Spike Lee launches a Kickstarter for his next movie to raise $1.25 million

To be fair, he has his niche. As does Tyler Perry. Or Tarantino. Or Clint Eastwood. Or any number of directors. It may, or may not be your or my taste, but he's clearly got a fan base. If you back him, as a fan, you know what you're getting, same as if you backed Tarantino. This is not quite true of every director. There are a ton - a majority as a matter of fact - of directors who are journeyman craftsmen or artists, who don't have any particular fan base, but bounce from project to project and you can never tell what you'll get... and those directors are not suited to crowdsourcing their financing... it wouldn't work. But for Spike Lee, among others, this might work.

Maybe this says something about financing films in today's world, or maybe it only says something about Spike, but it's his right to go out there and hustle a buck just like the next guy. It'll be interesting to see if he succeeds at this Kickstarter campaign.

Either way, I'm sure his fans are hoping and looking forward to this becoming a film. At least he has fans and a niche, which is more than one can say about 90% of working directors today.
 
Who in their right mind would want a pair of Nike's for $750? That have been worn by someone already to boot... Talk about egomania...
 
So 500 bucks you get a phone call from him? And for 750 a used par of nike's? And for 1k your be a extra, doesn't state if your a featured extra or anything. So basically your paying a grand to be treated like cattle, lower then PA's not even promising when you shoot your be in any part of the cut. I do find it funny the 10,000 dinner and Knicks ticket for 1 that you pay for has a more enthosuatic discription about the Knicks season then the movie.
 
i'm trying to find some reason for not liking spike lee being my fault. i just can't hear that tone. keeps tickin me off... ok i will recede now.
 
I respect Spike Lee as a film maker. Like Tyler Perry he's managed to make movies and get them in the theater and that's just major accomplishment so mad props to anyone that can do it any way they can.

I have some criticisms that don't have anything to do with disliking Spike Lee.

First, fight the power? His last movie was Oldboy set to release soon? It's a remake of a Korean horror film. How is that fighting the power?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jul/11/oldboy-first-trailer-spike-lee

It seems like making a buck off of a horror movie, which I have nothing against at all, but it's not exactly some socially conscious effort to "fight the power". So the attitude of I'm a film maker going against societal norms, Hollywood etc., well at this point Spike is just a successful film maker trying to get his movies funded so the attitude of the renegade underdog film maker kinda falls flat.

I have nothing against rich successful people using Kickstarter. That's fine with me. It's just presales of your DVD to bypass bankers to fund the movie so I see nothing wrong with it. It was funny that one if his film students had to tell him about kickstarter. Sounds like he's fat and comfortable and out of touch with the struggling film maker.

This is a bad Kickstarter. It starts off great. You're supposed to tell the audience about you and your accomplishments, which Spike does. But THEN you're supposed to talk about the project, which Spike doesn't do. It's like fund me because I'm Spike Lee, who cares what the project is? Well I would think people do care about what it is they are funding.

And yes the perks are stupid. He could have come up with some much better perks and certainly I think the Zach Braff perks are better.

Anyway, interesting development and we'll see who the next film maker will be to self fun on kickstarter.
 
I really enjoy Spike Lee's films, but I honestly hope that this Kickstarter fails. The page and video both look like there was minimal effort was put into them. :(
But that's the reality of crowd-funding today I suppose!
 
ASchear said:
I really enjoy Spike Lee's films, but I honestly hope that this Kickstarter fails. The page and video both look like there was minimal effort was put into them. :(
But that's the reality of crowd-funding today I suppose!
Click to expand...

While projects like this, Braff's, and VM might be the face of crowdfunding to Hollywood, I really don't even draw a connection between these celebrity masturbation projects and real indie filmmakers trying to find a way to make their blood, sweat, and tears mean something. If David Lowery, Shane Carruth, Jay & Mark Duplass, Roman Coppola, Derek Cianfrance, et al, were to launch a KS campaign, I'd have no problem jumping on board if I had money to spare and the project interested me. I really don't have a problem with Spike Lee doing a Kickstarter; like OldCorpse said, he's no Michael Bay. He's generally considered an "indie director" by H-wood, even if I myself wouldn't include him in the ranks of the above-mentioned indie directors.

It's just the arrogance of it. A friend posted on Twitter that Spike Lee was doing a Kickstarter, and my first thought was, "Finally, someone who will probably use it for a film that actually fits the crowdfunding model." But then I checked out the page, and it's just so... "arrogant" is really the only word for it. To think he doesn't have to work as hard as people like Zak Forsman, or Kholi Hicks, had to work to earn the confidence, trust, and support of their fanbase. That because he's Spike F--kin' Lee, he can just have a friend/assistant record him saying "I'm Spike F--kin' Lee," without even an idea of what story he's going to tell, and people should just fall over themselves to donate, when hard-working members of this board spend months setting up KS campaigns for films they spent months or years writing...

I know that's a little rant-ish, but that's just my attempt to sum up what I find so disconcerting about this campaign.

-EMB
 
When he was talking about his 'body of work', Malcom X was the only one I had even heard of... And his tone in this kickstarter campaign made me not wanna see any of his films ;)
 
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