Spike Lee: the movie Maverick takes us on a new wild ride. Here he talks to John Turturro

Interview, Feb, 2003 by John Turturro

SPIKE LEE: John!

JOHN TURTURRO: Spike! How are you doing? I really enjoyed 25th Hour.

SL: Thank you.

JT: So you shot that in 40 days, as I've heard?

SL: Less than that. We stole a couple of days during preproduction to shoot some of Edward [Norton]'s "fuck you" montage.

JT: Which was a fantastic scene. So the readers don't get lost, the film is about a man [played by Norton] on his last day of freedom before he goes to prison for seven years. And I have to tell you, it looks as if you shot for a much longer time than 40 days.

SL: You work with what you got. [laughs] We don't bullshit. There are no 50 takes and all that.

JT: How many takes did you average?

SL: Not a lot. But Edward likes to do a lot. You have to really convince him: "We got it! Let's move on." Philip Seymour Hoffman, he's like, "Spike, we got that on the second take."

JT: [laughs] Now, were you thinking about doing this movie before 9/11?

SL: No. Here's the situation: I flew to L.A. on Monday, September 10--direct flight from JFK, United. I had a meeting that day with [Arnold] Schwarzenegger; we were trying to convince him to do Max Schmeling for the Joe Louis movie [I've been working on]. Tuesday was [Lee's son] Jackson's first day of school, so I woke up early to wish him luck. I called the house, and [Lee's wife] Tonya picked up and said, "Spike, turn on the television." So I turn on the TV and I see one of the towers with the hole in it, and then the other plane comes in. After that I had to get home, but the airports were closed so I went down to Union Station [a train station in L.A.]. They said, "The United States government said no more tickets can be sold." So I pleaded with this old black woman; she was a supervisor. She put me where the porters sit. I got on the last train out of L.A. Tuesday and arrived in New York on Friday.

JT: Wow.

SL: As you know, we're all New Yorkers and we're just devastated by this. So at that point I was still hoping upon hope that we could do the Joe Louis movie, but that didn't pan out, so I decided to do this one. It was never a decision that we were going to include September 11. But when David Benioff had written the script from his novel, September 11 had not happened, so we tried to think how we could incorporate it without it being heavy-handed--I don't want anybody saying that we were trying to exploit it. At the same time, we shot in May [2002]. How could we shoot this thing in New York City so soon after 9/11 and act like it never happened?

JT: There's a wonderful scene between Barry Pepper and Philip Seymour Hoffman, shot looking out a window at Ground Zero.

SL: It was in the World Financial Center. I told the production designer, "I want to see Ground Zero!" Another thing about that scene is the dialogue. At one point Jacob [Philip Seymour Hoffman] says to Frank [Barry Pepper], "I hear the air is bad down here."

JT: Right!

SL: Because the EPA is full of shit. When they were telling everybody the air was fine, the air was not fine. People still have respiratory problems. Emphysema, asthma ... And then Jacob asks Frank, "Are you going to move?" and Frank says, "Fuck that!" We felt that he's really speaking for all New York right there.

JT: It was a great scene. You've never worked with Edward, Philip, or Barry before--

SL: --Brian Cox, either.

JT: Right. How was it working with those guys? Obviously Edward's part's the biggest.

SL: Originally it was going to be a Tobey Maguire thing. Tobey is the one who found David, found the book, got him to write the script. Then SpiderMan hit, so [laughs] that was that. But once we got Edward, we got the green light. Even though he's the star, there were still good roles for everybody. Like Brian Cox is not onscreen a lot, but for me, he's the weight.

JT: He's always terrific. You know, this picture reminded me of a lot of '70s movies, in the sense that you had this whole landscape and a really character-driven story.

SL: It's funny you mention that, because we screened a lot of films [from that era] during the rehearsal period. We screened Midnight Cowboy [1969], Raging Bull [1980], Marathon Man [1976]--all New York stuff.

JT: Now, there was no basketball in this film, but there was basketball talk. [both laugh] I was wondering if that's because people [in the movie] couldn't play. Does Edward play?

SL: Yeah, he plays. He's a good athlete. You know what's funny? Every time we do a film in the spring and summer we have a softball team, and we played [the team from] Analyze That--

JT: --Oh, Billy [Crystal]'s competitive.

SL: Oh, man! He bends the rules, cheats--he'll do anything to win. They beat us by one run, and they were all across the field from us screaming, "Analyze That! Analyze That!" So all the people in 25th Hour, we looked at each other, grabbed our crotches, and screamed back, "Analyze this! Analyze this!" [both laugh]

John Turturro's latest film, Fear X, just premiered at Sundance.