Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It [Hardcover]

Kaleem Aftab (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 19, 2005

The extraordinary life story—filled with fresh, firsthand accounts—of one of America's most provocative filmmakers.

This new biography tells the cinematic story of the preeminent director whose pioneering films-—from Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever to Malcolm X—helped transform the face of late twentieth-century America. Since bursting onto the scene in 1986 with the sexually provocative She's Gotta Have It, Lee has been one of America's most visionary and controversial cinematic figures. Film critic Kaleem Aftab chronicles Lee's explosive rise to stardom, exploring such important issues as Black Nationalism, Hollywood stereotyping, and the rise of a powerful black middle class. With Lee family interviews and the candid revelations of stars like Halle Berry, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne, Ed Norton, John Turturro, Rosie Perez, and Wesley Snipes, this book is the story of a visionary life in the cinema, telling us as much about Lee as it does about the past two decades of American social history. 40 photographs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The work of one of America's more important filmmakers is ill-served by this reverential biography. Aftab arranges the narrative around Lee's films, from breakout hit She's Gotta Have It (1986), through such cinematic touchstones as Do the Right Thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992), ending with the flop She Hate Me (2004). The resulting string-of-boxcars structure is a little disjointed, but it keeps the focus on Lee's often controversial and politically engaged films and delivers a flow of moviemaking anecdotes that give a sense of the director's domineering, manipulative, charismatic personality. Unfortunately, this very authorized biography staggers under the weight of the many lengthy tributes to Lee's genius and his statesmanship as the standard-bearer of African-American cinema. Complaints are sometimes aired about the director and his movies (he does cop to allowing "unreconstructed male chauvinism" to mar his films), but criticisms are quickly shouted down by rebuttals from Lee and a chorus of admiring actors and colleagues. Aftab's poorly organized text often feels like a collection of barely edited interview transcripts, with Lee and his friends' rambling on for paragraphs on end. The outcome is a sluggish, defensive biography of a man who deserves a more incisive treatment. Photos. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Over the course of his career, film director Spike Lee has alienated many groups: Italian Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, lesbians--and, most recently, paying moviegoers. Because of this book's packaging (first-person subtitle, head-on author photo, "as told to" writing credit), fans and foes alike may think they're getting a candid, jointly authored memoir written in Lee's voice. But Spike Lee is actually an oral history in which the director's voice is but one of many. Aftab interviewed scores of family, friends, and filmmaking collaborators, then created a reportorial narrative, organized by film. (The method will be familiar to anyone who's read the companion books to Lee's earlier films.) But if readers are disappointed at not getting more from Lee himself, there's consolation in that what his colleagues and critics say can be more revealing. And although the book has Lee's imprimatur, Aftab is not afraid to take issue with Lee. As might be expected with such a controversial subject, too much time is spent getting sides of arguments, and the writing is somewhat stiff, but this is still an invigorating look back at the work of one of our least predictable, most important filmmakers. As for really getting to know Lee, we'll have to wait until he writes his own story. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton (September 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061531
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061536
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #540,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #49 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Movie Directors

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't believe the hype!, October 2, 2005

By 

Michael La Rocco (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It (Hardcover)

I love Spike Lee movies --- "Do the right thing," "The 25th Hour," and "Clockers, but this book by Kaleem Aftab is shallow and meanders to the point of infuriating. At best it's a surface portrait of a complex man and his films. The book is an easy read, but never delves into the complicated world that Lee has created on and off screen.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars (RAW Rating: 2.5) - Exposing Spike, January 3, 2006

By 

The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It (Hardcover)

From his childhood and all throughout his film career, Spike Lee, born Shelton Jackson Lee, has been outspoken and opinionated. These solid traits, along with the sense of responsibility one acquires by being the oldest of five siblings, combined with education, talent, hard work, and great timing to produce one of the most recognized African-American film directors and producers to date. In SPIKE LEE: THAT'S MY STORY AND I'M STICKING TO IT, author Kaleem Aftab pens Spike's biography with such dedication and attention to details that readers will know everything one can know being on the outside looking into the life of Spike Lee: his upbringing, his college days, his first movies, his motivations, his financial trials, his political standpoints, his outlook on life, his recent films, and his goals. Although all is not rosy, Aftab still pulls back the cover and exposes details of Spike's life, before, after, and during the making of his films.

Starting with his childhood and then arranged by film, Aftab proves to have done excellent research as he provides readers with a plethora of facts about everyone Spike ever spoke to and/or dealt with and about how he started and got to where he is now. Offering insight into the motivations behind Spike's movies and good behind-the-scenes information, Aftab presents a novel that delves not just into Spike's life, but also illuminates certain well-known actors who Spike chose to work with: Bill Nunn, Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Giancarlo Esposito, John Turturro, Danny Aiello, and Laurence Fishburne (to name a few). Readers really get a strong grasp of who Spike Lee is as Aftab talks about some of the filmmaker's classic New York outlooks and his perspectives on African-Americans, not just in film but also in life.

Extremely informational, SPIKE LEE, by Aftab, starts out slow and mundane. Aftab's writing style is not very intriguing or captivating for readers, which is a shame for it to be the biography of such an interesting figure. Also jumpy, it is difficult to keep up with what is going on. A section will begin discussing one event and will go off on a tangent about a list of people, who they are, and how they relate to Spike or the movie, and then jump back to the previous event. Transitional aids would help to make section themes flow better. A stronger narrative voice would also make information flow better. Throughout the biography, there are a plethora of quotes. Sometimes, a quote is so long and involved that it is easy for readers to forget that it is a quote, and jumping back to the narrator's voice once again throws off the flow of the text. As readers press on and become adjusted to Aftab's writing style, his composition creates a well-researched look into the life of one of America's prominent African-American directors/producers: Spike Lee.

Reviewed by Natasha T.
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Plagued with mistakes, but it's an honest effort, July 3, 2007

By 

Ran Walker (Hampton Roads, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It (Paperback)

After reading this book and thinking about it as a whole, I was led to give it a 3-star rating, but it could've been a 5-star rating, if the editing were much stronger.

Viewing the reviews listed here, I see various complaints about the book, but none of them address what I consider to be the most glaringly obvious things: the grammatical errors and the cultural fact errors--two things that could have been handled before the book even went to the printer. First, and I must admit that I don't know if England uses a different set of grammatical rules, there is a serious problem with subject verb agreement throughout the entire text, particularly with regard to collective nouns and singular nouns with a plural appearance. Aftab even changes around some of the quotes to fit this very jarring grammatical detour. (For example, "40 Acres and a Mule are...." While I teach composition, I still know the average reader could pick up on this, whether it's setting a word like "jury" or committee" against the plural verb form or something more complicated like the 40 Acres name.)

Next, there are numerous fact errors. Among them is a misquote of Louis Farrakhan ("good" should be "great"--and that quote is forever taken out of context, and I say that not to defend the man at all). He also has Tupac dying in 1995 after being shot five times, Carmello Anthony going straight to the pros from high school, alongside LeBron James (as opposed to leading Syracuse to a NCAA championship), and stating that Cash Money Records was Master P's record label (not No Limit).

These errors are very glaring, but I can best compare them to enjoying a class where a teacher insists on using screechy chalk on the blackboard, because overall I really liked the book. It took enormous effort to synthesize so much information into a highly readable biography. Don't get me wrong. It is far from perfect, but the linear layout and the quotes from various actors and Spike create a kind of balance so that it's not completely one-sided. And Aftab covers all of the media worthy hot topics that surrounded each of Lee's films so that when you finish the book, you will have gotten a strong glimpse into Lee's professional approach to filmmaking.

I'm pretty sure that Spike Lee's own journals from his films will ultimately prove to be more useful for a beginning filmmaker than this book. It does, however, have its merits.