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Show Business

The Battle to Film Malcolm XTo portray the black hero his way, Spike Lee has taken onrival directors, black activists, the studio and the budgetBy JANICE C. SIMPSON

School Daze? Blacks complained thatit demeaned black coeds. Do the Right

Thing? Whites fumed that it promoted in-terracial violence. Jungle Fever? The di-rector himself groused that racism de-prived it of an award at the Cannes FilmFestival. Feisty black filmmaker Spike Leeis no stranger to controversy. Each of thefive movies he has made since 1986 aboutthe African-American expejtence hasstirred up some kind of fuss. But none ofLee's previous flaps compares to the trou-bles that have stalked his latest, mostambitious film, Malcolm X.

X, as insiders call it, won't be re-leased until the Christmas season.But already Lee has fought off rival ,attempts to make the film, wrangledwith the poet Amiri Baraka (onceknown as LeRoi Jones) and otherblack nationalists about how theirhero should be portrayed on thescreen, knocked heads with WarnerBros. over how much money' andplaying time are needed to tell Mal-colm's story, and lost financial con-trol of the project "I knew this wasgoing to be the toughest thing 1 everdid," he says, sitting wearily in hisediting room. "The film is huge in thecanvas we had to cover and in thecomplexity of Malcolm X."

Before shooting began in NewYork City last September, Barakapublicly warned Lee "not to mess upMalcolm's life" and organized a pro-test rally. After Lee lashed back atBaraka, a truce was declared. But dis-agreements with Warner Bros.haven't been resolved as easily. Thestudio refused to kick in additionalfunds when Lee went $4 million overhis $28 million budget, prompting thebond company that insured the com-pletion of the film to assume financialcontrol of the movie. That means Leemust get approval from the bond com-pany for each dollar he spends. "Theyhave financial control-they don'thave creative control," he says. "Theycan't finish this film without me."

Lee also continues to insist thathe needs at least three hours ofscreen time to trace the dramatictransformations of Malcolm's life:from the street hustler who solddrugs and women into the charismat-ic spokesman for the Black Muslims

who preached black self-determinationand antiwhite rhetoric and, finally, intothe orthodox Muslim who made a hajj toMecca and embraced universal equality.The studio would prefer a brisk compres-sion of the story. Twice in the past month,Lee and studio executives have faced offin shouting matches in which Lee citedOliver Stone's 3-hr., 8-min. JFK If a slainwhite hero like John F. Kennedy deservesthree hours, Lee argued, then so does aslain black hero.

Since being gunned down in a Harlemballroom 27 years ago, Malcolm X, once

viewed as an alarming extremist by whites-'Iand many blacks as well, has evolved intoan icon in the black community, reveredby African Americans ranging from Su-preme Court Justice Clarence Thomas tothe members of the raging rap group Pub-lic Enemy. Making a movie to satisfy allthese constituencies would seem an im-possible task. At various times since pro-ducer Marvin Worth sewed up the rightsin 1968, novelists James Baldwin and Da-vid Bradley and playwrights David Marnerand Charles Fuller tried their hand atwriting a screenplay. Actors Billy DeeWilliams and Richard Pryor expressed in-terest in playing Malcolm, and Sidney Lu-met and Norman Jewison considered di-recting. But nobody wanted to do the filmmore than Lee.

When he heard that Jewison had thego-ahead for the project, Lee waged a

protest campaign, arguing in thepress that only a black director coulddo the right thing with Malcolm's sto-ry and pestering Worth with count-less phone calls, insisting, "I'm theguy, I'm the guy." Worth finally re-lented, and Jewison bowed out.Warner Bros. agreed to finance theBaldwin script, as rewritten and di-rected by Lee, starring AcademyAward-winner Denzel Washington."I think they felt it would be more ofan event with Spike," Worth says.

Certainly it was a financial eventLee, who had never spent more than$ 14 million on a film, demanded $40million in order to portray four dis-tinct periods in Malcolm's life and togo on location for such crucial se-quences as his pilgrimage to Mecca.When the studio refused, Leetrimmed his budget to $33 million.Sorry, said the studio, but $20 millionwas as high as it was willing to go. Leemade up some of the difference byselling the foreign rights for $8.5 mil-lion, then went ahead with shootingbased on his $33 million projection.He hoped that Warner would comethrough once filming was under way.It didn't-a decision that Lee attri-butes to racism. "There are two reali-ties in Hollywood, one black and onewhite," he says, "Unless you're EddieMurphy, there's a glass ceiling onhow much they're going to spend onblack films."

Still, Lee is so determined not tomake compromises that he has takenthe unusual step of investing a sizableamount of his reported $3 million sal-ary in the project. Malcolm X oncefamously said blacks would achieve. their rights "by any means neces-sary." Lee clearly feels the same wayabout his movie. _

Baraka, left, and Lee clashed over how to tell the storyof Malcolm, played by Denzel Washingto , above

TIME, MARCH 16, 1992 71