Last week, Spike Lee started his own Kickstarter project and, like the celebrities who preceded him, he’s been the target of criticism as an established filmmaker asking for money from fans. Lee responded to those critics in an interview.
The Do The Right Thing filmmaker began the Kickstarter campaign to fun “The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint” on July 22 and since then, he’s raised $355,000 of his $1.5 million goal with 1,800 backers. According to Entertainment Weekly, Lee said in an interview with Film Courage that he realized that he would get criticized for the move.
He said that he doesn’t see Kickstarter as anything different from the time he spent begging for money to make She’s Gotta Have It in 1985, before he was an established filmmaker. “We were doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter,” he said. “We just didn’t have the technology.”
Like many of the celebrities who have used Kickstarter since the success of the Veronica Mars, he praised the show’s creator Rob Thomas. He said that these high-profile projects just being more attention to Kickstarter and any project there. He doesn’t think it takes anything away from the filmmakers who are just starting out.
“I’m bringing people to Kickstarter who never even heard of Kickstarter; I’m talking [about] a lot of people of color who’ve never heard of Kickstarter, who’ve never made a pledge on Kickstarter,” Lee explained. “So I really think it’s a fallacy, it’s a misconception, and it’s just plain-out wrong, with a capital W, that because someone puts $5 on my film … that was $5 that a young filmmaker was going to get. That logic does not follow through."
He continued, "There’s concrete evidence with what Mr. Thomas did with Veronica Mars and what Zach [Braff] did will his film, the majority of people who back those things had never been on Kickstarter before. But I think those people backed films after that, once they were made the introduction to Kickstarter.”
He also spoke with CNet and again praised Thomas and Zach Braff. “So those two examples made me believe this was something I should try,” he said.
Lee’s latest film is a remake of Oldboy with Josh Brolin. It hits theaters on Oct. 25.
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