Ang Lee Credits Super-8....

Lee credits learning for successes

By Bob Bloom
[email protected]

If Spike Lee were to make a movie about his life, filmmaking would be only a subplot.

His devotion to learning would be the main focus, as it was in his talk Wednesday night at Loeb Playhouse at Purdue University.

Lee's downplaying of his career did not come as a surprise to Raymond Reese, a senior at Purdue. Lee, he said, "always has been an advocate of education."

He found Lee's talk a "very motivational speech. A lot of the values he applies, I will be applying to my life."

The topic listed for Lee's appearance, which was sponsored by the Black Cultural Center, was "African American Images in Hollywood."

But he devoted the major portion of his talk extolling the benefits of higher education and urging students to "utilize school to find what you are passionate about -- what you love."

He encouraged students to open their minds and take the initiative. "Take what you need to get where you want to be."

Purdue senior Brande Mickens called Lee's talk "awesome. He did a great job."

She was appreciative that he talked about "everyday life, about his career."

Lee, a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, went on to study film at New York University, where he has taught for the last nine years.

He credited his parents and grandmother for allowing him to follow his ambition to be a filmmaker, a career he decided upon in the summer of 1977, between his sophomore and junior year at Morehouse.

He told how he took a super-8mm camera and filmed the images around him, and of the encouragement he received from a professor at Morehouse who urged him to edit his raw footage into a narrative.

Lee touched upon the lack of black faces in front and behind the camera when he was young, recalling that "it used to be a big thing when films would come out with us in it."

He also said the way the United States dominates the world is with culture, through the influence of movies, television and music -- especially rap.

Other topics:

# He criticized FEMA saying, "because of cronyism people are dead."

# He said that blacks should look beyond color and not support Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice if she runs for president.

# He urged everyone to register to vote and cast their ballots.

# He spoke in favor of reparations for blacks, saying, "this country was built on slavery -- free labor."

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Kudos on the Condoleeza Rice Comment, Rice apparently was shopping for shoes in a posh New York Boutique the day after Hurricane Katrina had left hundreds and perhaps thousands of New Orleans citizens clinging to the tops of their homes as flood waters washed their possessions away.