Spike Lee and Boots Riley have been in the middle of a very heated, very public, feud over the last few months. Luckily though, it appears the two men appear to have settled their differences recently. Riley told Variety, “He yelled at me as he walked away, saying ‘I’m Miles Davis, you’re Chet Baker!’…[But] then I saw him at the DGA luncheon and he said come here and said, ‘Squashed? Squashed.'”
The feud dates back to last August when Riley released an essay criticizing Lee’s recent release BlacKkKlansman. “It’s a made-up story in which the false parts of it try to make a cop the protagonist in the fight against racist oppression. It’s being put while Black Lives Matter is a discussion, and this is not coincidental. There is a viewpoint behind it,” Riley wrote.
Riley continued, discussing his issues with Lee’s bending of the truth for his narrative. “The real Ron Stallworth infiltrated a Black radical organization for 3 years (not for one event like the movie portrays) where he did what all papers from the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro) that were found through the freedom of information act tell us he did–sabotage a Black radical organization whose intent had to do with the very least fighting racist oppression. For Spike to come out with a movie where story points are fabricated in order to make Black cop and his counterparts look like allies in the fight against racism is really disappointing, to put it very mildly.”
Originally, Lee refused to respond directly to Riley, saying, “Now when I get a hint that this stuff is maybe going to dilute the message of my film, I know it is not going to do me any good to comment. Look at my films: they’ve been very critical of the police, but on the other hand, I’m never going to say all police are corrupt, that all police hate people of color. I’m not going to say that. I mean, we need police. Unfortunately, police in a lot of instances have not upheld the law; they have broken the law. But I’d also like to say, sir, that Black people are not a monolithic group. I have had Black people say, ‘How can a bourgeois person like Spike Lee do Malcolm X?'”
BlacKkKlansman was nominated for a total of six Oscars, winning the award for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay.’
