The cost of fame sometimes challenges entertainers to weigh their moral compass, in order to ensure that 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 impressive 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.”

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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.

The post Rosie Perez Felt Violated In “Do The Right Thing,” Says Her Brother Took Knife To Set For Spike appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

Remember the 1986 film, Soul Man? For those who aren’t familiar with it and it’s controversy, it was a film about a White dude who dressed in blackface, to pose as a Black student at Harvard University. The premise behind his Black ambitions was so he could earn a scholarship that was only intended for African Americans.

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Though the film was somewhat of a small change success- produced for $4.5 million, but grossing $27 million at the box office- the controversy it sparked was intense. As y’all can imagine, many African Americans, organizations such as the NAACP, and director, Spike Lee, had much to say about the blackface, the cultural appropriation, racial insensitivity, etc…and understandably so.

On the flip side, there were also many who enjoyed the film and the love story within it. That brings us to actress, Rae Dawn Chong, who played actor, C. Thomas Howell’s, ‘love interest’ in the movie. She apparently was pissed off with Spike Lee when he first spoke his mind about Soul Man decades ago, and 30 years later, during a 2016 interview with The Wrap, her anger was just as potent.

See What Spike Lee Said To Cause Chong To Go Off

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Spike Lee’s Conversation With Pres. Obama Re-ignited Chong’s Anger Years Later
Spike Lee once revealed in an interview, that he and our forever President, Barack Obama, became cool, and that during one of their conversations, Obama made a confession. He told Spike about his first date with former First Lady, Michelle Obama, which once again prompted Spike’s honest opinion:

“Actually, Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was ‘Do The Right Thing.’ I said,
Thank God … otherwise you would have taken her to ‘Soul Man’,” Spike recalled.

That did not sit well with Rae Dawn Chong, and she made that VERY clear in her interview…

Rae Dawn Chong Slammed Spike Lee For “Soul Man” Backlash
At the time of “Soul Man’s 1986 release, Spike apparently spoke out against it back then as well…and Rae didn’t like that whatsoever.

Via The Wrap: “It was only controversial because Spike Lee made a thing of it,” she said during a recent interview. “He’d never seen the movie and he just jumped all over it,” she added, recalling that it was a time when Lee was coming up in his career and making headlines for being outspoken.

“He was just starting and pulling everything down in his wake,” Chong asserted. “If you watch the movie, it’s really making White people look stupid. … It is adorable and it didn’t deserve it,” said Chong of the movie.

BUT PEEP What Else Chong Had To Say About Spike…And the NAACP…

Chong Accuses Lee Of Calling Her ‘Too White’ In The Film
Chong- who’s mother is Black-Canadian and father (actor, Tommy Chong) is Chinese and Irish- also accused Spike Lee of taking jabs at her lack of ‘Blackness’ at the time that Soul Man was released:

“I always tried to be an actor who was doing a part that was a character versus what I call ‘blackting,’ or playing my race, because I knew that I would fail because I was mixed,” she explained. “I was the black actor for sure, but I didn’t lead with my epidermis, and that offended people like Spike Lee, I think. You’re either militant or you’re not and he decided to just attack,” she told TheWrap.

Why She’s ‘Never Forgiven’ Spike

“I’ve never forgiven him for that because it really hurt me,” said Chong. “I didn’t realize [at the time] that not pushing the afro-centric agenda was going to bite me. When you start to do well people start to say you’re a Tom [as in Uncle Tom] because you’re acceptable.”

Chong Disses NAACP For ‘Following Spike’s Lead’…
Chong says she firmly stands up for pro-Black causes and such. However, as far as the NAACP’s public bashing of Soul Man, Chong blames them for following Spike Lee’s lead back in the day:

“The NAACP — trust me, they’re so spineless. We have so many problems. Where the f— have they been for 60 years?”

Ouch!

The post Decades Later, “Soul Man” Actress Oddly Blasts Spike Lee Over Film’s Black-Face Backlash appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

The year, 2022, marks the 34th anniversary of “School Daze.” It was in 1988 that the film broke boundaries in Hollywood. It opened up sore spots within the Black community, allowing those ‘sores’ to be picked, peeled back, exposed, and healed all at the same damn time. It let mainstream America know that films about predominantly African American colleges and it’s students could in fact pull numbers at the box office. Above all that, “School Daze” was the creation of a then-31-year-old Morehouse graduate, who was fresh off the hills of his ’86 success, “She’s Gotta Have It.”

There are countless memories that I- like many- will forever remember about the film. There was “Dap’s” (Laurence Fishburne) encounter with the older Atlanta natives in that fast food parking lot, when he had to tell the brothas “We’re not nig&as.” Or his ingoing battle with the pretty boy “G-Phi-G” frat leader, “Julian” (Giancarlo Esposito). We can’t forget the classic dark skin/light skin back n’ forth between the culturally aware “Jigaboos” and the sadity “Gamma Ray Wanna-Be’s”- a play on the real world complexion complex that still unfortunately exists today. As the world watch “School Daze” challenge many social issues, behind the scenes Spike had to tackle some of those issues on his own, just to create the film.

Why Morehouse President Kicked Spike & Crew Off Campus

Spike initially chose to shoot “School Daze” at his alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA and in the beginning stages of filming, everything was all good…until it wasn’t. Just two weeks after filming began, Spike Lee, along with the entire cast and crew, were kicked off Morehouse’s campus for a very sad, superficial reason, according to Spike.

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The president of Morehouse at that time, was Hugh Morris Gloster, a lighter complexioned brotha. Ironically, Gloster kicked them off Morehouse’s grounds, due to the very issue that was being covered in the film- Black on Black bias/colorism. Here’s what Spike revealed in a Feb. 2018 interview with Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Via AJC- Lee recalled a “sad” meeting with [Hugh Morris] Gloster, after he was kicked off campus, to plead his case to stay. “He said to me, ‘I don’t like the guy you cast as the college president (the late, great Joe Seneca). He looks too much like a sambo,’” Lee said. “He said that to my face. When he said that, I said, I know what we were doing was right. Because I had the president of Morehouse telling me the man I cast as the president was too dark-skinned.”

Spike Lee ended up taking his production just across the way from Morehouse, to film at Morris Brown college instead.

To make matters even worse, Spike revealed in a separate interview, that he wasn’t even invited back to Morehouse for the rest of Gloster’s presidency, but then he got sweet revenge:

“As a matter of fact, after this film came out, I wasn’t really invited back to Morehouse for several years. Really until the guy that was president left. But now I’m on the Board of Trustees, so it’s been a long while. But that was really hurtful at the time.”

The Tragedy That Inspired Spike To Create School Daze

In that same interview, Spike also revealed that the one of the reasons he wrote “School Daze” in the first place was because he wanted to shed light on the dangerous hazing that oftentimes goes unnoticed at HBCU’s. Why? Because a fellow Morehouse student’s death raised his level of awareness at that time:

“We show all the ills of these organizations. In fact, after I finished Moorehouse, a brother died pledging Alpha Phi Alpha. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to get into this fraternity thing, or this sorority thing for that matter. It always amazes me the amount of abuse and punishment people will put up with, just to belong to a group. To any organization. I mean they will fu*k you up.

Wow.

The post Spike Lee Exposed Foul Reason Former Morehouse President ‘Sabotaged’ School Daze Set appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

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 Explained Why He & Spike Lee Had Major Beef On “School Daze” Set appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

In 1991, Halle Berry officially began making noise in Hollywood, as Samuel Jackson’s ‘crackhead girlfriend’ in “Jungle Fever.” Her role was kinda small, but her performance was memorable. Word on the Old School curb is that she poured so much blood, sweat, and dedication into her role, that she refused to bathe for weeks, in order to give off the authenticity of being a homeless crackhead. She was THAT serious about it. Apparently, there was another topic she took seriously and it sparked a heated confrontation with director, Spike Lee, on the set.

Halle Berry Revealed What Led To Argument With Spike Lee

In the autobiography, “Halle Berry: A Biography of an Oscar-Winning Actress,” the argument between Halle and Spike was discussed. It seems to have involved the topic of her half Black/half White biracial heritage and her parents:

Jungle Fever was a hit. It made money and was praised by critics. But their same critics had differing views of Jungle Fever’s message. Some thought the theme was that it is foolish for people to be disturbed by interracial romance in the face of more important issues, such as crime and drugs. Others thought Lee was saying that interracial romances simply did not work, a view Berry didn’t agree with. Off camera, Berry got into an argument with Spike Lee. “He said my parents divorced because Black/White love can never work. I told Spike that that was just his warped and twisted point of view. The reality was that my parents loved each other…they split up because of my father’s drinking.”

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That made for a tense moment behind the scenes and tapped a nerve within Halle, that Spike probably had no idea existed in her at that time.

Halle Details Racism She & Sister  Endured As Kids As A Result Of Being Biracial

In years that followed “Jungle Fever,” Halle’s made it no secret that she has encountered many racial issues, which have molded her life and personality. For example, in a prior interview with People (see below video), Halle opened up about how she and her sister were teased and subjected to racism throughout her high school years in Bedford, Ohio. According to Halle, it all started after they’d switched schools and began attending Bedford High School, which she says was a predominantly White, with “like 3 [Black students] out of 2500 students.”

Halle Berry: “Now, all of a sudden we were in an all-white school with all-white kids. I got bullied a little bit…because of the color of my skin and at that time we were ‘Oreos,'” Halle said, referencing her and her sister’s biracial (half Caucasian, half African American) heritage. My need to please and my desire to achieve was because I was constantly trying to prove that I was as good as the other white students,” she explained. “I felt very less than and I thought if I could beat them at everything, then I can be as good as them. Subsequently, that taught me how to win in life.”

Halle’s schoolmates actually viewed her as the opposite of what she’s saying. Some of Halle’s classmates’ reactions to her racial claims, were reported by PJ Media.

One of her former White classmates brought up the fact that Halle was voted prom queen of their high school:

Rachel W.: “Class of ’86 here…..I didn’t know Halle personally so while I certainly can’t speak to her individual experience I can speak to how I looked at her and how all of my friends looked at her in high school. My female friends (black and white) and I thought she was gorgeous and wanted to look like her while my male friends (black and white) had massive crushes on her and wanted to date her. Curious also that she left out the fact she was elected Prom Queen by the entire student body, black and white.”

Another one shared the same sentiments:

Shannon T: “I remember everyone always being in awww of Hallie. She was always gorgeous and everyone seemed to look up to her.”

The point is that people oftentimes make assumptions, when looking from the outside in.  Simply because others did not walk in Halle’s shoes, doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen in the way that she experienced it, as opposed to the way they presumed it to be. That’s something Spike Lee probably realized about Halle, after their reportedly heated convo.’ Good thing is they long ago got over their differences and are hella cool now. We all live and we learn.

The post Halle Berry Once Had Heated Argument With Spike Lee On Set Of “Jungle Fever”…Here’s Why appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

As if many weren’t already shocked to learn that Malcolm X had dated a Caucasian woman in real life, Kate Vernon shocked the world a tad bit more, when she publicly claimed, in a 1992 LA Times interview, that Spike Lee treated her like a second class citizen on the movie set. According to her, things got so tense that they had a VERY heated argument while filming! See what Kate said all of this hoopla was about…

THEIR HEATED ARGUMENT WITH SPIKE LEE

At first Kate Vernon had a positive outlook about Spike and his films, but once it was time for her to work with him, her views about Spike Lee shifted after she was interviewed by him and rehearsals began:

‘”He was very kind of supportive and inquisitive, [said Vernon]. …  But according to Vernon, working with Lee from then on was difficult. She said his attitude changed as soon as rehearsals began. “It was as if he was very aloof, very disinterested,” she said. “Spike’s way of working with me, I mean in polite terms, I could say he was very quiet. He didn’t pay much attention to me.”

Vernon said she and Washington ended up working out their scenes during the rehearsals. “Spike was in the corner sort of going through the script watching,” she said. “I found that to be very uncomfortable because I felt like I couldn’t go to Spike. I am speaking about my experience with him, not everyone’s experience. I never felt part of the process. In that way it was terribly uncomfortable. I can’t figure out the psychology of Spike and I tried to.”

Kate then became pissed when she claimed that Spike Lee didn’t honor her contract when it came to nudity:

“In my contract, we agreed no nudity,” Vernon said. “The family of Malcolm X didn’t want any nudity.”

Vernon claims that once it was time to shoot the love scene with Denzel in the back of a Cadillac, Spike went against her contract. She says that only her shoulders were supposed to have been show, but claims Spike told her the scene would only work if she showed her breasts, presumably to give it a more realistic feel:

“This argument broke out between Spike and I,” she said. “I am trapped in this car and I am fighting with Spike to honor my contract. What resulted is that he cut the scene in half.”

SHE’LL NEVER WORK WITH HIM AGAIN

Via LA Times- Vernon said…she was in Rome filming a comedy, “Jackpot.” One morning, she heard a loud knock at her trailer door. It was Lee. “He said, ‘How you doing?,’ which was really great. He was lecturing at a filmmaking school and thought he would stop by and say, ‘Hi.’ I thought it was really sweet.” Still, she says, she doesn’t hope to work with the director again. “I feel like I have worked with him, I know what it is like.”

We’re not sure what Spike thoughts are about Kate’s claims, but we have learned one thing about him. To get the best performances out of actors, one of his tactics has been to intentionally create tension off-camera, as a way to get that authenticity of a tense situation on camera. Example: Spike created a real-life tense scenario for the actors who played the gigaboos and the wannabees in his film, “School Daze,” because he wanted that same off-camera tension between the actors to seem real in the film.

Some would say that’s the work of a genius, while others -especially those on the receiving end of said tension (like Kate Vernon was)- will probably say that’s the work of a jerk. But there’s no denying that when Spike puts his creative skills behind something, magic happens, just like it did in the “School Daze” and “Malcolm X.”

The post “Malcolm X” Actress Explained Why She Was So Furious With Spike Lee During Filming appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

The year marks the 34th anniversary of “School Daze.” It was in 1988 that the film broke boundaries in Hollywood. It opened up sore spots within the Black community, allowing those ‘sores’ to be picked, peeled back, exposed, and healed all at the same damn time. It let mainstream America know that films about predominantly African American colleges and it’s students could in fact pull numbers at the box office. Above all that, “School Daze” was the creation of a then 31 year Morehouse graduate, who was fresh off the hills of his ’86 success, “She’s Gotta Have It.”

There are countless memories that I- like many- will forever remember about the film. There was “Dap’s” (Laurence Fishburne) encounter with the older Atlanta natives in that fast food parking lot, when he had to tell the brothas “We’re not nig&as.” Or his ingoing battle with the pretty boy “G-Phi-G” frat leader, “Julian” (Giancarlo Esposito). We can’t forget the classic dark skin/light skin back n’ forth between the culturally aware “Jigaboos” and the sadity “Gamma Ray Wanna-Be’s”- a play on the real world complexion complex that still unfortunately exists today. As the world watch “School Daze” challenge many social issues, behind the scenes Spike had to tackle some of those issues on his own, just to create the film.

Why Morehouse President Kicked Spike & Crew Off Campus

Spike initially chose to shoot “School Daze” at his alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA and in the beginning stages of filming, everything was all good…until it wasn’t. Just two weeks after filming began, Spike Lee, along with the entire cast and crew, were kicked off Morehouse’s campus for a very sad, superficial reason, according to Spike.

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The president of Morehouse at that time, was Hugh Morris Gloster, a lighter complexioned brotha. Ironically, Gloster kicked them off Morehouse’s grounds, due to the very issue that was being covered in the film- Black on Black bias/colorism. Here’s what Spike revealed in a Feb. 2018 interview with Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Via AJC- Lee recalled a “sad” meeting with [Hugh Morris] Gloster, after he was kicked off campus, to plead his case to stay. “He said to me, ‘I don’t like the guy you cast as the college president (the late, great Joe Seneca). He looks too much like a sambo,’” Lee said. “He said that to my face. When he said that, I said, I know what we were doing was right. Because I had the president of Morehouse telling me the man I cast as the president was too dark-skinned.”

Spike Lee ended up taking his production just across the way from Morehouse…to film at Morris Brown college instead.

To make matters even worse, Spike revealed in a separate interview, that he wasn’t even invited back to Morehouse for the rest of Gloster’s presidency, but then he got sweet revenge:

“As a matter of fact, after this film came out, I wasn’t really invited back to Morehouse for several years. Really until the guy that was president left. But now I’m on the Board of Trustees, so it’s been a long while. But that was really hurtful at the time.”

The Tragedy That Inspired Spike To Create School Daze

In that same interview, Spike also revealed that the one of the reasons he wrote “School Daze” in the first place was because he wanted to shed light on the dangerous hazing that oftentimes goes unnoticed at HBCU’s. Why? Because a fellow Morehouse student’s death raised his level of awareness at that time:

“We show all the ills of these organizations. In fact, after I finished Moorehouse, a brother died pledging Alpha Phi Alpha. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to get into this fraternity thing, or this sorority thing for that matter. It always amazes me the amount of abuse and punishment people will put up with, just to belong to a group. To any organization. I mean they will fu*k you up.

Wow.

The post Spike Lee Exposed Foul Reason Ex Morehouse President ‘Sabotaged’ School Daze Set & The Tragedy Behind It appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

As if many weren’t already shocked to learn that Malcolm X had dated a Caucasian woman in real life, Kate Vernon shocked the world a tad bit more, when she publicly claimed, in a 1992 LA Times interview, that Spike Lee treated her like a second class citizen on the movie set. According to her, things got so tense that they had a VERY heated argument while filming! See what Kate said all of this hoopla was about…

THEIR HEATED ARGUMENT WITH SPIKE LEE

At first Kate Vernon had a positive outlook about Spike and his films, but once it was time for her to work with him, her views about Spike Lee shifted after she was interviewed by him and rehearsals began:

‘”He was very kind of supportive and inquisitive, [said Vernon]. …  But according to Vernon, working with Lee from then on was difficult. She said his attitude changed as soon as rehearsals began. “It was as if he was very aloof, very disinterested,” she said. “Spike’s way of working with me, I mean in polite terms, I could say he was very quiet. He didn’t pay much attention to me.”

Vernon said she and Washington ended up working out their scenes during the rehearsals. “Spike was in the corner sort of going through the script watching,” she said. “I found that to be very uncomfortable because I felt like I couldn’t go to Spike. I am speaking about my experience with him, not everyone’s experience. I never felt part of the process. In that way it was terribly uncomfortable. I can’t figure out the psychology of Spike and I tried to.”

Kate then became pissed when she claimed that Spike Lee didn’t honor her contract when it came to nudity:

“In my contract, we agreed no nudity,” Vernon said. “The family of Malcolm X didn’t want any nudity.”

Vernon claims that once it was time to shoot the love scene with Denzel in the back of a Cadillac, Spike went against her contract. She says that only her shoulders were supposed to have been show, but claims Spike told her the scene would only work if she showed her breasts, presumably to give it a more realistic feel:

“This argument broke out between Spike and I,” she said. “I am trapped in this car and I am fighting with Spike to honor my contract. What resulted is that he cut the scene in half.”

SHE’LL NEVER WORK WITH HIM AGAIN

Via LA Times- Vernon said…she was in Rome filming a comedy, “Jackpot.” One morning, she heard a loud knock at her trailer door. It was Lee. “He said, ‘How you doing?,’ which was really great. He was lecturing at a filmmaking school and thought he would stop by and say, ‘Hi.’ I thought it was really sweet.” Still, she says, she doesn’t hope to work with the director again. “I feel like I have worked with him, I know what it is like.”

We’re not sure what Spike thoughts are about Kate’s claims, but we have learned one thing about him. To get the best performances out of actors, one of his tactics has been to intentionally create tension off-camera, as a way to get that authenticity of a tense situation on camera. Example: Spike created a real-life tense scenario for the actors who played the gigaboos and the wannabees in his film, “School Daze,” because he wanted that same off-camera tension between the actors to seem real in the film.

Some would say that’s the work of a genius, while others -especially those on the receiving end of said tension (like Kate Vernon was)- will probably say that’s the work of a jerk. But there’s no denying that when Spike puts his creative skills behind something, magic happens, just like it did in the “School Daze” and “Malcolm X.”

The post “Malcolm X” Actress Revealed Why She Was Furious With Spike Lee During Filming appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

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 Explained Why He & Spike Lee Had Major Beef On “School Daze” Set appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

This happy-go-lucky kid in the photo grew up to be one of the most controversial celebrities in entertainment. Although he is loved by millions, he is also hated by many. Throughout his career, he never seemed to really give a d*mn though, and that is why his fans love him. If you guessed Spike Lee, you were right on point!

The childhood photo of Spike in all his swagged-out glory, was snapped when he was still running around Brooklyn, NY and going by his birth name, Shelton Jackson Lee. Little did Brooklyn know, a controversial, legendary filmmaker was being bred right there in their presence.

Speaking of Spike and his controversial ways, by now we all have probably heard that Spike is one of the many mega-celebs who vowed to drop this year’s Oscars like a bad habit, but something else we found to be just as interesting is that in November 2015, Spike was awarded an honorary Oscar at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ seventh annual Governors Awards. What makes it interesting is that in true form of the man who folks love to hate, Spike once again didn’t give a damn about what the Oscar execs thought of him, as he shamed them during his acceptance speech at their own event. The award was presented to him by his longtime friends, Denzel Washington, Samuel Jackson, and Wesley Snipes.

Staying consistent with what he has been stating- that our problem doesn’t begin with the Oscars, it starts in Hollywood- Spike blasted Hollywood and the Oscars organization for their lack of diversity in all forms-in front and behind the camera. The conservative crowd sat there almost in shock that Lee picked such a time to voice his frustration- a time when some thought that he should have just been grateful for a trophy, as opposed to staying true to his values and concerns about the industry. Read a part of what he said here and you can check out his full acceptance speech in the video below:

“I don’t know if you noticed, but the United States Census Bureau says that by the year, 2043, White Americans are gonna be the minority in this country. And for all of the people out there who are in a position of hiring, you better get smart ’cause you’ll work for us. You should reflect what this country looks like.

And I’mma get real here, everybody in here probably voted for Obama but when I go to offices, I see no Black folks except for the brother man at the security who checks my name off the list as I go into the studio. So we can talk ‘yabba yabba yabba’ but we need to have some serious discussion about diversity and get some flavor up in this. This industry is so behind sports it’s ridiculous.

It’s easier to be the president of the United States as a Black person than be the head of a studio. Honestly, it’s easier to be president of the United States than the head of a studio or head of network,” said Spike Lee to a room that was stunned, but applauded his words at the same time.

Thoughts ILOSM fam?’

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