CANNES, France — US director Spike Lee says music artists today are not as politically active as they were in the 1970s, because doing so is going to “hurt your pocketbook”.
“With so much money being made by artists, their record company or their management, if you speak out, it’s going to hurt your pocketbook,” he said Tuesday at the Cannes Festival after the premiere of his film “Highest 2 Lowest” out of competition.
In his new film, veteran star Denzel Washington plays a music mogul who faces a moral dilemma.
It is a loose adaptation of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 “High and Low”, a classic following a wealthy businessman who believes his son has been kidnapped.
Cinema bible Variety has called Lee’s version “a soul-searching genre movie that entertains while also sounding the alarm about where culture could be headed”.
“I’m 68. And I grew up during the Vietnam War era. Artists spoke out and commented on what is going on in the world,” said the two-time Oscar winner, who received the prize for his career’s work and 2018 “BlacKkKlansman”.
“I think that was prevalent more back in the era growing up,” he said, though quickly making an exception for US rock star Bruce Springsteen.
“Springsteen’s been on it,” he said.
Springsteen last week told a British concert audience his homeland was now ruled by a “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration”, causing US President Donald Trump to lash out that the rock idol was an “obnoxious J…”.
Several cinema figures at Cannes this year have warned about Trump’s administration, with screen legend Robert De Niro saying his country was “fighting like hell” for democracy and director Todd Haynes calling his presidency “barbaric”.
At the festival in 2018, Lee raged against the Republican president during his first term, after Trump refused to denounce violent far-right protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Lee, whose latest film will be released on Apple TV + on September 5, said he grew up with music.
“I grew up in a music household,” he said, explaining his father Bill Lee worked with Bob Dylan.
“If you go to that Bob Dylan album, it’s all over, Baby Blue. That’s my father on bass,” he added.
“But Bob Dylan went electric. Everybody went electric. And my father refused to play Fender bass.”
So his mother had to work to support Lee and his four younger siblings.
“In my early days, I was wondering, you know, Daddy, can’t you just play electric bass? Mommy’s working herself to death,” he said.
“Later on, I understood why. All money ain’t good money.”
