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

~ (Author), (Narrator) "A wooden boat crosses the Atlantic Ocean..." (more)
Key Phrases: jungle fever, rap scene, black talent, Spike Lee, New York, School Daze (more...)

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

Since his brash feature-film debut in 1986, Spike Lee has staked his place in the filmmaking industry and in the public consciousness by tangling with themes that otherwise get very little screen time. Starting with a black woman's sexuality in "She's Gotta Have It" and skin-tone stratification in "School Daze," Lee has placed his characters in combustible situations and then captured the explosions, without any need of special effects.

Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that this authorized biography contains so many unflattering -- even inflammatory -- testimonials. Author Kaleem Aftab not only briskly reprises all of the charges made through the years (anti-Semitism, publicity chasing and riot-mongering, just for starters) but also airs personal and professional grievances from associates, actors and family members. For example, David Lee, a photographer who has worked for his taskmaster older brother, admits he has nightmares of Spike torturing him on set. Rosie Perez recalls her sex scene in "Do the Right Thing" as a horrible initiation into show business. Acting coach Susan Batson critiques Lee's on-camera turns: "Normally his performances are terrible." Even his wife, Tonya, gets into the act, cutting down female characters in "Girl 6" and "He Got Game." It's a tribute to Lee's vibrancy, vision and filmography that he and his films emerge as more complicated and interesting for the hits he -- and they -- are taking.

In keeping with Lee's historically minded projects, the story begins with the image of a slave ship crossing the Atlantic, carrying the ancestors of Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King Jr. and other African-American icons. From that point, the book takes a big chronological leap to the icon staring out from the cover of this book, starting with young Lee as a happy child and a teenager more engaged by sports and music than by school.

Aftab tells of Lee's career with a lively interplay of narrative, Lee's take on events, and those of family, associates and critics like Stanley Crouch. He shows how Lee drew upon friends and family (especially grandmother Zimmie) to help him make his first films. The death of Lee's adored mother when he was in college surprisingly gets only a paragraph, but the book circles back to that event when Lee revisits his childhood with "Crooklyn," a film set in the 1970s and written by his siblings Joie and Cinque. (After Joie told Spike she wanted to direct it, he replied, "Too bad, go write another script, you've already sold this one.") Lee's relationships with his father, his stepmother and one of his three brothers are apparently so strained that they weren't interviewed for the book. Only unflattering testimonials, leavened with humor and/or affection, are included here, which is probably why Lee's pre-marriage romantic life gets little ink.

Lee himself has his regrets, such as including the rape scene in "She's Gotta Have It," straining relationships with his employees and colleagues, and allowing his empire (including stores, merchandising and advertising jobs) to become too large to handle alongside his film work. For the most part, he doesn't apologize for his scripts or for the characters who have "problematic" viewpoints. His frustration about critics mistaking his characters' statements for his feelings, their actions for his innermost desires, is understandable.

Racial tensions play a significant role in Lee's oeuvre, and Aftab puts the films within the heated context of their day, including the 1986 Howard Beach attack on 23-year-old Michael Griffith, who was killed after being chased into traffic by a mob, which set the mood for "Do the Right Thing"; and the racially motivated 1989 murder of Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst, N.Y., which inspired "Jungle Fever." Aftab delves into the Nation of Islam's involvement with "Do the Right Thing" (the group provided on-set security) and "Malcolm X" (Lee met with Louis Farrakhan and showed him the scenes in the script that involved Elijah Muhammad). He notes that Lee first screened the latter "for studio heads just as the Rodney King verdict was igniting South Central Los Angeles.

The book also includes less charged anecdotes, for instance, about serendipitous script changes. Lee's signature "Please, baby, please" lines, made famous in "She's Gotta Have It," were uttered in exhaustion because he was unable to remember the monologue he wrote for himself. Susan Batson recalls the climactic scene for "He Got Game," in which Denzel Washington and pro basketball player Ray Allen are having a father-son showdown. In the original script, Washington's character loses 15-0, but during filming it became a much closer match-up. Batson asked Allen, "Do I have to teach you basketball?" "And Ray looked down on me and said, 'Susan, Denzel got game.' I said, 'Are you crazy? He ain't got game, he's just acting his buns off and you're believing him.' Denzel, he couldn't walk the next day, but his commitment to play basketball came forward that day and it was amazing."

Lee has documented his trials and triumphs through numerous books already, including a sports-fan's memoir and production histories of five of his first six films. Aftab's retelling -- his remake, if you will -- is fresh, judicious and will likely spur readers to view movies they've missed in Lee's filmography (with the probable exception of "Girl 6"). At the end of this book, Lee thanks his wife for her "laser-hot honesty," but Lee and Aftab should be commended for theirs as well.

Reviewed by Abby McGanney Nolan
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393328945
• ISBN-13: 978-0393328943
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #795,636 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 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.

5 of 5 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

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

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.