Spike Lee recently revealed which of his movies is the ultimate fan-favorite.
The Highest 2 Lowest director sat down with former first lady Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson on their podcast IMO.
When the siblings asked Lee what his favorite of his movies was, he flipped the question to share what audiences like the most.
“When people come up, total strangers come up to me, more people say Crooklyn than any other film,” Lee said. “More than Do the Right Thing, more than Malcolm X.”
Crooklyn, released in 1994, is a semi-autobiographical movie centering on Troy (Zelda Harris), a young girl from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and her family.
“That’s the film people love, and not just Black folks,” the director said. “It’s that family. And Delroy [Lindo] played my father, and Alfre Woodard played my mother.”
He said his mother had to be the “disciplinarian” to compensate for the lax attitude his father had.
“We grew up sometimes, like, not liking our mother because she didn’t let us do nothing,” he said.
Delroy Lindo and Alfre Woodard with Chris Knowings, Sharif Rashed, Carlton Williams, Zelda Harris, and Tse-Mach Washington in ‘Crooklyn’.
Universal/Courtesy EverettÂ
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Still, the BlacKkKlansman director said he and his siblings were “wild Brooklyn kids” that needed the structure from their mother. Obama and Lee agreed that mothers were always “holding it down” for their kids. Because Crooklyn touches on this, Lee thinks the film resonates with people.
Listen to the full episode of IMO with Spike Lee below.