If I were to tell you I watched a movie with characters named Flik Royale, Chazz Morningstar, Blessing Rowe, Deacon Zee, Mother Darling and Bishop Enoch, what would that tell you? That’s right – it was a Spike Lee movie.
(Later we find out that Flik is a nickname and Enoch is an assumed name. Gator Purify didn’t have that luxury.)
RED HOOK SUMMER is the low budget indie movie Lee put out last year, kind of a return to his roots after a couple bigger studio movies, INSIDE MAN and MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA. Spike says it came about when he was talking to James McBride, author of the St. Anna novel, about what they saw as the dire state of black cinema. (I take that to mean “complaining about Tyler Perry movies.”) He had recently bought a digital camera so he asked McBride to write something and they would make it. Together they came up with a story about a middle class Atlanta Kid, maybe 13-14, coming to stay with his estranged grandpa in the Red Hook housing projects of Brooklyn.
(read the rest of this shit…)
