There’s something sacred about watching generations meet at the crossroads when the architects of a culture sit across from the visionaries still building it. Variety tapped into that alchemy by bringing Spike Lee and Ryan Coogler together, framing a conversation that felt less like an interview and more like a family reunion.
Raised on opposite coasts and shaped by different eras, Lee and Coogler spoke like brothers sharing the common language of cinema and Black storytelling. Their ease with one another revealed a bond that predates the moment captured on camera. Ahead of the release of his award-winning film “Sinners,” Coogler reflected on just how essential it was for Lee to see the project early on.
“I wanted to show you the movie. It’s got so many inspirations, but many of them are from your movies. I was just thinking, ‘Man, I should just check and see on the offhand chance that Spike is in L.A,’” he shared. “I called you, and you were like, ‘Yo, I’m here.’ [The] first thing you said was ‘You don’t want to sit next to me.'”
“I was giving you a warning. And I watched my brother’s film, and it’s like me sitting courtside at Madison Square Garden and we’re kicking the Celtics’ ass. I’m jumping up and down. I was buggin’,” Lee responded.
Like many audiences, the creator of “Do The Right Thing” fell in love with the film, and was particularly enamored with the Ernie Barnes-inspired musical scene, “Suga Shack,” that appears in the movie and transports audiences from 1930s Mississippi into a multiverse of Black music through the years.
“When that surreal music montage came up, I lost it, man,” Lee shared jumping out of his seat with uncontainable enthusiasm.
“It’s a dream come true, man, to be able to play the movie for somebody who you look up to,” Coogler explained. “So many of your movies affected me. I felt the same way when I watched ‘Highest 2 Lowest.'”
From Lee’s latest project to his classic pieces, like 1992’s “Malcolm X,” starring Denzel Washington, Coogler describes watching films as “a sacred experience”—a devotion that motivated him when working on “Sinners” and ultimately led him to find the right studio home for the project. While Lee teased at “certain conditions,” like Coogler’s groundbreaking ownership deal, contributing to the conversations with studios, Coogler stayed tact, sharing: “I’m happy we were able to find a home with Warner Bros. And just that people came out, which is something that you can never control, right? It’s a risk. I’m willing to bet on a good story. I truly believe that there isn’t any experience like a movie in a theater.”
“Especially at this time, when we’re disconnected from each other,” he continued. “But for me, going to sit in a movie theater, the best thing for me is not being able to press pause or stop it. Because the first thing I do, especially when I’m watching something scary, or I’m watching something that’s too funny or too shocking, if I’m at home, I press pause and give myself a chance to catch up.”
That belief in the story, the cast, and the project overall has paid off this award season, having already racked up four Critics’ Choice Awards, six Grammy and Golden Globe nominations.
“All my other jobs, it felt like, ‘If it doesn’t work, I’ll never work in this town again’ kind of thing, and a pressure that was maybe irrational, but maybe also possible. There was a lot of high potential for failure on all those projects. If they didn’t work, [I had] the fear of what that could mean for my future in this business,” Coogler shared in a Hollywood Reporter interview. “Whereas with ‘Sinners,’ I wasn’t thinking like that no more because I had made quite a bit of movies. On ‘Sinners,’ I felt like it was my actual job. I didn’t feel that I was getting over on somebody. The impostor syndrome was a little bit lessened.”
