The Playgoer: Spike Lee: Theatre Director

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Spike Lee: Theatre Director

Today's Theatre Oddity story, via Robertson and Riedel.

Actually I don't know what's odder: a Spike Lee Joint on stage, or just the idea of a revival of Stalag 17!

Or that he'll be getting rewrites out of the 87-year-old white man who wrote it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

best part of that story: spike's promise of some hot homosex! wonder of that will get past the authors -- and whether spike will make it homophobic.

Brian said...

not sure how much you can trust reidel on anything. he refers to spike as the "oscar-winning director" of Do the Right Thing. As virtually everyone knows Spike was overlooked for that movie and has been overlooked by Oscar ever since...

Aaron Riccio said...

Great article from Robertson, but terrible news for Broadway. Read between the lines: Lee isn't interested in reviving Stalag 17, he's interested in rewriting it, and the producer pressured him into it for "something more exciting" (read: money) and the writer's on board, although he has not read this yet either. Why bring back Stalag 17 at all? More to come on metaDRAMA (http://metadrama.blogspot.com).

Anonymous said...

AHA!! Finally, an explanation Cwhy Lee wanted to do STALAG 17: He's a fanboy of the first water, for Mr. Billy Wilder.

See Cameron Crowe's interviews with Wilder, plus this:

http://filmjournal.net/clydefro/2007/07/23/ace-in-the-hole-on-dvd/

3. clydefro - July 30, 2007

Thanks for the comment. It took me a couple of days to realize that I should have mentioned Lee’s Bamboozled as a cousin to Ace in the Hole. Both are blistering, take no prisoners indictments of media and empty-headed audiences. I’ve never heard Spike specifically point out Ace in the Hole as a direct influence on that film, but since he’s a fan I’d say he surely had Wilder’s movie in mind when writing and directing Bamboozled. Unsurprisingly, both films flopped on release.

About a month ago, Spike Lee announced he’d be directing a revival of Stalag 17 on Broadway next year, possibly with Clive Owen in the lead role, so there’s definitely a shared affection in terms of ideology and material between the two men.