Spike Blasts Hollywood (Again)

An irate Spike Lee gave Hollywood yet another tongue-bashing yesterday. Speaking at a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival for his latest film, Bamboozled, the controversial director refuted the claim that representation of black people has improved in film since the Civil Rights Movement. "I can give you examples of films where there has been no progress made. Look at black characters in The Green Mile, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Family Man. These are films being made today." This follows Lee's recent criticisms of Will Smith for playing Matt Damon's caddy in Robert Redford's Depression-set golf drama Bagger Vance - a film Lee retitled as 'Driving Matt Damon'. Lee's Bamboozled, which opens in the UK in April, stars Scary Movie director Damon Wayans as a black TV executive who reinvents the Black and White Minstrel show for the new millennium, by using black performers instead of whites. Concluding with a four-minute montage of live-action and animated clips from the past century all depicting black people in a politically incorrect manner, Bamboozled has been criticised in the US for being heavy-handed. Yesterday, Lee did not take kindly to such comments. "I just find it very funny that when black people find talk about how they've been oppressed, we're heavy-handed. But living in America, every single day you hear about the holocaust. I'm not saying you shouldn't hear about it, but believe it or not, there have been other oppressed people in this world. I don't think there's anything heavy-handed in this film. Black people were enslaved for 400 years. It's not just African-Americans, you could make the same film about the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood films." Tempers became frayed as Lee went on to claim that some blacks were denied the vote in Florida last November during the protracted presidential election campaign. "Black people were stopped by the police in Tampa Bay from voting," said Lee. "If someone wants to be delusional and say 'Here we are in America in 2001, we've made so many great strides, everything is OK', go ahead and live in that dream-world."