I'm not going to post a 3000-4000 word piece on this site...I'll just bless y'all with an excerpt of Spike talking about the new MJ project. Very illuminating stuff....I hope he gets the dance to a documentary on Thriller...

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Spike Lee: 30 Years Of Fightin’ The Power
Written By K. Murphy
February 26 2016

Excerpt:

When we met up with Lee we found him to be in jovial spirits. Our conversation ranged from the Oscars’ woeful diversity issues and the Presidential campaign circus of Donald Trump to the respectable return of his beloved New York Knicks. But first things first…Lee’s Off The Wall film—which features an embarrassment of riches of interviews including the Roots’ Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, fellow movie director Lee Daniels, new age R&B crooner the Weeknd, British music man Mark Ronson, and super producer Pharrell Williams as well as MJ’s family Katherine Jackson, Joe Jackson, Marlon Jackson, and Jackie Jackson and iconic Off The Wall producer Quincy Jones.

It’s the second installment of what Lee hopes will be his definitive documentary trilogy on the world’s greatest entertainer (Spike wants to tackle the making of MJ’s 1982 commercial juggernaut and best-selling album of all time Thriller following Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall and 2012’s Bad 25). For Lee, it’s quite simple. Michael Jackson is the standard for all who dream of making their mark on this world and beyond.

VIBE: The defining theme of your Off The Wall documentary is the demystification of Michael Jackson. We have this idea of MJ as this otherworldly performer who was beamed down from another planet. But you present Michael as a gifted singer who also happened to be pretty hardcore when it came to perfecting his own craft and studying the greats. How important was it to get the idea across that Michael Jackson wasn’t just getting by on natural ability and that he was arguably pop music’s most obsessive worker?

Spike Lee: With this Off The Wall documentary we definitely wanted to show how much of a hard worker Michael was. There’s a note that he wrote that we featured in the movie. Michael said: “To be great, study the greats.” Let me just say that I really hope that younger artists see this film because Michael had otherworldly talent, but he worked at his craft. And I think that is something that’s being lost to young artist.

How so?

I’m not trying to sound like some old fuddy duddy grandfather, but it’s about the work ethic; that elbow grease; that get-up-and-go. I think we are losing craftsmanship because everybody wants to get to their destination over night without putting in the motherfucking work. You gotta work. Like Verdine White (of Earth Wind & Fire) said in the documentary: If you love what you do, it’s not work. That’s something that the writer Dream Hampton also emphasized as well in the film.

Black artists, especially, are viewed as having some magical, natural gifts…

Right. So often with black artists and athletes there’s this crazy notion that we just—to coin a phrase my sister Beyonce—woke up like this . Nobody didn’t wake up like this. We didn’t come out of the womb dunking or singing or dancing. People put in work. They had the talent, but they put in the work. And Michael embodied that. He was working, perfecting his craft.


You were able to get your hands on some pretty rare archival concert footage from the J5 days and the Jackson’s Destiny and Triumph tours. Can you talk about how open John Branca and John McClain were in terms of opening up the Jackson estate’s vast video collection to you for the Off The Wall documentary?

We did a documentary before this on the Bad album, which was called Bad 25. Hopefully, God willing, I get to do one on Thriller. But that’s the appeal of these films. It’s not going to be a very interesting documentary if we show videos that people have seen a million times already. You want to see stuff for the first time.

How did the experience of filming the Off The Wall documentary differ from the Bad 25?

With the Bad 25 documentary, you are dealing with an artist following the best selling album of all time. Off The Wall is a very different time. People weren’t sure about Michael, but he was. There is more of an innocence of Michael hooking up with Quincy during the making of The Wiz going into his first adult album apart from his brothers. So there’s a lot of new milestones and I think that is definitely reflected in the music. Off The Wall is so joyful and free, whereas Bad 25, which I love as well, was basically Michael saying, “We are going to sell more records than Thriller!” *Laughs* It’s two different mindsets.

Are you in the camp that believes Off The Wall is Michael’s finest artistic statement?

I love them all…but there is such an innocence that you hear on Off The Wall that you don’t hear on Thriller or Bad.

Michael was very ambitious and even at times quite cutthroat when it came to breaking away from brothers. Did that aspect of Jackson come through for you?

I wouldn’t say Michael was cutthroat. He just wanted to fulfill his artistic vision. And that vision was not going to be singing and writing songs with his brothers, who he loved dearly, for the rest of his life. He wanted his own individual expression of who he was. I don’t think that’s cutthroat to me.

Full piece: http://www.vibe.com/featured/digital-cover-spike-lee/

GOAT of his era......long live Prince.....God is alive....