Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as ““She’s Gotta Have It””

MUSIC MONDAY: “Mo’ Better Music” – Spike Lee’s Greatest Hits Playlist in Honor of his 65th (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “Mo’ Better Music” – Spike Lee’s Greatest Hits Playlist in Honor of his 65th (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on March 21, 2022
by Jeff Meier (FB: Jeff.Meier.90)

In honor of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Spike Lee‘s 65th birthday yesterday, we’re celebrating the music from his movies in today’s Music Monday playlist, “Mo’ Better Music: Spike Lee’s Greatest Hits“:

Lee first made his mark on the Hollywood scene in the summer of 1986 with his independently-financed debut feature, She’s Gotta Have It.  From that start, it was clear that not only was Lee an original filmmaking voice, but also that he valued the role of music in his movies.

The body of musical work he has enabled through his movies spans the history of Black music, including Blues, Hip Hop, traditional R&B. His early career bloomed in the heyday of new jack swing, but he’s also served us gospel, jazz, and plenty of Stevie Wonder.

Lee’s  usual composer of choice, Terence Blanchard, has earned two Oscar nominations for his work on BlacKkKlansman and Da Five Bloods.

There also have been Number One Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Hits, E.U.‘s “Da Butt” from School Daze and Teddy Riley & Guy‘s “My Fantasy” from Do the Right Thing.

Working with his father, jazz musician Bill Lee (still alive at age 93) through his first four movies, Spike’s soundtrack choices displayed a musical depth of knowledge from the start.

“Nola” – the song about Nola Darling, the central character in She’s Gotta Have It – was sung on the original soundtrack by legendarily unsung vocalist Ronnie Dyson (the subject of a previous GBN playlist and profile – https://goodblacknews.org/?s=ronnie+dyson).

Though that soundtrack is one of the few Spike Lee soundtracks unavailable on Spotify, we’ve included a fairly faithful rendition of the song from contemporary jazz vocalist Jose James on our playlist.

To celebrate his 65 years, the playlist is comprised of 65 original songs and score selections from all of Spike Lee’s scripted features films with tracks were available for streaming (all the rest of his movies are included except Summer of Sam and the recent made-for-streaming Pass Over).

We’ve focused on titles that were either newly released or recorded for Spike’s movies, not on classic hits that just made their way onto the soundtrack.

And there’s plenty of great material to choose from, including multiple tracks from Prince, backup singer turned indie soul darling Judith Hill, Public Enemy, Terence Blanchard, and Stevie Wonder.

The Spike Lee soundtrack for Bamboozled introduced the first major song ever released by India.Arie — “Always In My Head.”

Though the soundtracks to Girl 6 and Get on the Bus are also unavailable on Spotify in album form, we’ve located the original Prince track “She Spoke 2 Me” from Girl 6 as well as a number of songs from the Get on the Bus soundtrack from God’s Property, Stevie Wonder, and Curtis Mayfield.

While Lee has mostly worked with Black composers and musicians, rootsy White rock musician Bruce Hornsby has worked on multiple Spike Lee movies, including songs for Bamboozled and Chi-raq, and a full score for Red Hook Summer.  He was also the composer for the lovely ballad “Love Me Still,” sung by Chaka Khan for the soundtrack to Clockers.

For his soundtrack to Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus, a 2014 horror film that Lee funded through Kickstarter, he issued a social media call for unsigned artists to submit songs and picked through over 800 submissions to find the songs he used – which included “As We May Dream,” another beautiful ballad from singer/songwriter Siedah Garrett of Michael Jackson duet fame.

Spike’s movies have also yielded some smooth new remakes of R&B standards – and we’re happy to include Stevie Wonder’s take on Bob Marley‘s “Redemption Song,” Erykah Badu‘s cover of Rufus featuring Chaka Khan’s “Hollywood,” Marc Dorsey‘s version of The Stylistics‘ “People Make the World Go Round,” and of course, Aretha Franklin‘s beautiful contribution to the Malcolm X soundtrack – her epic 8 minute rendition of Donny Hathaway‘s “Someday We’ll All Be Free.”

Most recently, Spike introduced his BlacKkKlansman‘audiences to a Prince rendition of the gospel classic “Mary Don’t You Weep” that had been originally recorded in 1983, but left in the vaults until its appearance in the closing credits of Lee’s movie.

In addition to all the above, you’re sure to uncover plenty of great but lesser-known material from Spike’s movies. With 24 scripted feature films under his belt, a Spike Lee film festival might take you a week of evenings to complete – but with our GBN playlist, you can cover all the musical memories from Spike’s movies in an afternoon.

Happy 65th birthday to Spike Lee! Though for many that’s retirement age, we hope to be updating this playlist with more great music from many more movies in the years to come.

Spike Lee to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at 2022 Directors Guild Awards

Spike Lee to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at 2022 Directors Guild Awards

By goodblacknews on January 21, 2022

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Spike Lee will be honored with the lifetime achievement award for his contributions to motion picture direction from the Directors Guild of America (DGA), according to Variety.com. The award is the organization’s top hono\.

“Icon. Trailblazer. Visionary. Spike Lee has changed the face of cinema, and there is no single word that encapsulates his significance to the craft of directing,” said Lesli Linka Glatter, president of the DGA. “From his groundbreaking Do the Right Thing, BlacKkKlansman and everything in between — to his signature ‘double dolly’ shot, Spike is an innovator on so many levels. His bold and passionate storytelling over the past three decades has masterfully entertained, as it held a stark mirror to our society and culture.”

New York University film school alum  Lee began his motion picture directing career by helming the independently produced She’s Gotta Have It, released in 1986, which in 2017 was adapted into a series for Netflix and in n 2019, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Some of Lee’s other notable films are School Daze, Mo Better Blues, Malcolm X, Jungle Fever, He Got Game, Clockers, Inside Man, Girl 6, Get on The Bus and his most recent release, Da 5 Bloods on Netflix.

Lee has also directed several award-winning documentaries, including 1997’s 4 Little Girls about the Alabama church bombings in 1963, and 2006’s When the Levees Broke, about Hurricane Katrina and the injustices and devastation it wrought on New Orleans and its Black and low-income communities.

Only 35 directors have been honored with the DGA lifetime achievement award since it started in 1953 (Cecil B. DeMille was the first recipient).

Lee is the first Black director to receive the award which will be given at the DGA’s 74th annual awards ceremony on March 12.

Spike Lee’s ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ Being Remade as 10-Episode Series for Netflix

By goodblacknews on September 17, 2016

(image via timeandtrees.com)
(image via timeandtrees.com)

article via blackamericaweb.com
Spike Lee’s 1986 film “She’s Gotta Have It” is headed to Netflix as a 10-episode series with all new actors.
The streaming service has ordered a remake of the film, which will also center on Nola Darling, a Brooklyn-based artist in her late twenties struggling to define herself and divide her time amongst her friends, her job and her three lovers: The Cultured Model, Greer Childs; The Protective Investment Banker, Jamie Overstreet; and Da Original B-Boy Sneakerhead, Mars Blackmon.
According to Variety, Lee will direct each half-hour installment and serve as executive producer on the project with his wife and producing partner Tonya Lewis Lee.
Lee released the following statement on the series pickup:
“SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT Has A Very Special Place In My Heart. We Shot This Film In 12 Days (2 Six Day Weeks) Way Back In The Back Back Of The Hot Summer Of 1985 For A Mere Total of $175,000. Funds That We Begged, Borrowed and Whatnot To Get That Money. This Is The 1st Official Spike Lee Feature Film Joint And Everything That We Have Been Blessed With In This Tough Business Of Film All Have Been Due To SGHI.
Now With The Passing (August 8th) Of The 30th Anniversary, It’s A Gift That Keeps On Giving. We Are Getting An Opportunity To Revisit These Memorable Characters Who Will Still Be Relevant And Avant Garde 3 Decades Later. With All That Said It Was My Wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, Producer In Her Own Right, Who Had The Vision To Take My Film From The Big Screen And Turn It Into An Episodic Series. It Had Not Occurred To Me At All. Tonya Saw It Plain As Day. I Didn’t.
We Are Hyped That NETFLIX Is Onboard With This Vision As Nola Darling, Mars Blackmon, Jamie Overstreet And Greer Childs DO DA DAMN THANG Now, Today In Da Republic Of Brooklyn, New York.”

Spike Lee to Receive Governors Award from Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences

By goodblacknews on August 27, 2015
Spike Lee (photo via huffingtonpost.com)
Spike Lee (photo via huffingtonpost.com)

Spike Lee, Gena Rowlands and Debbie Reynolds will be honored Nov. 14 at the seventh annual Governors Awards.  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences voted the awards at their Aug. 25 meeting. Following tradition, AMPAS representatives withheld the announcement until they could notify the recipients.
In 2009, the Academy broke out the Governors Awards into a separate, untelevised ceremony; the Oscarcast time constraints limited the number of honorees and the time devoted to each. So the separate ceremony was an experiment, but an immediate success. There was no pressure to select ratings-friendly individuals, and the board has often gone for people who are well-known in the industry but unfamiliar to the public.
The Academy can salute up to six people each year: four honorary Oscars, and one apiece for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Thalberg Award, which goes to a film producer for their body of work. It’s generally been four honorees, except for 2011, when there were three.
Lee and Rowlands will receive the annual honorary Oscars and Reynolds will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

NYC: A Screening Series Not to Be Missed Kicks Off Today! "Black Independents in New York, 1968–1986"

By goodblacknews on February 6, 2015
Tell It Like It Is

Kicking off today, Friday, February 6, 2015, is a must-attend series, presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center (NYC), titled “Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968–1986” – from the opener, Kathleen Collins‘ stately 1982 feature “Losing Ground” (read my review of the film here); to Ayoka Chenzira‘s humorous, though inciting short “black hair” travelogue, “Hair Piece A Film for Nappy-Headed People;” Camille Billops‘ devastating documentary on a young black woman’s struggles to come to terms with her physically abusive father (dead at the time of the making of the film) as well as a mother, abused herself, unable to protect her children in 1982’s “Suzanne Suzanne,” and more.
A series programmed by Michelle Materre and Film Society of Lincoln Center Programmer at Large Jake Perlin, co-presented by Creatively Speaking, other titles included in the program, which some of you would be familiar with, include Bill Gunn‘s seminal “Ganja & Hess” (a film that Spike Lee *reinterpreted* in his latest work, “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus”); William Greaves’ instructive “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm;” another Bill Gunn film, “Personal Problems” (which came after “Ganja”), the work of cinéma-vérité, capturing a middle class black family in crisis; St Clair Bourne’s intimate documentary capturing Amiri Baraka‘s trial and conviction for “resisting arrest” despite allegations of police harassment, in “In Motion: Amiri Baraka;” and much, much, much more.
Of course, given the period and city covered, the early work of Spike Lee is well represented, with “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads” and “She’s Gotta Have It,” both scheduled to screen.
Tickets for this must-attend series of rare screenings can be purchased online here.
It’s quite exhaustive, so I strongly encourage you to take full advantage, because you may never get another opportunity quite like this again, or anytime soon, after this run ends. Check out the full lineup here.
In the meantime, here’s a just-released trailer for the series:

article by Tambay A.Benson via blogs.indiewire.com

Spike Lee To Adapt His Feature "She’s Gotta Have It" As Series For Showtime

By goodblacknews on May 15, 2014

She's_Gotta_Have_It_film_posterSpike Lee is revisiting his debut feature, 1985′s She’s Gotta Have It, on the small screen. Showtime has put in development a half-hour series adaptation that updates the film, with Lee set to write and attached to direct. The project is taking a new, contemporary look at the characters and willspike leeexplore Lee’s unique and provocative points of view about race, gender, sexuality, relationships, and the gentrification in Brooklyn.

Showtime is a fitting home for the project as the pay cable network has built a whole slate of half-hour series that straddle comedy and drama in the tone of She’s Gotta Have It.

Lee made his breakthrough with She’s Gotta Have It, which he shot in 12 days during the summer of ’85 on a budget of $175,000.  The film, starring Tracy Camilla Johns as a young, sexually independent Brooklynite who juggles three suitors (Tommy Redmond Hicks, John Canada Terrell, Lee), ended up grossing $7,137,502 at the U.S. box office. It helped usher in the American independent film movement of the 1980s and paved the way for other black filmmakers.

article by Nellie Andreeva via Deadline.com