Highest 2 Lowest, Reuniting With Denzel, Cannes

Spike Lee arrives for this interview in Los Angeles fresh off of Steven Spielberg’s plane, wearing a New York Knicks hat and jacket. He’ll be quickly changing into a black-and-white suit covered in tiny Michael Jordan silhouettes to speak at Francis Ford Coppola’s AFI Life Achievement Award Ceremony in Hollywood, then will hop on another plane so that he can sit courtside at a Knicks playoff game in Detroit on Sunday morning. For some people, this itinerary might be a flex. For Spike Lee, this is Saturday night.

In May, Lee, 68, is heading to France to premiere Highest 2 Lowest at the Cannes Film Festival beside his longtime collaborator Denzel Washington, who plays a music mogul confronted with the dilemma of — well — how to do the right thing. It’s a question Lee has been prodding moviegoers about for the past 26 years, since his first trip to Cannes in 1989, and finding the answer isn’t getting any easier.

Highest 2 Lowest is a quintessentially New York “reinterpretation,” as Lee calls it, of Akira Kurosawa’s Japan-set 1963 police procedural High and Low, with Jeffrey Wright playing the music mogul’s chauffeur and friend, Ilfenesh Hadera as his wife and A$AP Rocky in a role that is best left for audiences to discover for themselves. The film — an Apple Original feature in partnership with A24 that will arrive in theaters Aug. 22 and premiere Sept. 5 on Apple TV+ — is about a man who has reached the pinnacle of his field and enjoys a lavish lifestyle but has lost something along the way. Lee supplied some of the character’s vast African American art collection, and the film reflects his eclectic musical tastes, from James Brown to Puerto Rican bandleader Eddie Palmieri to 24-year-old soul singer Aiyana-Lee.

In 2025, Lee’s role as a prolific Black American director who has reached mainstream audiences with movies like 1992’s Malcolm X, 2006’s Inside Man and 2018’s BlacKkKlansman, is more urgently necessary than ever, according to Wright. “The perspective of Black Americans right now is under attack,” Wright says. “Look at what’s happening at the Smithsonian, the attacks on academia. There’s something particularly racialist about it, a vicious, energetic, thoughtless attempt to disappear these perspectives.” Lee and his filmography, Wright says, are part of the antidote. “Spike’s place as the guardian of the African American perspective is critical.”

In a wide-ranging interview that spans his childhood dyslexia, career-long antagonism of Donald Trump and navigation of today’s contracting movie business, Lee is alternately funny and introspective, worried and grateful, but always unapologetically himself.

Highest 2 Lowest is your fifth film with Denzel, but why has it been such a while?

Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Inside Man and this. I didn’t know it was 18 years since Inside Man. Time flies. I was shocked. We had to have a reacquaintance, but we were still in step. When the Knicks are playing the Lakers, sometimes we’ll go to the game together, courtside. He has the Lakers seats, I’ve got the Garden. And then we might see each other at some event.

When you were coming off the success of Do the Right Thing, you cast Denzel in Mo’ Better Blues before Glory had even come out, before he’d won his first Oscar —

I used to kid Denzel — when I would see him, I’d go like this (motions with his finger a single tear going down his cheek). When his character in Glory is getting whupped, that tear, that was it. Danny Aiello was nominated that year, too [for playing Sal in Lee’s Do the Right Thing]. We got two nominations, Danny for best supporting actor and myself for screenplay. When I saw that tear, I was like, “Danny, it’s over.”

How do you cast someone to play opposite Denzel, especially someone who is younger or newer to acting like A$AP Rocky?

Denzel is so powerful that you could get blown out. If there are confrontational scenes and one actor blows somebody off the screen, it’s like watching a sports event where one team just kills another, they get beat by 50 points. Even if that’s your team, you want to see some competitiveness. I’ve been fortunate in who I’ve cast. Clive Owen [who plays opposite Washington in Inside Man], he said to me, “Spike, I’ve got a big dick, too.” Wesley Snipes in Mo’ Better Blues, there were physical altercations. It makes better cinema. It’s drama. It’s a boxing match. Toe to toe.

Rocky, he didn’t give a fuck. A$AP Rocky, he ain’t just a rapper, he’s an actor. I first knew of him as an actor. He worked in a film [2018’s Monster] my wife produced with John David Washington, Denzel’s son. Some actors, they freeze up when they’ve got to go against the greatest of the great. But Rocky, he’s from Harlem.

Denzel’s character in this movie is a man who has reached the pinnacle of his field — the music industry — but he doesn’t walk home across the Brooklyn Bridge discovering new music anymore. He’s lost touch with what mattered to him. The movie is really about, how do you handle success without losing yourself? So, how have you done that?

Well, I don’t do drugs. I had asthma growing up, so I just didn’t. My father was doing drugs after my mother died. My brother Chris — I’m number one, he’s number two of the five of us. He died. He was a drug addict. And I just never — it wasn’t for me. There’s that father-son shit in the movie, too. Denzel has two sons. I’ve got a son.

Do you think fathers are harder on their sons than their daughters?

(Quoting dialogue from the film) “Is Al Green? Is Barry White? Is James Brown?” Let me tell you, in the scene with his son, Denzel didn’t need to rehearse that.

Your dad, Bill Lee, who composed some of your scores, was a great jazz and folk bass player who played with Bob Dylan and famously refused to go electric when Dylan did …

(On his phone, Lee pulls up Dylan’s 1965 classic “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” to show the only two credits on the song: Bob Dylan and Bill Lee.)

I mean, he was the man. And then when Bob Dylan went electric, my father couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. Every weekend my mother was sharp-dressed in Bloomingdale’s, Lord and Taylor. That stopped.

The family’s lifestyle changed because your dad wasn’t working?

Correct. But he did not want to play electric bass. Couldn’t do it. It was like a religion. “I’m not going to play. I can’t do it.” And as the oldest, and knowing the struggles my mother was going through supporting the family, cooking, cleaning with five crazy kids, it was tough. She started teaching at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn. My mother, she was 41 when she died of liver cancer. She didn’t even drink. But my mother supported him. She believed in him. After I got older, I understood why he had to do this. He had morals. Convictions.

Do you think you —

I know what the next question is. Has that rubbed off on me?

Yes. Do you see yourself at all in that?

Yeah. There are things I won’t do. Can’t do it. And some of that stuff might’ve been to my benefit, but I’ve just got some stuff I can’t do. There are things that — I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Have my films remade, this or that, can’t do it. And artists can do what they want to do. But for me, I just could not live with myself. Have you seen the poster for this movie? There’s a quote on it: “All money ain’t good money.” And look, people have got to do what they’ve got to do. I understand it. But I just think I can’t do it. All money ain’t good money. I’ve got to give love to Mr. Kurosawa. That’s what I love about the premise of this film. It’s a moral dilemma. You’re jammed up. And there are consequences of your actions.

Denzel’s character has an unbelievable art collection in this film. Where’s the art from?

That’s my art. Most of it. Copies of it.

The giant Basquiat?

Not that one. I’ve got the small Basquiat.

Do you think a major studio would make Malcolm X in 2025?

That movie almost killed me when Warner Bros. let the bond company take over the film in postproduction and shut it down. [Lee and the studio were in a dispute over the budget and running time of the film.] That’s probably the most I’ve been depressed in my life with the exception of my mother dying. Half my salary went into the movie. I was broke.

The most important book I ever read was The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley in junior high school. I read that book every year. Once I got the gig to do that film, I said, “I have to be a student of Malcolm.” I just kept thinking about him. And it hit me like a ton of bricks: I know some African Americans who’ve got some money. I made a list and I got the money. Peggy Cooper Cafritz, who was an entrepreneur in D.C.; Tracy Chapman; Janet Jackson; Bill Cosby — he was the first person I went to. Prince. And every time I was going to somebody, I was asking for more money. Oprah Winfrey. The last two people on my list were Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. And knowing how competitive those two brothers are, I let it slip to my Brooklyn brother, Michael Jordan, how much Magic gave. Michael Jordan said, “OK, I got you.” Boom. And with that money I was able to rehire the crew. We had a press conference in Harlem to let the world know these prominent African Americans gave gifts, no strings attached, so I could finish this film. The next day, Warner Bros. took the film back from the bond company and started to finance it again.

So even in 1992, Malcolm X was a difficult movie to mount in the studio system. Would it be doable in the current political and economic environment?

I don’t like to get into what-ifs, but a lot of these people [who own movie studios] were at the [Trump] inauguration. I’m not naming names, but it is not an exaggeration to say that [Malcolm X] cannot be made today with where we are in this world.

Donald Trump is making efforts to silence people who are critical of him. As someone who has been an antagonist of Trump’s since the ’80s, do you worry about your ability to continue to exercise your free speech?

Have you seen what De Niro said about him? I’m a child of the ’70s, and I think the history of this country is artists. The Vietnam War, the songs, the movies. Black, white, brown people stood up against a war that was wrong. Jackson State. Kent State. The Democratic Convention, Chicago and those cops going crazy cracking heads. And they were saying, “The whole world is watching.” But it is a shock. We haven’t seen this exactly. I mean before, I mean not even Nixon did the stuff this guy is doing.

I’m a teacher, an NYU tenured professor; I’ve got a lot of students. Before spring break, the [school] administration sent an email, “Don’t go away for spring break.” It’s scary. I mean, if you are an international student, clean record, and you see what’s happening in the world. This is the year of living dangerously.

You’ve made a movie and a career out of asking, “What does it mean to do the right thing?” So what does it mean to do the right thing in the United States in 2025?

That’s a great question. And here’s the thing, if you ask people that question, everybody’s not going to give you the same answer. It is personal and everybody’s different. I read the papers and even the people who voted for him are like, “WTF.” When I travel all over the world, people I don’t even know will come up to me in an airport and say, “Spike, what’s happened to the United States, the so-called leader of the free world?” They’re like, “How did this happen?”

You were a sophomore at Morehouse College in Atlanta when your mom died, which is pretty young to lose a parent, especially as the oldest of five. How do you think that shaped you?

Me and my mother were very close. I was her movie date. When my mother died my sophomore year, I had not declared a major and my grades were terrible. The summer after she died, I came on back to New York, the summer of 1977, one of the craziest summers in the history of New York City. New York was broke. Usually you get a summer job. There were no jobs. It was hot. I was depressed. And this is an example of how God works. I’m sitting on my stoop doing nothing. And there was a great friend of mine, she lived in University Towers with her parents on the other side of Fort Greene Park. I said, “Let me go see what she’s doing.” So I go there, she’s studying for some test. And I look in the corner of the living room. I said, “What’s that?” She said, “It’s a Super 8 camera. My father gave it to me, but you can have it.” So that summer that I was doing nothing, I said, “Let me just shoot this summer.” It was the first summer of disco. Every block, the DJs hooking up their turntables and speakers to the streetlights. It was also the blackout. It was 100 degrees. Finally ConEd just said, “Fuck it.” My father was driving me around to see the looting going on. My fellow brothers and sisters, they were driving Cadillacs out of there. It was bedlam.

I came back to school in the fall, and there’s a teacher, Dr. Herbie Goldberger, who encouraged me to make a documentary out of the film I shot. I showed my class. They liked it, they responded to it. I said, “All right, I’m going to be a filmmaker. I’m going to do whatever I’ve got to do.” I applied to AFI, USC, NYU. I didn’t get into USC or AFI because I didn’t get a high enough score on the written test. Thank you Jesus, NYU. You didn’t have to take a written test, you just had to submit a portfolio.

I understand you’re dyslexic.

I call it dyslepia. (Laughs.) I didn’t even realize I had it until my son was diagnosed. I was like, “Oh shit. Is that what you got? You might’ve got it from me.” When I was growing up, it wasn’t a thing. It was like, “He’s a little off. Spikey makes his words up.” I never thought about it.

What are your thoughts on the Inside Man sequel? [Inside Man: Most Wanted is a 2019 sequel to Inside Man made without Lee and Washington’s participation that went direct-to-video.]

(Lee rolls his eyes.)

That was the first eye roll of the interview. I feel good that we made it this far.

They didn’t want to pay Denzel and me. They did a cheap film in South Africa. I’ve not really done a remake of my own, anyway. Listen, I’m looking forward to going to Cannes May 19, which is going to be Malcolm X’s hundredth birthday. When you walk up that red carpet in the Grand Palais and you’ve got your music going and the paparazzi, it’s insane. A great insane.

Thinking back to your first Cannes in 1989 with Do the Right Thing, the movie ended up losing the Palme d’Or to Sex, Lies and Videotape and you were so angry with the jury president, Wim Wenders, that you said you had a Louisville Slugger with his name on it. Have you and he ever talked about that?

I’ve never met him in my life.

Really?

I’m co-writing a book with Jay Glennie, great writer. He did the Deer Hunter book and the Raging Bull book. We’re writing a book about Do the Right Thing. It’s coming out next year. And I was looking at the press conference for that film, the first press conference in Cannes. And look, that’s years ago. But the thing that got me mad is that [Wenders] said Mookie was not a heroic character. And then no disrespect, but compare that to James Spader in Sex Lies and Videotape. So that got me mad. And then Sally Field and the late great [Kiss of the Spider Woman director] Héctor Babenco told me about what was going on with the jury. The word was coming from the president of the jury, Do the Right Thing cannot win. That’s when I really got mad. That’s when I made that statement, “I got a Louisville Slugger baseball bat.”

What’s happening with your Viagra musical?

That’s something I still want to do. I grew up on musicals. My mother took me to Broadway plays and movies, and that’s something I’ve got to get made. Got to get made.

How will you figure out what project is first in line after Highest 2 Lowest?

The studio. Who’s in it, who’s available? And also, I guess I should have said this first: What’s the budget? I have a lot of friends here in L.A. that work within the industry, and no one’s working. In New York too. Might be a couple TV shows. People are hurting. Like I said, this is the year of living dangerously. Shout-out to Peter Weir [director of the 1983 movie The Year of Living Dangerously]!

We’ve got to wind down soon because we’re both heading off to Francis Ford Coppola’s AFI ceremony.

When I got the email that Francis would like me to attend this, it came out of nowhere. I was so happy. And then came, “Do you want to go to L.A. on Steven Spielberg’s plane?” I get on the plane, and it’s Spielberg, Bob De Niro, Adam Driver. The four of us. We were having so much fun. If you would just hear how we all love Francis and how we love making films. A lot of these guys, they took me under their wing. The blessings, man. The blessings.

This story appeared in the May 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.