People sometimes forget all the films that we've done. They remember the likes of 'Malcolm X' and 'Do the Right Thing.' But I've been working since 1986. From the beginning, I was determined to not just be a flash in the pan. I've got to keep up with Woody Allen. He's lapping me.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the dedication of an artist to their craft and the desire for lasting recognition rather than fleeting fame.
Spike Lee reflects on the transient nature of fame in the film industry, expressing that while some works are memorable, true success comes from consistent effort and longevity in one's career. He acknowledges the challenge of keeping up with influential figures like Woody Allen, illustrating the continuous pursuit of excellence in art.
In practice
During a film festival panel discussion on the importance of legacy in filmmaking.
I think that anyone who lives in New York, who's lived here, who's spent any time here, knows that it's basically a love-hate relationship, you might say. Even though I still think it's the greatest city in the world and I wouldn't live anywhere else, there're still things about it one doesn't like. The love far outweighs the negative.
There's an unwritten law that you cannot have a Jewish character in a film who isn't 100 percent perfect, or you're labeled anti-Semitic.
The truth is I've been doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter; there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes.
It gets dangerous when you start allowing people to validate your work.
All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love.
Because many advances have happened, we've lost the urgency (and that's just human nature) that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains.
You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it's going to happen.
Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women's hair rhapsodically described, women's faces acclaimed in odelike language.
I always feel that art in general and acting in particular should make the audience a little uncomfortable, to slap them and wake them up.
I want to make people feel things when they hear my music I want to give a song to someone who is going through a break up, I want to give a song to someone who loves someone and can't tell them. A song for someone who has just fallen in love and a song for just people who are living their lives.
Photography can light-up darkness and expose ignorance.
Their task [creative artists], therefore, is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in such a way that an actual shock of experience will have been rendered: not a mere statement for the information or persuasion of a brain, but an effective communication across the void of space and time from one center of consciousness to another.
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