Inside Man - Spike Lee interview

SPIKE Lee talks about some of the challenges of making bank heist drama Inside Man and some of his casting choices, from Brits Clive Owen and Chiwetel Ejiofor to regular collaborator Denzel Washington. He also talks about some of his other movies - both past and in the pipeline. He was speaking at a UK round table...

Q. The great joy of this film is being taken back to the great heist movies of the Seventies, such as The Anderson Tapes and Dog Day Afternoon. Was that deliberate?

Spike Lee: Well we even give homages to Dog Day. Two of the actors that were in Dog Day are in Inside Man – although you’ll have to do your homework to find out who they are! It was a way of trying to make something contemporary but at the same time be respectful to the films that I liked growing up.

Q. Was there an element of fun doing that for you as a director?

Spike Lee: There was a lot of fun, not just because of the subject matter but just to work with a cast like that.

Q. What was it about Clive Owen that made you use him because we haven’t seen him play such a bad guy before?

Spike Lee: Well, he wasn’t a good guy in Closer either. But I like working with talented people. We wanted a man to be in this role, not a boy, because Denzel’s a man and in order to make the cat and mouse game work we needed somebody who could plant their feet on the ground, stand toe to toe with Denzel and not get blown off the screen, or piss their pants and be confident in who they are. Clive had great respect for Denzel but he was like ‘yo, I’m here too!’ And that’s what we needed for that part.

Q. Was having to wear the mask for such long periods of time in the film a problem at any time for him?

Spike Lee: It was a big concern and it was why he didn’t sign on right away because his face was going to be covered.

Q. How did you convince him?

Spike Lee: I took him to a [New York] Knicks game and that’s the truth. Once he said he’d do it, things were fine.

Q. Was the Jodie Foster role written with her specifically in mind? Was she someone you’d always wanted to work with?

Spike Lee: No it wasn’t. But Jodie and my brother went to Yale together, they were in the same class and we had discussed working together. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I’ve come to learn that things happen when they’re supposed to happen.

Q. What appealed to her about the role?

Spike Lee: She wanted to do it because she hadn’t played a character like this before. She didn’t want to carry the whole film, she just wanted to come and do a supporting role. But she wanted a role where she could really get dressed up and look glamorous and that worked with me too.

Q. Did it take a long time to get such a quality cast together, including the likes of Christopher Plummer and Willem Dafoe?

Spike Lee: No, it came together quickly because Denzel had a specific window. At the time I sent the script to Denzel he was playing Brutus on Broadway in Julius Caesar. He said: “Spike I want to do it but this is when the play ends, I’m going to take a week off, then I’ll begin a week later and we’ll have four weeks of shooting.” It had to come very quickly to fit within Denzel’s schedule. If he wasn’t doing it, then the film wasn’t getting made.

Q. You’ve been quoted as being concerned about the direction Hollywood is taking. Was that a concern on this film? How much input did the studio have and did they give you a fair amount of autonomy?

Spike Lee: The studios weren’t so much a concern as was the question of whether Brian Grazer [producer] and I would be able to co-exist. This project was bought by Imagine – the partnership between Ron Howard and Brian Grazer – after a bidding war. Imagine paid the most money so that Ron Howard could direct the film and Ron began working with Russell Gewirtz [the screenwriter] in pre-production. But then Russell Crowe came and said: “Let’s do Cinderella Man”. So Ron Howard left Inside Man for Cinderella Man and four or five years later here we are…

Q. But they left you to get on with it pretty much by yourself?

Spike Lee: Well, they had their opinions. Some things they said were good adjustments, but other things I said we’re not doing.

Q. What’s next for you?

Spike Lee: I’m hopefully doing a film called Save Us, Joe Louis. It’s about Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. Terrence Howard, the recent Academy Award nominee, is going to play Joe Louis and Hugh Jackman is going to play Max Schmeling and it’s going to be an epic – bigger than Malcolm X.

Q. Will that be your biggest undertaking as a director?

Spike Lee: It will be. It’s been co-wrote by Budd Schulberg. I made a promise to him that we’d get this film made. We’ve been trying to make it for six years and we’re hoping to get it started late Fall. Every time this looked like it was going to happen we’d have a setback. The first was Ali because of the mentality of the studio. When Ali came out they said: “Boxing films don’t work.” Then it gained some momentum but when Cinderella Man came out, they said the same thing. It’s that type of mentality that keeps good films from being made. I’m not trying to be biased but Star Wars was turned down by every studio because of a film called Starman, starring Jeff Bridges. Joe Louis isn’t going to be Star Wars in any way, shape or form but that’s the mentality of the gate-keepers – the people that decide which films are getting made and which aren’t.

Q. Will this film be as important on a political level as the Jesse Owens story?

Spike Lee: Yes. They were contemporaries. Jesse went to Berlin and beat everyone but Hitler refused to shake his hand. In fact, Schmeling and Louis fought twice and the first time Goebbels and Hitler did not watch it because at that time no one ever thought that Louis would ever lose and it would not look good for the Aryan race to be beat. But after he knocked Joe Louis out in the first fight, then Schmeling became an instrument, a tool for propaganda and was used as an example of the superiority of the Germans.

Q. On the subject of racism, Inside Man does feature some racist comments being made by policemen. Was that something specific you wanted to address?

Spike Lee: The NYPD is better than they used to be. In fact that was ad-libbed when the character says: “You guys called me an Arab, but I’m a Seikh.” And Willem Dafoe says: “You didn’t hear that.” But there’s still a great insensitivity by police departments across America towards people of colour.

Q. But even Denzel’s character is guilty of it because he tops the scene with the line: “But I bet you can still get a cab”?

Spike Lee: Well that’s not a racist statement. It’s irony. Cabs won’t stop for black people in New York, especially if you try and go to Brooklyn from Manhattan. No way they’re doing that!

Q. Can you comment on the casting of another Englishman in the film, Chiwetel Ejiofor, who you have worked with before?

Spike Lee: Yeah, he had a small part in She Hate Me. I saw him in Dirty Pretty Things and right away I said: “Who is that guy?” I put out my feelers and we made contact. He’s a wonderful actor. I’ll give you a funny anecdote. While we were shooting the film I noticed that every scene between Chiwetel and Denzel, Chiwetel is standing really close to Denzel. It’s like he was almost attached to him. So when I asked, he said: “There’s no way Spike is cutting my arse out of this”! If Denzel moved this way, Chiwetel would take a step with him.

Q. IMDB credits Thierry Henry as being in the film. Is he?

Spike Lee: No. I don’t know where that started but they’ve made mistakes before.

Q. Could you afford him?

Spike Lee: He would have done it for scale. We’re friends but we’ve never discussed him being in a movie or me playing for Arsenal.

Q. Given your love and appreciation of Arsenal and football, what’s your view on the point that in spite of the best efforts of directors there’s never been a successful film about soccer?

Spike Lee: That’s a very good question. The thing that makes sports great is that it’s unpredictable. After a great game you’ll always read in the paper next day that “if Hollywood had tried to script a game like this, no one would have believed it”. But when you see a movie like that, it’s not the same. So maybe that’s one of the reasons.