spike lee
...N.Y.U he produced a 45 minute film “ Joe’s Bedstuy Barbershop: we cut heads” which won a student academy award. However success doesn’t mean money and stardom, he waited by the phone for major filmmaking companies to call but they never did. In 1986 Spike made his film debut “She’s Got To Have It”, a comedy about sexual relations. The film was a great success. It cost $175.000 to produce and made an estimated 7 million in sales at the box office. It immediately established Spike as an important young African American filmmaker. He went on to open his own production company “Forty Acres And A Mule”, which originated from an unfulfilled promise that politicians had made to freed slaves after the civil war. After “She’s Got To Have It” Spike produced a couple of movies such as ”Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever”. Spike then tackled his most ambitious and controversial film, a biography of Malcolm X which starred Denzel Washington. Spike built on existing scripts by Arnold Perl and Marvin Worth who also executive produced the film. The film had a large production and eventually production cost began to escalate. Spike with his back to the wall turned to black entertainers such as Bill Cosby, Janet Jackson, Tracy Chapman, Oprah Winfrey and Micheal Jackson who gave him the capital to complete the film the ...