Spike Lee is up for an Atlanta ‘reunion’ celebrating ‘School Daze’ again

Released by Columbia Pictures and filmed at Atlanta University in 1987, “School Daze” was Lee’s follow-up to his attention-getting debut, “She’s Gotta Have It,” which cost only $175,000. “School Daze” was the director’s first studio film, released in 1988.

With a cast that included Samuel L. Jackson, Ossie Davis, Giancarlo Esposito and Laurence Fishburne, the musical comedy charted the chaos that takes place among undergraduates at a historically Black college during homecoming week. It’s based on Lee’s four years at Morehouse College. The director himself starred as student Darrell “Half-Pint” Dunlap, and people come up to him to this day, he says, and repeat some of Half-Pint’s dialogue.

Almost four decades after he made it, Lee is proud that the themes of “School Daze” still resonate and that the film made a difference.

“The most important thing about this is it introduced generations of people who had not seen the experience of Black colleges and universities,” Lee says. “For years, people said they went to Black colleges and universities because of ‘School Daze,’ and they became very successful in the fields they chose to follow. That is the legacy. When you do something that deeply affects the path of people’s life, that is important.”

Credit: Photo by Satchel Lee

Credit: Photo by Satchel Lee

Born in Grady Hospital in 1957, Lee lived in Atlanta for a year with his family before they moved to Chicago and then to Brooklyn. Growing up, he spent summers between Alabama and Atlanta with his grandparents. He referred to Atlanta as a second home before he began attending Morehouse.

The director is a third-generation Morehouse man. His father, William “Bill” Lee (class of 1951), and his grandfather, Richard Jackson Shelton (class of 1926), also attended. Bill Lee was a freshman at Morehouse when Martin Luther King was a senior, while MLK III and Spike were together as part of the class of ’79.

Additionally, both Spike’s mother and grandmother are Spelman College graduates — Jacqueline Shelton (class of 1954) and Zimmie Shelton (class of 1929). “My mother and my grandmother went to Spelman, and that is where they coupled, so I have a deep, deep love for Spelman and Morehouse and HBCUs.”

The “School Daze” screenings honor those universities and their history. “We had to have these schools because people like Gov. George Wallace stood in the door (to block Black students at the University of Alabama). Look at Little Rock, Arkansas, where President Eisenhower had to send a National Guard so these young Black kids could go to high school. These institutions had to be there because we were not allowed to go to these other schools, and we knew that we had to be educated. It was out of necessity.”

The film that followed “School Daze” — the landmark “Do the Right Thing” — won Lee an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. In all, he has directed more than 30 films and finally won an Academy Award, for his adapted screenplay of “BlacKkKlansman.”

Although Lee’s father did not care for films, his mother loved them and — not wanting to go alone — would take her oldest son with her. Eventually, Spike would become a proud cinephile himself.

The director is pulling hard for Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” at this year’s Oscar ceremony. While he was in Los Angeles, Coogler called him and checked on his availability to attend an early screening.

“I am never in LA. If I am in LA, I fly out of JFK the first flight out and, that same night, I am flying back to New York,” Lee says. “Ryan said he was looking at the final print and wanted to know if I could get there in an hour. What is the chance of me being in LA? It was a whim (that he called me). Throughout the screening, I was jumping up and down, yelling, laughing, applauding like I was front row at Madison Square Garden and (the New York Knicks) were kicking the Celtics’ ass. I was floating when I came out of the screening.

“We’re close. There is nothing but love and respect between us two.”

Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV+

Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV+

Lee feels lucky that he’s been able to make the films he’s wanted to throughout his career — and able to deal with themes such as identity and racism.

“People have their wheelhouse. You define where you do your best. For me, I came to learn I was a storyteller, and the films I make are the stories I want to tell. I was born to be a filmmaker.”

IF YOU GO

“School Daze,” introduced by Spike Lee

7:30 tonight. $25; $16.50 for Spelman, Morehouse, Morris Brown, Clark Atlanta, Georgia State and Georgia Tech college and university students with current ID. (Student tickets much be purchased at the box office.) Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. foxtheatre.org.

::

Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband Craig.

::

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

MEET OUR PARTNER