we force them to exercise peace by an the city innocence from knocking the boots. who would have thought spike lee would have that story in his few film chi-raq which has just opened here in the united states. going to make sure these fools put down these guns. people die, every day. i m going to die, every day. father try, every day. trying to get my head straight. it s the city of chi-raq, get your bed made. do you want justice? pray for our city i got faith in my city it s chi-raq and i love that some can t relate to my city die every day in my city spike he, when we met, he
at first. we tried to get this done six years ago, and there s one thing i sure of now, everything is timing. it wasn t time for this film six years ago. the powers that be, the spirits, whatever, they said not now. do it later. we couldn t have picked a better time to do this film, chi-raq. tell me about the women aspect of it. you give a lot of power to women s power. shut down their sexual favors. i can t take the credit. i have to give it up to my mai , man, the greek play write. what did you cast think? had they heard about it? many of them had done it in theater. the lead actress went to she went to juliard.
dude, this is about life and death, about a community that s a wreck. and you want to sit here and talk about how women behave? fool, we try too long free these slaves, slaves to the madness, slaves to this violence and what you just want us to silence? we re going to make sure these fools put down these guns. and stop thinking that this craziness is fun. spike lee s new movie is called chi-raq . it is a fan tastical mythical modern adaption of lysistrata. where women band together for a sex strike to put an end to the gang violence in their chicago neighborhoods. film has been controversial from the start from the title which conjures up the images of a distant war zone to the prem 34is criticized as an front to residents of chicago where gun violence is a deeply serious reality. i sat down with spike lee to talk about the movie, including
there s a certain amount that comes with the territory. i understand that. when i watched the movie i thought to myself, this is it s a myth. it s a myth. it is a mythological film as much as it is a realistic depiction of actual urban violence. i use the term heightened reality. just the fact that we took this play written by the great greek playwright aristophanes. he wrote in 4 b.c. and moved to southside of chicago where the premise is women take control by withholding sex. i mean, it s heightened reality. what do you mean by that? is that people are not going to start breaking into song and dance singing and people aren t going to walk around today speaking in verse and rhyme. so this is a heightened reality.
hudson is in the film. she plays a pivotal role. her mother, brother, and nephew were murdered in chicago. why would she be part of a film if if what chance rapper is saying is true why would she be in the film? age you just mentioned the mayor. the mayor is under tremendous the feds are in town. the feds are in the city of broad shoulders. now. the feds. f-e-d-s. you met with the mayor before you started filming. > we met in preproduction. what was that meeting like? it wasn t good. he was not happy. he was not happy. he never said spike, you can t make this film. he couldn t do that. he said he liked my films in the past. but he also said that he wish