After months of anticipation, the new Spike Lee Joint, Red Hook Summer, hits theaters today.
The film focuses on a middle-class boy from Atlanta, whose life is turned upside down when he spends the summer with his deeply religious grandfather in the housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn.
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During an interview with theGrio, Lee talked about the financial obstacles he faced making Red Hook Summer and trying to distribute the film to theaters.
“I did know that it would have been a waste of time to get the studios to finance this film,” Lee told theGrio’s entertainment editor, Chris Witherspoon. “When we began to talk about this film, we always knew this had to be done outside the Hollywood studio system. So it was shot like that and its being distributed like that. I’m not gonna put myself in a position where if Hollywood doesn’t want to make a film then that means it can’t get made.”
The Oscar-nominated director also revealed which of his most popular films he would consider remaking or revising in the future.
“The sequel that should have been made was Inside Man,” Lee said. “Inside Man is my most successful film to date and we never were able to get it down. School Daze and Do the Right Thing — if I did them it would probably be in a different form. It would probably be on Broadway, but not in movie theaters.”
Follow Chris Witherspoon on Twitter at @WitherspoonC