SHORT TAKES : Spike Lee’s New Film Sizzles
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NEW YORK — Spike Lee says sex, not race, will generate a lot of heat in his new film, “Mo’ Better Blues.”
“The audience may squirm,” Lee said in the March 5 issue of People magazine.
The $10-million film starring Denzel Washington is about a trumpet player torn between his love of music and his desire for two women, a singer played by Cynda Williams and a Harlem schoolteacher played by Lee’s sister, Joie.
Joie Lee said she had no problem working with her brother in scenes that called for nudity.
“When he said, ‘OK, take off your top,’ I just did it. It’s not perverse,” she said.
Williams said the love scenes are tasteful, “but when I think of going to see the movie with my parents and grandparents, it freaks me out.”
Lee’s last film, “Do the Right Thing,” examined racism with a tragic confrontation at a pizza parlor.
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