Spike Lee says studio heads and Donald Trump are too cozy to make Malcolm X today

Of course, it was hard to make Malcom X (a film based on the autobiography of the famed civil rights leader) in 1992. Lee clashed with studio Warner Bros. about run time and budget, pushing WB to let a “bond company take over the film in postproduction and shut it down,” which Lee now recalls as “the most I’ve been depressed in my life with the exception of my mother dying.” To see the film through to the finish line he sought cash infusions from prominent Black artists, athletes, and entrepreneurs, including Janet Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan, and Magic Johnson. With their help he was able to rehire the crew, and set things back in motion: “We had a press conference in Harlem to let the world know these prominent African Americans gave gifts, no strings attached, so I could finish this film. The next day, Warner Bros. took the film back from the bond company and started to finance it again,” he explains to THR. 

That being said, though Lee compares our current political and cultural moment to events of the past (The Vietnam War, Jackson State, Kent State, etc.), even he admits that “We haven’t seen this exactly. I mean before, I mean not even Nixon did the stuff this guy is doing.” And that refrain of what “couldn’t get made today” applies as much to the contraction of the industry as it does to the political climate. “I have a lot of friends here in L.A. that work within the industry, and no one’s working,” Lee observes. “In New York too. Might be a couple TV shows. People are hurting. Like I said, this is the year of living dangerously. Shout-out to Peter Weir [director of the 1983 movie The Year of Living Dangerously]!”