Spike Lee has revealed the piece of advice he received from Michael Jackson that influenced his long and incredibly diverse career.
Lee was on stage Friday at Cannes Lions Festival, where he will tonight receive the inaugural Creative Maker of the Year award. He was reflecting on his long career, in which he has seemingly effortlessly balanced making independent feature films with mainstream commercial success, helming ad campaigns including the first Air Jordan spots for Nike, and a hit jeans campaign for Levi’s.
“It’s a combination of the commercials, the feature films, the documentaries, not music videos but short films.” The latter is how Lee chooses to describe his work with artists including Jackson, Prince, Miles Davis and Public Enemy, following a tip he received from Jackson.
And the celebrated auteur added that it was Jackson who first suggested he use the right language to describe his portfolio. Lee remembered: “Michael Jackson said to me, ‘Don’t ever use the term ‘music video’.”
Lee also revealed he couldn’t resist the offer from Nike to reprise his character of Mars Blackmon – first seen in She’s Gotta Have It – for the brand’s 50th anniversary.
Lee had previously said to friend Barry Brown “I’m never going to do that again” when asked about playing the role in an ad.
Brown reminded Lee of this on stage on Friday, to which his friend replied: “Well, you gotta be careful about using the word ‘never.’ This opportunity came. They called me up – ‘Nike want to celebrate their 50th anniversary.’ It was a great honour they wanted to bring back Mars Blackmon for it.
“There was no way I could turn it down,” he added.
The commercial, titled ‘Seen It All’ and launched in May, sees Lee back in character as Blackmon, playing chess in a Brooklyn park with Zimmie. While Lee talks up the sporting heroes of the past and documents landmark moments of the past 50 years, Zimmie confounds him with present-day icons.
On stage at the Festival, Lee remembered how, back in 1988, the era-defining three way relationship between him, Nike and a rising basketball star – one Michael Jordan – first came about, following the success of She’s Gotta Have It.
“They called me up, said they liked the film, said we want you to do a commercial. You can direct it. You’ll play Mars Blackmon and we want Michael Jordan. At the time, Michael Jordan had not seen a film, nor knew what one was. They could easily have found some big-time director, but Mike agreed to it, and it blew Nike up. That started my relationship with Nike and Brand Jordan.
“I don’t think any of us could have predicted the impact those commercials would have on the world. Looking back, it was a blessing that this whole happened.”
Lee was similarly feted by Levi’s following the success of his film Do the Right Thing. Offered total creative freedom for a jeans ad campaign, he opted to be filmed taking part in the ancient tradition of running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, suitably clad in Levi’s jeans and T-shirt, a decision he described on Friday as “I was crazy back then! We were young and foolish.”
But it paid off, with Lee revealing the ad proved so successful, Levi’s were able to fund the whole campaign with the ensuing sale of their ‘Button Your Fly’ T-shirts alone.
“Directing commercials is very lucrative. It’s not something I set out to do,” added Lee.
“It was not planned. When you’re able to join forces with companies, agencies, that believe who you are – I wasn’t calling up people, they were calling me – so it’s, for the most part, very rewarding. I’m still doing commercials. When everybody is on the same page, it’s a beautiful thing, to make a creative thing, to have fun, it’s a blessing.”