Inveterate New Yorker Spike Lee recalled the 9/11 terror attacks 22 years after the tragedy took place in a TIFF on-stage conversation on Monday (September 11).
“You can make the case that the world has changed since that day,” said Lee,” appearing on stage in a Visionaries session with TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey after showing the audience an episode of his 2021 HBO mini-series NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021 1/2.
“I wasn’t there,” said Lee of the day of the attacks on multiple sites including the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. He had been in Los Angeles talking with Arnold Schwarzenegger about playing the lead in boxing drama Save Us, Joe Louis, which he co-wrote with Oscar-winning Budd Schulberg (On The Warterfront) but never made.
Lee watched the catastrophe unfold on television and raced to Union Station in Los Angeles – all civilian flights in US airspace would be suspended for two days – and with the help of station porters was able to secure a bunk on a sold-out ride to Chicago. He made it home three days later.
“When this happened I knew I wanted to make a tribute to the people that are no longer here, the brave NYFD, NYPD, EMS, everybody, regular citizens,” the filmmaker said. “The goal was not just speak to the firemen but everybody, as many as we could.”
In a brief Q&A session a typically feisty Lee teased and joked with the audience, chiding one audience member in Glenn Gould Studio who described himself as an occasional filmmaker: “Either you’re a filmmaker or you’re not,” he said, getting a roar out of the audience. “You’re in or out. None of this dipping your toe.”
Asked about his love of music and how he uses it in film the director reminded that he shot the Michael Jackson documentary Bad 25 and numerous music videos with Jackson and other artists, adding in a theatrical aside: “I wanted to do Thriller but never got the call.”
Lee continued, “Music is so much a part of what I do; documentary or feature, music is key. There are some filmmakers where the picture is locked then they decide to get a composer.
“That shit is ass backwards,” he said, getting more laughs. “When actors get the scripts, the cinematographer, production design, my composers are getting the script at the same time. It’s not going to Billboard magazine and seeing what the 10 hot songs are. For me that’s not the best utilisation of music. Music is just for me; t’s just as important as the acting, cinematography.”
The filmmaker invited unsigned artists via Instagram to submit work for the 2017-19 Netflix series adaptation of his 1986 breakout She’s Gotta Have It. “The talent is out there and this technology has been a connective force. If you’re in this independent cinema thing, hook up with people who can help you.”
Lee received the TIFF Ebert Director award at Sunday’s night’s TIFF Tribute Awards. His most recent film to screen at the festival was David Byrne’s American Utopia in 2020.
*Later on Monday evening Lee hosted a Q&A with The Talking Heads following an Imax screening of a 4K restored version of Jonathan Demme’s 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense.
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