*During a candid appearance on “The Tonight Show,” Spike Lee recalled a bold moment from the 1990s when he asked Prince for one of his iconic guitars.
“He looked at me like I had five heads,” Lee said. To his surprise, “A big-ass guitar case shows up” a year later, a gesture that left a lasting impression. Lee added, “I miss him. I miss him,” reflecting on his friend’s passing in 2016.
Lee’s bond with Prince extended to his 2018 film “BlacKkKlansman,” a biographical crime comedy-drama that follows the first African-American detective infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in 1970s Colorado. Prince’s estate provided an unreleased rendition of “Mary Don’t You Weep” for the film’s credits. At the 2019 Oscars, where Lee won Best Adapted Screenplay, he said, “What could be more fitting than to have a Negro spiritual sung by Prince, just him and the piano in this movie,” adding, “I’m telling you, on my mother’s grave, he wanted me to have this song.”
“BlacKkKlansman,” produced on a $15 million budget, grossed $93.4 million and earned critical acclaim for Lee’s direction and its timely themes. Starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, and Laura Harrier, it premiered at Cannes in 2018, winning the Grand Prix, and later secured six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
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Lee’s latest venture, “Highest 2 Lowest,” a neo-noir thriller reinterpreting Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low,” features Denzel Washington as a music mogul navigating a kidnapping plot. The newly released trailer showcases Jeffrey Wright, A$AP Rocky, and Ice Spice.
The filmmaker told The Hollywood Reporter, “We are brothers,” describing his bond with Washington as “the dynamic Duo of D and Lee.”
“‘Highest 2 Lowest’ hits theaters in the United States on August 15 before streaming on Apple TV+ on September 5. Watch the trailer below.
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