‘This Is Your Life’ Meets a Job Fair: Spike Lee Talks Tribeca, Receives Gifts

A scene from Spike Lee’s “Passing Strange.” Image courtesy of the Tribeca Film Festival.

The film has Bryant providing commentary over one game that Lee filmed.  A one shot deal, Lee was nervous going into it. “This is not scripted, and that’s what I love about sports - anything can happen,” Lee said. “But it’s also kinda scary because if Kobe gets hurt, we don’t have film. If he gets two technicals and gets thrown out of the game, we don’t have a film. So I told him before we started filming - you can’t get thrown out of the game!”

Bryant made it through the game, and “Doin’ Work” has its world premiere at Tribeca this Saturday night before screening on ESPN later next month.

While Lee’s decision to film a basketball doc is no surprise considering his status as a hardcore fan has been common knowledge for years, his decision to take on a Broadway musical is a bit more surprising. “My mother was taking me to Broadway musicals when I was really little,” he said. “So that’s where the influence comes from. ‘West Side Story’ is one of my all-time favorites. And I was glad to see the new revival of it.”

“Passing Strange” is a documentation of the 2008 Broadway musical that follows a young black musician who travels on a picaresque journey from South Central Los Angeles to Europe in an attempt to find himself. 

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful piece,” Lee said of the play.  “One of the producers of the play, Steve Klein, approached me about documenting this. Because so often when a play is over, when a play shuts down, that’s it. You might have some stills or something, but there’s not really a living document of what happened. It’s just people’s memories. And we all felt that this thing was too good - despite the fact that the marketing was terrible.  And the usual Broadway audience is maybe not the right audience [for ‘Strange’].”

Lee criticized the marketers for not reaching out to the black or hispanic communities, and for relying too much on the potential of Tony Awards. “One of the things that got [the marketers] tripped up is that part of the music is rock and roll,” he said. “And they just think that rock and roll and black people… they are not gonna come. But come on, we made rock and roll. Little Richard… Chuck Berry… That’s us. It got appropriated, but we still claim it… Here’s also a dangerous thing when you want to market a film or play. You cannot base everything on ‘well, once we get Academy Award nominations, then we ‘llget the box office.  Or once, I mean [‘Passing Strange’] got nominated for seven Tony’s, and they were up against ‘In The Heights.’ They were banking their success - to continue to run - depending on whether they won the Tonys. And they only won one.”

So when this resulted in the show closing, Lee and the play’s producers decided they would document the last three shows for the film. It debuted at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival to warm notices, and makes its New York City debut May 2nd as part of Tribeca.

Spike Lee was the first in a series of discussions happening at the Apple Store during Tribeca that are co-presented by indieWIRE. For a full schedule of events, click here.