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| Spike Lee |
Earlier this year, I watched for the first time a film called Malcolm X directed by Spike Lee. It was largely inspired by a mix of current events, free time, and curiosity over a widely respected film on someone that I knew little about. Even at over three hours, I found the film to be an amazing achievement in bringing this person's story to life and it kept moving at the same aggressive pace. I was dazzled by every edit and well shot monologue given by Denzel Washington. It made me feel like I was entering a world that otherwise wouldn't have been available. As a white middle-class Californian, I only have movies and history books to show me what the past was like for minorities. Maybe it was the sense of discovery, but it was the moment where I began to fall in awe of Spike Lee.
I had seen Do the Right Thing years earlier, but something about Malcolm X felt authentic and thus more enjoyable. I even felt he was one of the most important names in launching black actors' careers. I wanted to explore more. Up to that point, I knew of Lee from his iconography more than his filmography. I had initially wanted to see Oldboy as a joke, but found myself getting more and more intrigued. Less than a week after I had this epiphany, Lee announced via Twitter that he had big news coming. While podcasts like Broken Projector (who did a great piece on him) predicted it was his retirement. However, it was going to be his next film.
As expected when any director of note jumps to Kickstarter, there was backlash. I must have missed it, as within the first day, I put aside $50 for the project. My goal had been to promote independent films on Kickstarter ever since I watched the beautiful and amazing Girl Walk // All Day at least 20 times in three months. Being a writer on independent film at CinemaBeach made it seem like almost the perfect fit. While I eventually came around to the idea that starting with a popular name was counter-intuitive, I was still riding the fumes of Malcolm X giving me faith. Also, his introductory video, as much as it felt like a Kent Brockman credits list, did its thing. He sold me.
In a way, I was thankful that I jumped on immediately because it gave me the chance to receive every single update. Whenever someone hopped on board or wished him luck, I was able to become aware of it. The most notable was Steven Soderbergh, who next to a heated interview on Bloomberg, raised the profile in unexpected ways. Mixing personal investment with my curious journalistic side, I began approaching it more as a way to look at Lee's project and tear it down when it came to the end.
I honestly felt that with 10 days to go and over a million to earn, the story about people obsessed with blood wouldn't make it. The details were vague and the cast wasn't announced. I even got the impression that with support from Soderbergh, Matthew McConaughey, and Kerry Washington that this was being largely funded by the big names that he could have just scrapped money from in the first place. I initially saw his "I was doing Kickstarter before there was a Kickstarter" argument as a gimmick to help funding. I even felt cheated that as time went on, he raised money by pulling posters and signed memorabilia from the vaults to raise money. I later realized it was because I didn't have that option at the time and that he had a strategy.
The deadline came and he got the money he was looking for. Having archived the updates that he sent (57 total), I was saving research until after everything came to a close. I had invested in the project, even if I grew skeptical. I still liked Lee enough to stay with him, but I admit that it was tough to justify without evidence. He hadn't backed a project on Kickstarter at the time and sure enough my impression was that majority of his income was coming from celebrities.
As I got ready to write up this piece, I decided to finally binge every video and update that he had sent out. The pile of memories took quite some time to unfold, but I got a stronger sense of who Lee was. He was passionate about the fight and every update seemed to suggest that he was doing things for good. While videos like the Washington video initially felt like cheap gimmicks, it was when I approached his less known videos. Being a professor at NYU, he has influenced and funded a lot of people's work. In fact, almost every video suggested how they were influenced by this one man, who began to sound more and more like a generous donation machine. Among all of them, the video done by Kiel Adrian Scott was the closer.
The deadline came and he got the money he was looking for. Having archived the updates that he sent (57 total), I was saving research until after everything came to a close. I had invested in the project, even if I grew skeptical. I still liked Lee enough to stay with him, but I admit that it was tough to justify without evidence. He hadn't backed a project on Kickstarter at the time and sure enough my impression was that majority of his income was coming from celebrities.
As I got ready to write up this piece, I decided to finally binge every video and update that he had sent out. The pile of memories took quite some time to unfold, but I got a stronger sense of who Lee was. He was passionate about the fight and every update seemed to suggest that he was doing things for good. While videos like the Washington video initially felt like cheap gimmicks, it was when I approached his less known videos. Being a professor at NYU, he has influenced and funded a lot of people's work. In fact, almost every video suggested how they were influenced by this one man, who began to sound more and more like a generous donation machine. Among all of them, the video done by Kiel Adrian Scott was the closer.
While it has the honor of being the longest video in the Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint campaign, it also explained everything that made Lee's endeavor worthwhile. To the uninformed general public, Lee is a director who is doing a studio film this Fall and has quite a career to draw from. However, Scott's story expresses how Lee managed to be so much more. He influenced and taught so many award-winning filmmakers to follow their passion that even if you took out the idea that he helps fund student projects, he also gives motivation and training. An average film of his seems to include a portion of his class. I also later learned that he does indeed have trouble funding films.
In the end, my $50 is in Lee's project now. While he initially sold it as a vague film that you should invest in because of his impressive body of work, it has slowly begun to make more and more sense. The people that are there for him are there for more than the fact that they are his rich friends. Even if I felt that, like most people, Lee was corrupting Kickstarter by bringing celebrity to the website, he finally sold me through his numerous updates and occasional posts that sounded more like pep rallies to raise money. I always got the sense that this was a veteran wanting to get the public involved, which if the updates don't lie, he has been doing most of the time.
While I personally feel bad that my first introduction to Kickstarter was for a movie from someone I had only seen two movies from and had little knowledge about, I think it finally worked. I receive constant e-mails from Kickstarter about interesting projects and hopefully I will find one that sticks. Even Lee has gotten involved and has now funded nine projects. To finish on a note that almost felt like a false gimmick Lee used to get people to back his project, it actually continued to make the site flourish. In one of the most recent updates from Kickstarter itself:
In the end, my $50 is in Lee's project now. While he initially sold it as a vague film that you should invest in because of his impressive body of work, it has slowly begun to make more and more sense. The people that are there for him are there for more than the fact that they are his rich friends. Even if I felt that, like most people, Lee was corrupting Kickstarter by bringing celebrity to the website, he finally sold me through his numerous updates and occasional posts that sounded more like pep rallies to raise money. I always got the sense that this was a veteran wanting to get the public involved, which if the updates don't lie, he has been doing most of the time.
While I personally feel bad that my first introduction to Kickstarter was for a movie from someone I had only seen two movies from and had little knowledge about, I think it finally worked. I receive constant e-mails from Kickstarter about interesting projects and hopefully I will find one that sticks. Even Lee has gotten involved and has now funded nine projects. To finish on a note that almost felt like a false gimmick Lee used to get people to back his project, it actually continued to make the site flourish. In one of the most recent updates from Kickstarter itself:
"Spike Lee brought three decades of fans to Kickstarter when he launched his project. He introduced many of them to this new way of funding creative works, and to the thousands of other projects that are funding on Kickstarter. Of Spike’s backers, 47% had never backed a Kickstarter project before.
The Veronica Mars and Zach Braff film projects were similarly criticized for hurting other projects, but in reality were a windfall for creators. Those projects brought thousands of new people to Kickstarter who have since pledged more than $1 million to 6,000 other projects (film projects have received most of those pledges).In the past 90 days alone, more than $21 million has been pledged to filmmakers on Kickstarter not named Rob Thomas, Zach Braff, or Spike Lee. Even without counting these projects, it’s been the biggest three months for film ever on Kickstarter!Almost five million people have backed a project on Kickstarter, and more than a million have backed two or more projects. These repeat backers are responsible for 59% of the total money pledged to Kickstarter projects — a whopping $444 million. On average, 2,130 people a day have become new repeat backers this year. This is huge! Future creators will benefit from more and more people using Kickstarter."
That alone suggests that this whole endeavor was a success, and I am kind of excited about the results to come now. Despite initial disregard, this ended up feeling like a test of a veteran teaching newcomers to try something out. While it seemed like a mask to fund the film at first, he has been true to his word and even if the film isn't that successful, it has gotten me to check out Kickstarter, which makes the investment all the more worthwhile. He may have not had the same level of success as Zach Braff or Veronica Mars, but in a way, I feel like this is more independent crowd sourcing than either of those because even if it doesn't achieve the same level of success as his competitors, I get a stronger sense that Lee cares more.
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