Spike's Pique?

SPOTLIGHT

Yeah, yeah. We know. Writer-director-actor and down-by-law entrepreneur Spike Lee is a lightning rod for controversy. He knows it, too. With Malcolm X due for release in November, the skies have opened and rained down on him in any number of ways. He weathered bolts from purists within the black community over his rewrite of a 25-year-old James Baldwin script; from the completion-bond company over financing (costs swelled $5 million above budget); from Warner Bros, over the movie's epic length and images they wanted to cut (footage from the Rodney King video, an American flag burning into an X). Electrified by all the charges, Lee proclaims, 'This is the best I've ever done."

Denzel Washington stars as the fire-haired Black Muslim leader, evolving from hedonist-hustler to idealist-icon. ("Woo, he's phenomenal," raves Spike. "D.'s killin'. It's a role D. was bom to play.") Lee himself turns up as Shorty, a compilation figure created by Alex Haley in The Autobiography of Malcolm X—in the photo here, he and Washington are zoot-suiting up into their yowsuh, yowsuh vines (hipster garb).

Bored by the postproduction calm, Lee conjured up another storm by telling African-Americans to take the day of Malcolm X's opening off to see the movie. "I said, 'Parents should take off work,'" Lee cackles. "That got blown way out of proportion [in the New York Post]. They made it sound like I said black kids should drop out of school or something." Then again, maybe a one-day boycott wouldn't be such a bad idea. "When I was in school I had to go see fuckin' Gone with the Wind and write a fuckin' report about it," Lee remembers. 'That movie was racist and four hours long."

ELVIS MITCHELL