Spike Lee documents Kobe Bryant and 'strange' behavior

August 21, 5:37 PMCelebrity Q&A ExaminerCarla Hay

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Spike Lee

Spike Lee has documentary fever in 2009. The outspoken filmmaker’s two films released this year are documentaries: "Kobe Doin’ Work" (about basketball star Kobe Bryant) and "Passing Strange: The Movie," which shows the stage performance of the Broadway musical of the same name. Both of the films had their New York premieres at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival — the first time any of Lee’s new films were screened at the annual event.

In April 2009, as part of the "Meet the Filmmaker" series during the festival, Lee participated in a question-and-answer session at the Apple store in New York City’s Soho neighborhood. In between showing clips from both films, Lee took questions from a moderator and people in the audience. The event began with the moderator reading off a list of Lee’s films, and Lee responded, "That’s a lot of work!" Here’s what else Lee had to say during the interview.

You’re catching up to Sidney Lumet.

I passed him. I’m trying to get Woody Allen. I got more films than Sidney Lumet. He’s still a great filmmaker. "Inside Man" was really ... "Dog Day Afternoon." A lot of it.

The [New York ] Knicks aren’t in the playoffs, so that freed up your schedule to be here. When do you think the Knicks will be back in contention?

Look, we’ve got a black president. Anything’s possible.

Spike Lee at the Apple store in New York City's Soho neighborhood

Since you’re such a well-known Knicks fan, the first film we’re gong to talk about is a close look at basketball: "Kobe Doin’ Work," which documents a day in the life of Kobe Bryant. How did that movie come about?

There was a film at Cannes several years ago about one of the great soccer players: "Zidane." What really struck me about that film was that all the cameras were on him [Zinedine Zidane]. I liked the film, and I said, "This could work better for basketball." So Kobe was the first person I thought of, and soccer was his first sport. I gave him a DVD of the "Zidane" film and said, "We should do something like this." And he said, "Fine. You just have to go through the necessary channels."

So I went to the NBA [National Basketball Association] Commissioner David Stern, the [NBA] Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver. Then I had to go to the Lakers’ owner, Dr. [Jerry] Buss’ daughter, Jeannie Buss. I had to go to the Lakers’ coach, Phil Jackson, because we wanted to go in the locker room.

And for this one game, we had 30 cameras on Kobe. He was miked. As I said before, Coach Phil Jackson let us bring a camera into the locker room — which he never does. So we filmed in the locker room before the game, at half-time and after the game. What’s exciting about this was it was not scripted. To me, that’s what I love about sports: It’s not scripted, so anything can happen.

And it’s kind of scary, because if Kobe gets hurt, we don’t have a film. If he gets in foul trouble, he has to sit out the game, and I don’t have a film. If he gets two technicals and gets thrown out of the game, we don’t have a film. So I told him before we started, "You can’t get thrown out of the game and you can’t get in any foul trouble!"

And all along we knew that once we finished the cut, we would like to have Kobe provide a commentary. So we had been done a long time, and for whatever reason — I know he’s busy — but we cannot schedule him to sit down and do the commentary. About three or four times, I was in L.A. on other business, so I could’ve done it then and there.

Spike Lee (pictured second from left) and Kobe Bryant (pictured second from right) filming "Kobe Doin' Work"

So finally, we say, "Let’s do [the commentary] when the Lakers come to New York." The West Coast [NBA] teams only come to New York one time. And the year before, he didn’t play because he got suspended. So we hadn’t seen him play in New York for two years. So the day that the Knicks were scheduled to play the Lakers the night after the Super Bowl. And Saturday night, the Lakers had played in Toronto, so they flew into New York early Sunday morning. He wanted to do it after the Super Bowl, but Andrew Bynum got hurt and [Kobe] said, "We can’t do it [the commentary]. We’ll do it after the game Monday night." This was another, "It’s not going to happen."

I said, "Do you really want to do t after the game? You’re going to be tired." And he said, "I promise I’ll do it." It’s funny how the spirits work. We’d been trying for months to get him to do it, and when we finally decided to do it is when he scores 61 points against the Knicks. Then we take him straight from the Garden to where we record the commentary. So it worked out …

Bruce Hornsby did the music for the film — the great Bruce Hornsby. He’d done stuff with me before. He wrote a song for Chaka Khan in "Clockers," and he wrote a song for "Bamboozled." And besides being a musician, he’s a huge basketball fan, too.

So what we attempted to do with this film, through sounds and the visuals, try to put the audience like the players see it, as Kobe sees it, because as a filmmaker I’m frustrated watching games on television. It’s non-imaginative, there are so many different angles they you can do, but you just usually see them running up and down the court, and usually the camera is midway up at mid-court, and they just pan back and forth. With the amount of cameras we had, we were able to get a different look.

Can you talk more about filming the shots from Kobe’s perspective?

That’s where I got the idea from the "Zidane" documentary. [Kobe] ended up winning the MVP last year. They should’ve beat the Celtics, but they didn’t.

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington at the 2009 NBA Western Conference finals in Los Angeles

Were you at the game where Kobe scored 61 points against the Knicks?

I was there.

How did the New York fans react?

Oh, they gave Kobe mad love. As I said in the commentary, I’d never heard Knicks fans cheering a MVP [who was] an opposing player. That’s unheard of. And he was moved by it. In a way, I was really glad that he scored 61 points, because it just really enhanced [that] he was on a high coming from the Garden and into the studio for the commentary.

Now, if a miracle had happened and we had beat the Lakers that night, it would’ve been like one or two words throughout the whole [commentary]. He was feeling great. In fact, he said that he felt like playing another game right then and there.

He said that while watching himself?

Yeah. He said he was so amped-up from scoring 61 and watching this, "I’m ready to lace them up again."

Kobe  Bryant (pictured second from left) in "Kobe Doin' Work"

Kobe is a star player, but he’s also almost like a coach, the way he interacts with the other members of his team. What’s your take on that?

He’s diagramming plays and stuff, but Phil Jackson had that in Chicago with Michael Jordan. I think will see how much of a coach [Kobe] is: He’s a coach in the locker room, on the bench, on the court telling players what they need to do and that type of stuff.

Did you get a lot of resistance from the NBA to get all that access?

No, that’s what they wanted. In fact, I asked the commissioner, "Do you worry about profanity?" He said, "No." This is going to broadcast on ESPN on May 16 … So when it’s broadcast, we’re going to bleep out the profanity, but when the DVD comes to, all the profanity is in. [The] commissioner had no problem with that at all.

Tell us about "Passing Strange," your other documentary out this year.

"Passing Strange" is a Broadway play that started at the Public Theatre and then moved up to Broadway at the Belasco Theatre. I saw it at the Public first. The book is by Stew and Heidi [Rodewald], who wrote the music and lyrics. It’s a wonderful, wonderful piece.

One of the producers of the play, Steve Klein, approached me about documenting this. Because so often, when a play is over, when a play shuts down, that’s it. You might have some stills, but there’s not really a living document of what happens, just people’s memories. We all felt that this thing ["Passing Strange"] was too good — despite the fact that … the marketing was terrible. The usual Broadway audience was not necessarily the right audience.

Spike Lee, Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Uma Thurman at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival

What was wrong with the marketing?

They didn’t try to reach out to the black or Hispanic community at all. I think one of the things that got them tripped up was part of the music is rock’n’roll, and they just think, "Black people and rock’n’roll. They’re not going to come." But come on. We made rock’n’roll. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, that’s all us. Louis Jordan, that’s us. It got appropriated. We still claim it …

Here’s the dangerous thing when you want to market a film or a Broadway play: You cannot base everything on, "Well, once we get Academy Award nominations or win the Academy Awards, we’ll get the box office." They [the "Passing Strange" team] got nominated for seven Tonys, and they were up against "In the Heights." And they were banking on continuing the run [of "Passing Strange"] on them winning the Tonys, and they only won one. So after they didn’t win [a lot of Tonys], it was like, "Well, that’s it." The decline in attendance cam every soon, and they can’t kept throwing money out the window. The show was going to close.

So we decided that we would document the last three shows. And so we did the last three shows. It was [the] Saturday matinee, Saturday evening, and the Sunday, the final show. It was all before live audiences. And then the next day we came in without an audience and filmed the whole play again, from start to finish. There was no audience, but we were able to put cameras onstage and not have cranes and all that stuff.

It’s a wonderful piece and I’m just glad that it looks like we’re going to finally get our theatrical distribution. We world premiered ["Passing Strange"] at Sundance, and it got a great, great response. And we’re getting our theatrical release in the summer here.

There were a couple of changes I wanted to make, but at the same time I had to respect the brilliant direction of Annie Dorsen had done with the play. She’s one of the creators. It started in Sundance at the writing workshop thing. But from the very beginning, I thought it was cinematic. She was very gracious to let us change a couple of things. And once I decided to do it, I was coming to the show every night. It was at the Belasco, where right now "Joe Turner Done Come and Gone" is there, so you should check out that play too …

So I saw ["Passing Strange"] many times, and the great cinematographer Matty Libatique, who shot for me "She Hate Me," "Inside Man," "Miracle at St. Anna," "Kobe Doin’ Work" and then this one ["Passing Strange"] too, we looked at it and figured out where we wanted to place the cameras.

Jesse Jackson and Spike Lee at the 2009 NBA All-Star Game in Phoenix

Same thing with "Kobe Doin’ Work." We walked all around the Staples Center — that’s where the Lakers play — and we had a diagram of the Staples Center and put X’s where we wanted cameras. So for "Passing Strange," Matty and I were underneath the theater. Underneath the stage, we had a bank of monitors, so all the camera operators had headphones on, so we were calling out what shots to get.

For "Kobe," we didn’t have that. We had production meetings where everybody was told what they had to get, and they had to get it. I bought Denzel’s seats. Denzel Washington’s seats are courtside, right opposite the Laker bench. So I had a small camera, so in time outs, I’d run form my seat to stand from behind the Laker bench and shoot their time outs.

Both of these pieces were cut by the great cut master Barry Alexander Brown … We had a ton of footage. That’s the thing: it’s great to shoot, tape with all these cameras, but we’ve got to look at that stuff.

How did you edit something that was shot on 30 cameras?

We couldn’t put 30 cameras at a time [in the editing process], so it was like a block of five that we divided into the screen. We did a live cut with "Passing Strange." With "Kobe," it was an ABC nationally televised game, so we had a live cut of that. So it was a lot of editing.

Can you talk about your emotional response to "Passing Strange"?

I loved it from the very beginning, but I should’ve told you a little synopsis of what it’s about. It’s about a young, African-American male growing up in South Central L.A. during the late ‘70s who has a hard time trying to fit in. He doesn’t fit in with the people in the ‘hood and he doesn’t fit in with the white people in L.A.

Like many people, he feels he must find himself and go to Europe. And this is his odyssey. He lives South Central and goes to Europe first: Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam he goes to Berlin. And he also has a conflict with his mother, who really can’t understand why you have to go to another country to find yourself. So it’s a great story. And when you add the wonderful lyrics and the musicality that Stew and Heidi had …

I grew up loving musicals. So hopefully, one day I’ll get to do a full-fledged musical. There have been several films [I’ve done] where we had musical numbers, but not like that, all the way through. I just recently saw "West Side Story" here, and I encourage everyone to check that out on Broadway. It’s really great.

Daniel Breaker and Colman Domingo in "Passing Strange"

A lot of your films are larger-than-life, like musicals can be …

I don’t look at it that way. I just think music is a tool that filmmakers can use, the same way they use editing, costume design, production design. It’s one of the tools filmmakers have, whether it be score or source music.

Can you talk a little more about the music in "Kobe Doin’ Work"?

The obvious choice would be to put hip-hop to it, but that’s not something we wanted to do. We wanted Bruce Hornsby to play his acoustic piano.

What about your goal to direct a movie musical? What are your favorite musicals or musicals you would you consider adapting to the big screen?

I’ve never seen a film where I said, "I wish I would’ve done that," because I don’t think like that. There’s no "woulda/coulda/shoulda." If I didn’t direct the film, I didn’t direct it. My mother was taking me to Broadway musicals when I was real little. So that’s where my influence comes from. As I mentioned before, "West Side Story" is one of my favorites of all time. What I liked about the [Broadway] revival is that they incorporated Spanish. So some of the dialogue and some of the lyrics are now sung in "Spanish."

Was there ever a time when you were making a film where you thought you were overwhelmed and in over your head?

That only happened on "She’s Gotta Have It" and "School Daze." It wasn’t until my third film ["Do the Right Thing"] where I felt confident as a director. But the first two films, I didn’t feel confident, especially interacting with actors.

Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee at the New York premiere of "Miracle at St. Anna"

What films and what directors have inspired you?

Growing up, I didn’t know I wanted to be a filmmaker. The idea of being a filmmaker, I didn’t think about until college. Billy Wilder, [Akira] Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, great filmmakers like that.

What inspires you to make controversial and racially themed movies?

Very good question. When I’m getting ready to do a film, I don’t say, "What controversial subject matter can I do?" That’s not really a thought process. It’s really the story I want to tell. And I think that the word "controversial" is over-used. Sometimes I think that you could use the word "thought-provoking" instead of "controversial." Some people tend to pick out the films dealing with race in this country, like "Do the Right Thing," "Malcolm X," "Jungle Fever."

Do you plan to do a movie about all the political and economic change that’s been going on recently?

Hopefully, the next film [I do] will be the sequel to "Inside Man," and it’ll take place in a world where people have lost their jobs left and right, lost their homes and are hurting.

Out of all the players in the NBA, why did you choose Kobe Bryant to document?

Well, he ended up being the MVP. He ended up taking the Lakers to the finals, where they should’ve beat Boston. There’s really only two players: LeBron [James] or Kobe.

If you did another sports movie, what would it be about?

The next thing I want to do in sports probably is the World Cup when it takes place in South Africa. I’m trying to figure out the angle for that, but I definitely would like to be filming in South Africa in 2010 for the World Cup.

Spike Lee at the 2008 American Film Festival in Deauville, France

What advice would you have for aspiring filmmakers?

I get asked this question a lot. It’s not a secret formula. I don’t care who you ask, whether it’s me, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas. There’s not any one thing any of us can tell you that’s going to be like, "Abracadabra! Presto chango! And you’re a filmmaker!" I think that you have to find your own way.

I think that if you did your research, and you look at the rebirth of independent cinema — which was really the last 30 or so years — if you did a survey and looked at the films of first-timers, I would say more than half of them were people who directed their own scripts.

So if you’re a writer/director, you have a much better chance of getting your films made if you write a great script — versus trying to be a director trying to find a property, hook up with a writer, option a script, comic-book a story, whatever.

I didn’t realize this when I was in elementary school, but my English teacher would tell us all the time that if you can write, no matter what you want to do, you’ll be so much ahead in whatever field you chose to pursue. It’s so much easier. Not that it’s easy, but if you’re a writer/director, you have a much better chance. And if you’re not a writer, you have to make sure you hook up with somebody who can write.

Did being a writer/director help "She’s Gotta Have It" get made?

I was always interested in writing, even in elementary school. P.S. 7, P.S. 8, junior high school. I went to John Dewey High School in Coney Island. Creative writing was always one of my favorite classes. I wrote the scripts at NYU [New York University], but "She’s Gotta Have It" came on the heels of an attempt to do a feature film that didn’t work out. My filmmaking capacity was not up to what the script called for. After that, I tried to … write a film with two or three people in a room, and that turned out to be "She’s Gotta Have It."

Is "Crooklyn" based on your upbringing?

Yes. It’s semi-autobiographical about the Lee family growing up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, late ‘60s/early ‘70s.

Spike Lee, Danny Aiello and Samuel L. Jackson at the New York City party celebrating the DVD/Blu-ray release of "Do the Right Thing: 20th Anniversary Edition" in June 2009

Do you think you could make a film like "Do the Right Thing" now, given that so much of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn has become gentrified?

We gave an indication of the gentrification to come in "Do the Right Thing" in the John Savage character [who] bought that brownstone on that block. But you’re right. The thing about gentrification, I always wonder where the people go. Where are they going? We lived in Cobble Hill. We were [one of the few] black families to live in Cobble Hill, but my mother wanted to buy a brownstone. She bought a brownstone in Fort Greene. There were no white folks in Fort Greene then.

And now? Sidewalk cafes, linen[-covered] tables, garbage is picked up all the time now, more police. Same thing with Harlem, same thing with Bedford-Stuyvesant. If it brings the neighborhood up, that fine. But I want to know: Where do the people move to who leave? It really comes down to affordable housing in New York City. If it keeps going, you have to have $10 million just to live here.

The reason why Bed-Stuy and Fort Greene and Harlem became gentrified was because the rents were so high everywhere else — even the Lower East Side. No one wanted to live on the Lower East Side [in the past]. And now? Forget about it! That’s something that [New York Mayor Mike] Bloomberg will have to take a look at: having affordable housing in New York City.