According to local lore, it was during Game 2 of the World Series that year that Howard Cosell uttered the immortal words, “ The Bronx is burning.” Seems like a ripe setting for a Spike Lee flick. These include Studio 54, CBGB as well as the blackout of 1977 and the Yankees’ epic winning streak. The movie reflects the grit of NYC in the 1970s and features many real-world places and events. This crime thriller takes place in an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, likely Morris Park or Throggs Neck, at the height of the Son of Sam murders. This photo of Buhre Avenue in the Bronx was featured in the New York Post on J, just after Son of Sam’s first strike. Should be quite a scene – just as long as garbage cans don’t go flying through pizzeria windows. To celebrate the movie’s 30-year anniversary, Lee is holding a block party on June 30 at this very location and it’s open to the public. Incredibly, the entire movie was shot on one block of Stuyvesant Avenue between Quincy Street and Lexington Avenue in Bed-Stuy. Teenagers blasting boomboxes, chance run-ins on the street corner and old-timers hanging out the window of their walkup apartments all make the back drop of this classic Spike Lee flick. The movie is very much a portrait of Brooklyn life. Mookie, the protagonist of “ Do the Right Thing,” lives in Bed-Stuy and works at Sal’s Pizzeria, a family-owned business in the neighborhood. It goes without saying, however, that the neighborhood has changed a lot. The themes are as timely and relevant today as they were in the 1980s. Over 30 years after the film first released, Lee adapted it for a Netflix TV series. Many of the movie’s scenes take place in Fort Greene Park and on stoops throughout the neighborhood. The protagonist, Nola, is a graphic designer living in Fort Greene with a roommate and rotates through multiple boyfriends. Spike Lee’s first feature-length film “ She’s Gotta Have It” centers on a young woman navigating how to live, love and be independent in New York City. Photos in slideshow below.įort Greene Park is where Spike Lee filmed many scenes in “She’s Gotta Have it.” In 2014, they listed the 8,292-square-foot, 5-bedroom home for $32 million and eventually lowered it to $24.5 million. The abstract impressionist Jasper Johns owned it until 1998 when Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, purchased it for $16.6 million. Don’t let the uptown address fool you, though. His UES townhouse was previously owned by Jasper Johnsīelieve it or not, Lee owns a historic townhouse (aka “Hatch House”) located at 153 E. It was just outside the townhouse at South Elliott Place that Lee organized an epic, impromptu block party as an “emergency tribute” to Prince during his shocking death in 2016. In 2014, Lee hung a poster commemorating the death of Eric Garner. The exterior of the building is easily recognizable with the signature 40 Acres and a Mule flag and expressive signage. In 2008, Lee relocated his studio literally around the corner and down the block to a brick townhouse at 75 S. Recently, the exterior of Lee’s production studio featured a poster of his first film in 1986, “She’s Gotta Have It.” Lee’s old studio is currently for sale as a private residence, listed for $4.75 million. In 1985, Lee and his company moved in and occupied the space for over 20 years, until a landlord dispute forced him to move in 2008. His first studio was at 124 Dekalb Ave.īetween 19, Lee was operating his production studio, 40 Acres and a Mule, at an old firehouse in Fort Greene at 124 Dekalb. The firehouse was originally built in the 1920s for Brooklyn’s Engine Company 256, but had been defunct since the 1970s. He moved to Cobble Hill with his family at the age of 4 and then eventually relocated to Fort Greene, the neighborhood he calls home to this day. Although he was actually born in Atlanta, Lee is pretty much a de facto native New Yorker. Lee’s love for the metropolis began at an early age. And 2019 will go down as a big year for Lee, who finally won that elusive Oscar (for Best Adapted Screenplay for “BlacKkKlansman“), as well as celebrating a milestone - the 30th anniversary of his groundbreaking movie “Do the Right Thing.” His next film is set to be another NYC epic: an adaptation of the Romeo & Juliet–based graphic novel “Prince of Cats,” by Ron Wimberly, which is set in 1980s Brooklyn. Although his most recent flick, “BlacKkKlansman,” takes place in Colorado, the majority of his movies are filmed right here in New York City. No filmmaker has more NYC cred than Spike Lee. In the years since, the borough and the city have become essential to his work. Spike Lee moved to Brooklyn when he was four years old.
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