What most of us never knew was that he and Spike Lee figured out that they actually couldn’t stand working together during the filming of Spike Lee’s School Daze and here’s why according to what Laurence Fishburne told Sun Sentinel in a prior interview:

[Fishburne] rolls his eyes when asked about his experience with Lee. “I`m very opinionated, I have a very big ego; Spike has a very big ego, too,”  he says. “I`ve been around for a long time, and I thought I knew more about what he was doing than he did. And, in some ways, I did. But it wasn`t so much that I knew more about what he did — I knew more about what I` was doing, and I made the mistake of telling him that. So we probably won`t work together for another 10 years,” Fishburne says. Chuckling, he adds, “If we work together at all.”

Well get outta here! On camera it looked like all of the actors got along great off screen because of the great chemistry they had on screen, but it sounds like it was hard for Fishburne to take direction from someone he deemed to be far less experienced than him at that time. Dang, he was right- those egos were massive on that set.

I guess Spike Lee eventually extended the peace symbol to Fishburne because he was able to get past his dislike for him when he reached out a few short years later to offer Fishburne the role of “Radio Raheem” in Do The Right Thing. Fishburne was actually Lee’s first choice before Bill Nunn, who ultimately did a phenomenal job with that character.

But Fishburne wasn’t trying to have anything to do with the movie. After he read the script he was like “Hell no!” LOL. Here’s what Laurence said about why he absolutely didn’t like the script for Do The Right Thing:

Fishburne criticized the role for not being real when he said “I’m from Brooklyn too and I didn’t grow up in that kind of Brooklyn. I didn`t like the script, and I didn`t like the part.” -via Sun Sentinel

Many actually speculated that Fishburne’s refusal was less about the role not being ‘authentically Brooklyn’ enough and more about these two factors: (1) because of his beef with Spike; and (2) because Spike Lee didn’t offer him a lead role in Do The Right Thing.

And there you have it folks. Laurence and Spike were not the best of friends on School Daze, unlike the united front their characters had as ‘cousins’ in that film, and Do The Right Thing almost had “Professor Phipps” (Fishburne’s character in Higher Learning) as the “Radio Raheem” character. Now that I think about it, it would have been really different watching “Jason Furious Styles” (Cuba Gooding Jr.’s “Daddy” in Boyz N’ The Hood) or “Morpheus” from the Matrix morph into the role of “Radio Raheem,” but I can definitely see “Dap” from School Daze pulling that character off.

All in all, both School Daze and Do The Right Thing were classics, but the stars just didn’t align for Spike Lee and Laurence Fishburne to work together on the latter. However, the late Bill Nunn played the heck out of that “Radio Raheem” character and I don’t think that either one of the films would have been the same without what Nunn or Fishburne contributed to them.

Source: Sun-Sentinel

-ILoveOldSchoolMusic, Old School news with a new point of view

The post Laurence Fishburne Disclosed Why He & Spike Lee Had Major Beef On “School Daze” Set appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

The cost of fame sometimes challenges entertainers to weigh their moral compass and make sure their center is in a place that allows them to rest easy at night and awake to a reflection they still respect in the morning. For actress/choreographer, Rosie Perez, her personal morals were tested during her days as the character, “Tina,” the ’round the way Puerto Rican girlfriend of Spike Lee’s character, “Mookie,” in Do The Right Thing.

The year was 1989, when Rosie became the one of the breakthrough stars in the film. Two dynamic scenes helped solidify her spot – (1) her FIRE dancing in the opening credits of Spike Lee’s joint and (2) the unforgettable intimate scene where “Mookie” dripped ice cubes over her bare breasts on a hot summer New York day.

Those scenes helped garner Rosie the titles of ‘bold,’ ‘beautiful,’ ‘fearless,’ ‘relatable,’ ‘talented,’ and so one. Unfortunately for Rosie, she hated the bare breasts scene. In fact, she hated it so much that she cried throughout the entire shooting of it.

Rosie Perez Tells Why She Cried During Filming

In a prior interview with New York Times, the Soul Train veteran admitted she felt violated, even though she was the one who actually agreed to shoot the nude scene. Rosie also stated that she finally spoke publicly about it, because her then 14 year old stepdaughter informed her that she’d seen her nude screenshots, from the movie, online. That’s when Rosie began to question whether, or not, she felt comfortable standing behind her work 100%…apparently she does not:

Rosie Perez- “My first experience [with doing nude scenes] was Do the Right Thing. And I had a big problem with it, mainly because I was afraid of what my family would think — that’s what was really bothering me. It wasn’t really about taking off my clothes. But I also didn’t feel good about it because the atmosphere wasn’t correct. And when Spike Lee puts ice cubes on my nipples, the reason you don’t see my head is because I’m crying. I was like, I don’t want to do this. I felt like Irene Cara in ”Fame.” It was like, Wait a minute, I feel so wimpy, this is not who I am. So that was my first experience, and it was horrible. But then I went and took my clothes off again for ”White Men Can’t Jump”! But that was because it was totally my decision, I felt totally comfortable, the director was so cool and Woody Harrelson was like, Well, whatever you want is cool with me. So there I felt empowered by it. But with ”Do the Right Thing” it was like, ‘Now I’m the object, here’s the shot.’ And the reason why I cried was not so much because I felt violated as because I was angry at myself, because I wanted to say: ”Say something! Get up!” So that’s how I felt violated. I felt like I violated myself.”

Embed from Getty Images

Her Brother Brought Machete To Meet With Spike?

Even though she felt “violated,” in all fairness to Spike Lee, it’s important to note that Rosie Perez previously admitted that she was not threatened, nor forced to film her nude scene in Do the Right Thing. According to Daily News, she recalled in her memoir, Handbook For An Unpredictable Life, bringing her knife-wielding brother to set to ensure Spike Lee didn’t try any funny stuff during her nude scene negotiation:

Via DN: [Rosie] Perez fought Lee over the naked scenes, and later charged him with exploiting her. She actually had her brother-in-law, a drug dealer who came to the meeting with a machete in hand, negotiate that there would be “no ass-crack, nothing close to the vagina.”

Wow…gotta luv Rosie for making sure she was protected by any means, and much respect to Spike for still keepin’ it professional in the midst of tense hurdles they faced behind the scenes at that time.

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