:
David
Lee,
Handout)
Spike
Lee
reaches
a career
high
point
with
“BlacKkKlansman”
By
David
D’Arcy
Tell
Us USA
BROOKLYN,
N.Y. -
In
“BlacKkKlansman,”
a young
black
detective
penetrates
the Ku
Klux
Klan in
Colorado
in the
1970s.
The
latest
Spike
Lee
joint,
as the
director
calls
his
films,
is a
hybrid
of drama
and
comedy,
lurching
at its
end to
documentary
footage
of the
bloody
Charlottesville,
Va.,
march of
extreme
right
groups
in
August.
The
film
shows
video
footage
of Klan
leader
David
Duke, a
march
participant,
quoting
Donald
Trump on
the need
to “take
America
back.”
“That
ain’t
fake
news.
That’s
not fake
film.
That is
real,”
Lee
declared.
“Spike
Lee did
not take
that
footage
to my
friend
George
Lucas at
ILM and
say,
‘Fix
this.’”
Seated
on a
couch on
the
second
floor of
his
production
company’s
office a
block
from the
Brooklyn
Academy
of
Music,
Lee, 62,
was
surrounded
by movie
posters,
sports
memorabilia
and
paintings
of
African
American
figures
from
history.
“There’s
two
words
that
have
been
prominent
in my
films,
going
all the
way back
to
‘School
Daze’ in
1988,
and
those
two
words
are
‘Wake
up.’
“‘School
Daze’
ends
when
Giancarlo
Esposito
and
Laurence
Fishburne
look to
the
camera
and say,
‘Wake
up,’
looking
at the
audience,”
Lee
said.
“My next
film,
‘Do the
Right
Thing,’
begins
with
Samuel
Jackson
saying,
‘Wake
up.’”
“So
I’ve
been
saying
that
since
1988,”
he said.
“Somebody
says,
‘Wake
up,’ I
think,
four
times in
this
film.”
This
year
marks
the 32nd
anniversary
of Lee’s
no-budget
debut
feature,
“She’s
Gotta
Have
It,” an
indie
sensation
when
that
field
had few
black
directors
whose
names
anyone
knew.
Lee was
just out
of New
York
University
film
school,
where he
now has
tenure.
“She’s
Gotta
Have It”
has a
new life
today,
as a
Netflix
series.
By
the time
his
first
feature
premiered,
Lee
said, he
had
already
made his
first
film
about
the
Klan, a
student
project
called
“The
Answer,”
in his
first
year at
NYU. Lee
conceived
of “The
Answer”
in
response
to D.W.
Griffith’s
heroic
depiction
of the
Klan in
“The
Birth of
a
Nation”
and to
what he
says was
ignored
about
that
film’s
legacy.
“My
problem
with the
film was
the
social
impact
of the
film,
how it
led to
the
rebirth
and
re-emergence
of the
Klan,
how
President
Woodrow
Wilson
said it
was like
‘writing
history
with
lightning.’
This was
directly
related
to black
people
being
lynched,
castrated
— and
that was
never
discussed
in
class,”
he
recalled.
Lee
hesitated.
“I’m not
one of
these
people
who say
that
‘Huckleberry
Finn,’
one of
the
greatest
American
novels,
should
not be
taught
in class
because
of the
word
‘n—,’ —
that, or
Harper
Lee’s
“To Kill
a
Mockingbird,”
he said.
“I
thought,
let’s
have
‘The
Birth of
a
Nation’
in
class,
but
let’s
have an
expansive
discussion
of it
and not
leave s—
out. So
my film
‘The
Answer’
was,
‘you
left s—
out,’”
he said.
It’s
now more
than 30
years
later.
Scenes
from the
1915
Griffith
epic of
Klansmen
on
horseback
defending
the
white
race
from
freed
slaves
and
treacherous
whites
in
blackface
appear
and
reappear
throughout
“BlacKkKlansman.”
Lee’s
film
rejoins
Klan
history
in the
1970s,
when Ron
Stallworth
(John
David
Washington)
was the
first
black
cop in
Colorado
Springs.
Lee
learned
of
Stallworth’s
memoir
of the
same
title
when he
got a
call
from
Jordan
Peele,
director
of the
2017
independent
hit “Get
Out,”
which
was
nominated
for a
best
picture
Academy
Award.
Peele
had
acquired
Stallworth’s
book and
sent Lee
a script
based on
it.
Peele,
who once
thought
he might
direct
it, is
producer
of
“BlacKkKlansman.”
“When
they
said
Spike
Lee, I
broke
out into
a great
big
grin,”
said
Stallworth,
65, who
spoke
over the
telephone
from El
Paso,
Texas,
where he
now
lives.
In
Stallworth’s
memoir,
the
young
detective
telephones
a local
Klan
office
after he
sees a
Klan ad
in the
newspaper.
Fluent
“in
English
and
jive,”
as he
described
black
English,
Stallworth
professed
his
hatred
for
blacks
over the
telephone
and
applied
for
membership.
A white
cop who
happened
to be
Jewish,
Flip
Zimmerman
(Adam
Driver
in the
film),
became
his
undercover
surrogate
in the
flesh.
Soon the
two Ron
Stallworths,
on the
phone
and in
person,
were
trusted
Klan
members.
The
black
Stallworth
still
has his
membership
card.
Eventually
Stallworth
found a
new
phone
friend,
the
Grand
Wizard
David
Duke
himself.
When
Duke
traveled
to
Colorado
Springs
to rally
Klan
members,
Zimmerman
met him
in
person,
and
police
supervisors
assigned
Stallworth,
a black
cop, to
be the
Klan
leader’s
security
detail.
That
status
gave the
black
Stallworth
access
to Klan
events
during
Duke’s
visit.
Lee’s
script,
co-written
with
Kevin
Willmott,
burnishes
the
historical
record
with a
beautiful
girlfriend
for
Stallworth,
a
menacing
police
traffic
stop of
black
leader
Kwame
Ture
(earlier
known as
Stokely
Carmichael),
and a
deadly
Klan
bombing.
Outdoor
shots
for the
story
set in
Colorado
were
filmed
in
Ossining,
N.Y.
Stallworth,
who says
he likes
the
film,
said Lee
Hollywood-ized
the
story.
“There
was no
bombing.
The Klan
was
planning
to bomb
a gay
bar,” he
said,
“so his
plotline
fit in
with
their
plans.”
Lee
pleads
guilty
to
injecting
drama.
“There
isn’t a
film
that’s
been
made in
the
history
of
cinema
where
there
hasn’t
been
some
embellishment.
The
title
doesn’t
say,
‘This is
based on
a true
story.’
The
title
says,
‘This is
based on
for
real,
for real
s—.’
“If
that’s a
criticism,
that
doesn’t
bother
me,” the
director
added,
“I
remember
my
mother
telling
me,
‘Cleopatra
did not
look
like
Elizabeth
Taylor.’”
By
way of
explanation,
Lee
said,
“My
mother
loved
movies.
My
father
hated
movies.
And I’m
the
eldest,
so I was
my
mother’s
movie
date.
She had
a thing
about
Cleopatra.”
More
convincing
than
Taylor
as
Cleopatra
for Lee
was
Topher
Grace’s
David
Duke,
fastidiously
groomed
and
wearing
a
hairpiece
as the
Klan’s
Grand
Wizard
in that
era.
“Topher
killed
it,” the
director
said
with a
serene
expression.
John
David
Washington,
Denzel’s
son,
plays
Stallworth
as an
earnest
young
cop with
a ’70s
Afro and
a
persuasive
phone
voice.
At age
6, he
played a
child in
Lee’s
“Malcolm
X.” Lee
cast him
as
Stallworth
without
an
audition.
“I told
him I
knew him
before
he was
born.
We’re
family,”
Lee
said.
Ron
Stallworth
recalled
that
“when
they
asked
who I
wanted
to play
me, I
said,
‘Denzel
Washington.’
But I
was 25
when the
incidents
in the
book
took
place. I
thought,
‘OK, I
can’t
get the
daddy,
so I got
the
son.’”
Thinking
back 40
years,
Stallworth
recalled,
“When I
was
dealing
with
David
Duke, I
was
feeding
information
from him
regarding
where
they
were
going to
be
marching,
what
cities
around
the
country.
“After
he would
tell me,
I would
hang up
and I
would
call the
police
departments
in those
cities
to alert
them
that at
such
date and
time,
David
Duke and
his Klan
forces
would be
in your
city,
conducting
a march
and
possible
cross-burning.
They
would
inform
their
troops,
and when
Duke
would
show up
with his
people,
he would
find an
organized
effort
in place
to
counteract
that,”
he said.
“Duke,
when he
called
me back,
would
tell me
how
surprised
he was
at the
preparedness
of local
police
in those
area.”
In
watching
the
Charlottesville
riots at
the end
of Lee’s
film,
Stallworth
said,
“None of
that
surprised
me. The
Klan
naturally
recruits
those
disgruntled
people
who
today we
would
call
Donald
Trump
supporters.
That’s
the
natural
base for
groups
like the
Klan.
“Donald
Trump is
the
physical
embodiment
of what
David
Duke
wanted
to
accomplish
40 years
earlier.”
Lee
disputed
that his
film was
targeting
Trump,
whom he
calls
Agent
Orange —
“I can’t
say his
name.”
“I
don’t
approach
my films
by
saying
who’s
the
target.
I use
the word
‘story’
instead
of
‘target.’
There
has to
be a
story,”
Lee
said.
“Just
the
premise
of this
film is
high
concept.
A black
man
infiltrates
the Ku
Klux
Klan.
That’s
all
you’ve
got to
say. How
many
words is
that?
“Eight
words,”
he
shouted.
“Those
eight
words
tell the
entire
story.
You
can’t
get more
Hollywood
than a
movie
that can
be
described
in eight
words.
That’s
high,
high,
high
concept.”
The
conversation
shifted
to a
practical
subject,
the Klan
robes
worn in
“BlacKkKlansman,”
and
whether
Lee had
burned
them or
was
saving
them for
a
sequel.
“There’s
no
sequel,”
he said,
laughing.
“We made
them. I
don’t
know
where
they
are. I
gotta
get ‘em
before
they go
on
eBay.”