Spike Lee : "my ancestors are from the region now called Cameroon."

Even before Spike Lee makes an appearance, the room is abuzz with talk of his abrasive personality. One wide-eyed reporter testifies that at a previous tete a tete with the filmmaker, he lashed her mercilessly with his tongue for being unprepared. Today, she clutches her questions in her hand—they are typed, numbered and perfectly punctuated. Another reporter comments that she will only venture one question. Thus cutting down on the possibility of being humiliated by Lee. Folklore. It's all folklore, I tell myself.

So full frontal nudity was a must then?

I got so much flak in Mo' Better Blues—how come Denzel wouldn't take his shirt off? You got to show the man's butt. You just got to.

Have you gotten feedback from lesbian communities?

Oh yeah. We've had several advance screening for the lesbians across the country and it's divided going in—half of them like it, half of them don't. What's also really interesting is that it's also really divided upon race. Lesbians of color like it a lot better, a lot more, than white ones. And the thing about it is that lesbians of color are much more forgiving of the whole impregnation thing with penis being a part of the equation. Whereas the white lesbians feel that in no way shape or form should penis be involved (laughs).

Did you have any problems finding support for this film in Hollywood like Michael Moore did with the politically-driven Fahrenheit 9/11?

We went to all the major studios and they said, 'Can you paraphrase it?' Hell no! (laughs and imitates an executive voice) 'Spike, we like you, but this one's not for us, so we'd be more than happy to see what you're doing the next time, but for this particular film, I don't know how we could sell this film.'

Did you have problems getting an "R" rating?

No. Usually we have to go toe-to-toe with the MPAA, but not this time. It was amazing.

The returning star is always the music, right?

Music has always made a major contribution to my films, so I think I give as much importance to music as I do to cinematography, acting, production and design. And once again, I am very happy with the brilliant score by Terence Blanchard. What's different about this film is that there's usually his score and songs. This time we had no song, so it's all about Terence's orchestral score.

How did you cast Anthony?

I cast Anthony in another project I did for Showtime a film called, “Sucker Free City,” which will be coming out in the Fall and he was great, so I knew startingShe Hate Me right away, I gave him the script, he liked it and now you like it.

Will "Sucker Free City" be a two-hour movie now?

Two-hour movie. The initial hope was that it would be a series, but they knocked that down. We said mini-series and they knocked that down. After they knocked that down, we said we would put that out as a two-hour film.

You recently traced your roots back to Cameroon, right?

Let me put it this way. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and I always felt envious when my Italian American friends in the summer, they go back to Italy to visit their families. My Puerto Rican friends go back to Puerto Rico. My Irish American friends, in the summer would go back to Ireland. And then, my people were in Alabama and Georgia, but that's not where we're from and now because of science and DNA, African Americans are finally able to find where their ancestors are from. It's called African Ancestry Company. My wife her mother's ancestors are from the region of Sierra Leone. On my father's side of the family, my ancestors are from the region now called Cameroon and on my mother's side, my ancestors are from a region now called Niger, so my wife and I had to sit down when we got the results—for me, it was this great moment of empowerment just knowing where my ancestors were stolen from.

Is that a new movie idea?

It's something. When something like that happens that's why science can benefit us all up to a point. One of the few things I agree with President Bush on is cloning. I think that you can't play God. Start cloning human beings [and] something bad is going to happen.

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