The Spike and Stew Show

The director and the "Passing Strange" creator discuss their collaboration and their younger selves.

Near the end of the show, Stew, you step out as the narrator and address your younger self. The easy question would be: what would you tell your younger self? But I’d like to know what your younger self could tell you today.

Spike Lee: Oh, that’s the switch-up!

Stew: Early on in the workshop, I had two pages where the kid was just telling the narrator off. It was coming on too strong. I wanted so badly for people to understand that I was not judging this kid from a superior point of view, or giving some kind of lecture. At the end of the day, all this 20-year-old has is writing songs, and that’s what he’s going to do. Later on, he’ll realize there are other things. [laughs] I believe in this kid and his perspective. He might not know everything, but he’s sincere. I’d rather be hungry for life than walk around doing nothing, being dead.

I never talk down to my daughter about life. I have fun telling her about my mistakes, my crazy teenage experiences — to let her know, like signposts. As a result, it’s not as sexy for her. She doesn’t do anything as crazy as I did as a teenager. I’m talking to my younger self when I’m talking to my 17-year-old. “Here’s what happened. Here’s what you need to do. Want to be an artist? Go to school.” She’ll say, “Dad, you didn’t go to school. Look at you, you’re making a movie with Spike Lee!” I’m like, “Spike Lee went to NYU.”

Spike Lee: Personally, it’s hard for me to answer hypothetical questions. What would Spike Lee 20 years ago tell me today? Don’t get lazy. Keep it up!

Stew’s coming of age is already laid out quite nakedly in “Passing Strange,” so for you, Spike, when did you first feel like you came into your own?

Spike Lee: I’m a product of family. My father’s a musician, a jazz bassist and composer. My mother was an art teacher. We grew up in an artistic household. My father was taking me to Newport Jazz Festival, and dragging me to Broadway plays. Once I got there, I liked it, but I didn’t want to go. I’d rather just run up and down the block with my friends. So it’s not an accident I became a filmmaker. The spark was ignited the summer between the sophomore and junior years when I was at college. This is something my sister Joie reminded me: I used to have these notebooks. Three ring, loose-leaf notebooks. In class, I’d just practice my autographs. [laughs] I don’t know what for. I still have the books.

Taking the temperature of 2009, Obama’s America proves some sign of a progressive path, but then I see these health care rallies…

Spike Lee: You know what? I saw one of these rallies, and there was this lady in there. She must’ve weighed 500 pounds. A black woman, she was pitching a bitch. I’d put money on it she was paid to do that because she was the only black person in there! [It took] four people to get her ass out of there because she was raising holy hell. [laughs]

…So continuing on with that, I feel like it’s always two steps forward, one step back. Using a line from the show, is America any closer today to embracing the “freaky Negroes”?

Stew: Yeah, I feel like we have to be vigilant and realize what Spike has said a couple times today: we have to be aware of this post-race myth. It’s dangerous. You can’t have young kids growing up thinking that, because one day they’ll be in a car, and they’ll get picked up, and they’ll be thinking they’re… No, police don’t look at you like you’re a human being — they look at you like you’re the profile. I always teach my daughter that. She lives in a multicultural environment, but still.

The thing about Obama is, the positives are obvious, and particularly the thing that Spike obsesses on, is people knowing that we are a monolith. We’ve got brothers that live in Indonesia. You don’t get less monolithic than him. We love that he’s there. We also love that there’s a man with a brain in the White House for a change, but let’s not get too comfortable. That’s all. Are we closer to this embrace? Of course we are. We’re always getting closer. But, man, it’s still a very long way to go. I don’t want to digress, but I’ve been reading a lot about details of [Rev. Martin Luther] King’s struggles in the ’50s and ’60s. Man, racism is a motherfucker. People will kill not to live next door to people, and that was only a few years ago. So we can’t act like, suddenly, we’re all different.

Spike Lee: What about the cop who called [Henry Louis Gates, Jr.] a jungle monkey? And then he said it was not racial! [laughs]

Stew: We’ve got a ways.

Spike Lee: A banana-eating jungle monkey, goddamn! That thing was so bad, the Boston cops had to back away from that, and you know how bad they are. But even they had to say, “Yo, man, your ass is on your own! We can’t help you, baby.” [laughs]

“Passing Strange” opens in New York on August 21st and will be available on VOD on August 26th.

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