So you have this label as being this angry black man.
Are you that angry?
I don't think I'm any angrier than any other intelligent,
thinking, African-American male today living in America.
[APPLAUSE]
Stevie, are you angry?
To me, anger is something that distorts your ability
to deal with the problem.
I'm hurt by various things, and things do get me upset.
But to be angry--
and I don't think, really, anybody is,
on a consistent basis, angry.
OPRAH WINFREY: Spike may be.
You think you're angry on a consistent basis, Spike?
According to the press.
I think that basically, the press--
He's a diplomat.
He may be angry, but he's a diplomat.
But go ahead.
I think basically, that's just as stereotypical as saying that
the things that we're dealing-- you
were dealing with in the film.
I mean, that's just their opinion.
And you know about opinions.
Everybody's got a-- you know, opinions.
Well, I don't know.
I think sometimes labels like that really hurt.
Because once you're labeled angry,
then there are a whole group of people,
then, for whom that negates everything else
you have to say.
And they hear anything because you just are
labeled this angry black man.
And something you said recently--
I was very upset with you for saying it too, Spike.
SPIKE LEE: What was that?
I don't know if you said it, but I
read in "The Detroit Press" where
you were quoted as saying--
as calling Colin Powell the number one Tom in the country.
I was very angry with you for saying that.
Because I thought, you know if you--
No, I didn't call him a Tom.
But what I'm saying is that any man-- any black man--
in my opinion, any black man that rises that far in the Bush
administration, and knowing what I feel
George Bush feels about black people, I don't think
can be trusted. And that's my opinion.
OPRAH WINFREY: Mm-hmm.
[APPLAUSE]
OK. OK.
STEVIE WONDER: But again, I think that's his opinion.
And if that's how he feels, that's how he feels.
OPRAH WINFREY: And I respect his right to feel that way,
I really do.
But I just thought, you know, Colin Powell,
he's doing what he's doing.
And he's faced discrimination.
We've never walked in his shoes.
So how do we know what kind of struggle he's had?
So I just wanted to get that out.
When people see--
it's like when people see--
it's like when you see more than one black person.
There's a crowd of black people.
They say, OK-- or they say we're going to work together to do
this to uplift our culture.
Then some people say, well, they're being racist.
I mean, that's stupid.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with people,
African-American people, coming together
to do something great for them-- for themselves,
for their culture.
Because you cannot really appreciate, completely,
anybody else's culture until you really are
able to appreciate your own.
Well, you know, what Spike does--
but I will say this.
What Spike does so unbelievably well is that--
I mean, the dialogue, particularly between the blacks
and Italians in this film--
I mean, the Italian families, I feel like I-- in that,
that I know those people, that I'd lived in that house.
And so did you grow up around a lot of Italians or something?
Well, I lived in the Italian neighborhood Cobble Hill.
And one of my best friends was Louis
Tucci, Louis and Joe Tucci.
And I used their last name for the character of Angie.
But more important than that, I hired
the best Italian-American actors I could find in New York City.
And a lot of them were in Martin Scorsese's films.
And they were all committed to the film.
And we wanted it to ring true.
We just not-- we just--
I mean, some of these characters are racist.
But we wanted to have-- be not stereotypes.
We still want to understand why they're racist.
And that's what we tried to do.
And so when you are casting, are you casting
for a particular point of view.
Are you casting because-- because I like the way
all your characters look too.
Didn't you like-- I just loved the way they looked.
So are you looking for the look?
You're looking for a point of view?
You're looking for the-- - It's a combination.
I mean, I don't think that an actor has to have the same
philosophical different--
I mean, same philosophy I have.
Because me and Danny Aiello used to fight
all the time about politics.
But that was not important.
He was the best person to play Sal in "Do the Right Thing."
And that's what we go for.
Are people usually--
like, if you-- when they come onto your set--
Stevie maybe you can help us to answer this.
Are they intimidated by you?
Are they scared of you?
No, I don't think so. OPRAH WINFREY: No?
Not ever? - Mm-mm.
I think that people have an image of what someone is.
OPRAH WINFREY: They think you're going to be angry.
Well, I mean, with Spike, I wasn't scared.
I'll punch him out.
But I think it depends on--
I think people have this image, this preconceived thing
about how you are.
They might be impressed with your success,
they might not be.
It depends on the person.
Are you impressed by it at all?
Are you all impressed by what you've
achieved in the past four years, Spike,
since "She's Got to Have it?"
Well, everything that's happened now, I've visualized.
So I'm not really surprised by them.
OPRAH WINFREY: Do you do it on purpose,
like creative visualization?
Well, I mean, I was in college when I decided
I wanted to be a filmmaker.
This is what I visualized.
And it's happened.
I read, I think, in the "Playboy" interview,
where you said that "She's Got to Have
it" is the one film of yours that you now can't watch.
That's why I read.
I don't know if you said it or not.
I said that.
OPRAH WINFREY: OK, you said that, OK.
All right, so why?
Well, it's the acting in the film.
Any time you have bad acting in the movie,
it's the director's fault. I had just come out of film school.
I was not really comfortable working with actors.
And so if you have bad acting in a film it's because, number
one, he didn't direct them, and number two,
he cast the wrong people.
I love it where you say that it
was so hot in the room you all were drinking a lot of sodas.
And when people would go to throw away the bottles,
you'd say, don't throw away the bottles.
Because you'd turn in the bottles for money.
Yeah, we bought three or four rolls of film
like that with those deposits.
OPRAH WINFREY: Wow.
Come a long way.