SPIKE LEE: He's Got To Have It His Way

Angry over racial inequities and stereotypes, filmmaker SPIKE LEE combines his message and his own pop image into a provocative media voice

As producer, director and writer of the homecoming-queen coronation ceremony in his senior year at Morehouse College, Spike Lee had a vision. He imagined a sophisticated beauty pageant, reminiscent of the old Hollywood musicals he loved. Rather than the usual lineup of leggy girls scantily clad in slinky dresses, he pictured beribboned beauties in floor-length ball gowns. Lee failed to anticipate the outrage of campus males when they learned they would be deprived of the show of flesh that was traditionally part of homecoming. A group ganged up on the young producer, threatening to beat him up. But Lee stood firm....

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