Spike Lee visits Pitt

Director, producer, writer and actor are a few of the credits Spike Lee has tucked under… Director, producer, writer and actor are a few of the credits Spike Lee has tucked under his belt.

But on Tuesday night he told a packed David Lawrence Auditorium about one of his lesser-known titles: presidential matchmaker.

Lee said he met President Barack Obama at a fundraiser for his first Senate race. Obama told Lee that he took Michelle to see Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’ on their first date, so the director was responsible for the couple getting together.

Like past speakers to come to Pitt, Lee’s controversial nature made him an ideal candidate.

Black Action Society programming chair Glory Ojiere said the group chose Lee because his films challenge people to think.

‘It doesn’t matter if you agree with his message,’ said Ojiere. ‘But his unconventional films get audiences talking.’

Lee talked after being swarmed by fans and waiting for nearly 15 minutes until the audio system was properly set up. His lecture, which cost BAS $27,000, attracted more than 1,000 people.

Although the men’s basketball team didn’t attend the event, and thus left the three rows Lee asked to reserve for them empty, Lee still expressed his sympathies for their loss.

‘I was pulling for Pitt against ‘Nova,’ he said.

Lee spent the majority of the hour discussing his ascent from unmotivated student to celebrated filmmaker.

He spent the summer before his junior year of college shooting video of disco, blackouts and looting that occurred in 1977 in New York City, his hometown. When he returned to Morehouse College in Atlanta, one of his professors encouraged him to turn his raw footage into a story.

‘I found out what I loved doing and became focused,’ said Lee.

He stressed ‘doing what you love’ instead of picking a major that would please your parents.

‘Parents kill more dreams than anybody,’ he said.

Lee continued his passion for filmmaking at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, during which he won a Student Academy Award for ‘Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads,’ a movie he shot in 1983.

By 1989, he had released ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ and ‘Do the Right Thing,’ two of his most highly acclaimed films.

Making films hasn’t always been easy for Lee, whose early movies encountered budgeting problems, he said.

The 1992 ‘Malcom X’ was particularly ‘a battle,’ said Lee.

After running out of money, he said he made personal phone calls to Bill Cosby, Prince, Oprah and Michael Jordan to get funding.

‘Mike’s very competitive and wrote the biggest check,’ Lee said laughing.

It wasn’t until the end of the lecture and question-and-answer session that Lee began to address his role as a portrayer of the black community.

‘I’m only six generations removed from slavery,’ he said, and the black stereotype still exists.

Until we deal with it, we will never get where we need to be, said Lee.

During the question-and-answer session, an unprepared student asked how Lee felt about the way blacks are depicted in society, to which Lee quickly quipped that he already told that story in his film ‘Bamboozled.’

‘Netflix it,’ he said shortly.

Neepa Majumdar teaches a Spike Lee directors’ course at Pitt and said she remembered the first time she heard him speak at Indiana University 10 years ago.

‘It was very contentious, people were there to call him out,’ she said.

But Tuesday night’s audience was supportive, applauding, shouting and taking pictures.