A pairing made in film heaven: director and cinematographer Spike Lee and Ernest Dickerson, inseparable in almost everything they did as artists in the 80s and 90s, making six movies together, and great friends in real life. Recently the two sat down together in downtown Los Angeles, where they talked for an hour and a half in front of a rapt audience of 400 at the Colburn School of Music. The occasion was the introduction of Spike Lee’s new book, called Spike, a coffee-table large volume filled with photographs taken by Spike’s brother David, mainly from Spike’s film sets.

Dickerson (70) was soberly dressed in a black suit, while Lee (64) in contrast, wore a pink jumpsuit, red shoes, pink glasses, and was very animated. But beneath the surface, the two men are close.

“Brothers” since they were classmates at Tisch School of the Arts in New York, they ad-libbed memories and reminisced about the film world of yesterday and today, the movies they did together – starting from She’s Gotta Have It in 1986, then School Daze (1988), Do The Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991) and Malcolm X (1992) – and much more. 

“If you love what you are doing, it is not a job!” exclaimed Lee, repeating the concept at least three times during the event at Colburn. He had the audience in the palm of his hand.

Spike Lee: Ernest, do you remember how we both wanted Malcolm X to be an epic, and we were studying the films of David Lean? And during pre-production, they had a reissue of Lawrence of Arabia at the Ziegfeld in New York City, a new print, and we were inspired. We wanted Malcolm X to be epic.

Ernest Dickerson: Well, the great thing about it, we actually hoped to shoot Malcolm X in 70 mm. And we were lucky to get 35mm. Cause you know, remember, when we were sitting in the theater looking at Lawrence and thought we wanted people to really see the real Malcolm, because of disinformation a lot of people didn’t really know who he was, or his life’s journey. 

S.L.: One of my favorite stories about Malcolm X is just watching Denzel Washington‘s performance, which is going to stand the test of time. And all the speeches in the film were Malcolm’s actual words. So, there’s one scene, where there is this big painting of Elijah Muhammad. Ernest is shooting, Denzel is killing it, and we shoot the film, 35mm mags for ten minutes. So, as Denzel is tearing it up, I am looking at the script to what he is saying. And Ernest is looking at me whispering, “Spike, I am about rollout.” And I said, “Ernest, don’t turn that camera off, (laughter) let it roll.” And then the part came where the scene was over. But Denzel kept going. And finally, Ernest said, “We rolled out.” And I went up to Denzel and I said, “Denzel, what was that?” He said, “Spike, I can’t even tell you, I can’t remember what I said.”  We had moments like that, where the hairs went up, we were seeing Malcolm, I mean, his eyes were glazed over.

E.D.: Yeah, Denzel became Malcolm, no doubt about it. And with Denzel, even behind the scenes, when the camera was not rolling, he’s still in character, because he had to keep that, he had to keep that mindset. He’s a masterclass actor. We went to South Africa to shoot Nelson Mandela.

S.L.: The only feature film he was ever in! So let me tell you this story. You have got to realize South Africa was still under apartheid when we went there. After Christmas, after the holidays, we flew to Egypt and we got all the stuff there, the pyramids, the Sphinx. And then we were going to fly from Cairo to South Africa to Johannesburg; there was a bomb scare and we had to divert the plane to Nairobi, Kenya. Finally, when we get to Johannesburg, and Nelson [Mandela] looked at the script, and the last words in the script are: “By any means necessary.”  And he says, “Come here, I have to speak to you.” He said, “Mr. Lee, I cannot say ‘by any means necessary, and do you know why?” He was going to run to be the President of South Africa and those motherfuckers who had him in prison for 27 years, they would use that against him. They would have him on camera saying it, “by any means necessary,” therefore, the Afrikaans would spin a different narrative, they would use that to say he was saying that “I am going to kill all the white folks in South Africa.” That is why he didn’t do it.

E.D.: Yeah, because it was scary up there. Everybody knew there was going to be bloodshed, everybody knew there was going to be war in the streets. And everybody was belonging to one political party or another. We had the ANC who were sponsoring us and helping us out, but then you had SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation) who were the Zulus and who were truly against them.

S.L.: Oh, remember this? We were there so we knew we had a couple of days before we were going to film Mr. Mandela. And we were in one location, to a place where we weren’t supposed to be, and that was where they catch your ass and put a tiger around your neck and light that shit on fire.

ED: Now nobody told us we weren’t supposed to be there.

SL:  So, we were shooting something, and the guy says you have got to leave right now. I said what? He said you have to leave right now!!! And we packed our shit up! (laughter)

ED: We saw hundreds of guys moving in on us. And we got in the truck, drove out the doors, right outside the main gate were three South African Army armored troop carriers filled with soldiers. And they knew we were in there and they knew. What happened was that the guy was supposed to straighten everything out and get us in there, but he didn’t do it, he screwed up, he did not do it. And so SWAPO felt that we might have been spies for the ANC. And all those guys we saw coming toward us, their intention was to actually kill us. We found out later on that they all had machetes.

SL: This is God’s honest truth; we could have been killed… We were able to fly back that night to New York. And then it came to the point of editing the film and I knew there was no way the film could be under 3 hours. Warner Brothers wanted it shorter. In those days I knew Oliver Stone was finishing JFK. So, I asked the producers at Warner Brothers, “How long is JFK?”  They said two hours. I said alright. I had Oliver Stone’s number. (laughter). I called him. Oliver, “How long is JFK?”. “Spike, it’s three hours, don’t tell them I said that!” (laughter) It’s all true.  And I was like if JFK is three hours, we have to be three hours!

ED: Remember when we did Do The Right Thing? That film took place on the hottest day of the summer of ’87. Spike said, “I want you to think about the best ways to visually portray heat, the hottest day of the year, so think about it.” You actually brought me on for about six weeks for prep, which allowed me to make some decisions about the set, what street to shoot on.

SL:  Yeah, we had to find a block that had two empty lots. We built the Korean fruit and vegetable stand. And we built Sal’s Famous Pizzeria in the neighborhood. So that was very important, we had to find a block where it had lots and they had to be opposite from each other.

ED:  And I demanded that it had to run north and south because this takes place in one day and if we are shooting for eight weeks on one block, you are going to have problems with weather, cloudy days and it’s supposed to be a bright hot sunny day. So, I figured north and south, most of the day one side of the street is going to be shaded, so I figured okay if I did that, then I can make the shadiest side of the street, a cloudy day, I can make the shadiest side of the street be on a cloudy day. And that really saved us a lot because the first two weeks was rain. And it really determined what our angles were and everything else and I learned how to make sunlight”.

For the filmmakers in the audience, the whole conversation was a lesson in creativity. At the end, Spike Lee turned to the audience and said: “To the young filmmakers here in the audience, you are looking at Ernest Dickerson and me up here, two brothers who came together to kick ass in an industry that did not want us. We busted our asses, Ernest and I. We had a commitment that we wanted to do what we had to do, short of any crimes, to breakthrough! You are looking at two brothers from two historic Black schools, Howard University and Morehouse, that produced greatness. And even though we went to NYU, we got our grounding at Howard and Morehouse. Because NYU back then, to be honest, to keep 100, (laughter) there weren’t a lot of people of color. And in fact, I got kicked out. 

“At school, they only talked about the genius of D.W. Griffith and his Birth of a Nation, and for the African American students, they didn’t talk about how this film gave birth to the Klan that was dormant. And then four years later we did She’s Gotta Have It. My grandmother, who loved Melvin Van Peebles, supported me. And that was the key. Why? Because parents kill more dreams than anybody. And a lot of parents don’t understand the arts, they don’t know how you will make money, they want their children to be lawyers, teachers, doctors. Poetry, dance, music… what is that? 

“And a lot of these children succumb to parental pressure and choose a major and a direction in life which is not what they wanted to do. And they grow up to be miserable people hating their parents. If anyone can make money doing what you love, you have won. So, to all the artists out there: be happy, do what you love, it’s not going to be easy. But if you do what you love, it’s not a job.  I will repeat that, two more times, “If you do what you love, it’s not a job. If you do what you love, it’s not a job!”