I unfortunately couldn’t get to the world premiere of Paul Schrader’s new (and quite possibly schlocky) film The Canyons, starring Lindsay Lohan and written by Bret Easton Ellis. The Dissolve reports that during the discussion after the movie, Schrader brought up a potential crowdfunded collaboration with Spike Lee about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Schrader said the following:
I said, ‘Spike, you and I should do a film about Clarence Thomas. I’ll write it, you direct it. Clarence Thomas is probably the most complex and interesting black power figure in America today. But if either one of us did it alone, it wouldn’t have as much strength to it. But we should do this together.’
Like Spike Lee’s vague new joint, The Canyons was also partially funded via Kickstarter.
I’d be interested to hear Schrader and Lee’s take on the Anita Hill hearings, which brought the issue of sexual harassment out into the open and helped kick off third wave feminism. (The hearings were covered from Hill’s POV in Freida Mock’s documentary Anita.) There are also issues of race and political leanings to consider, so there might be a unique take on what it means for Justice Thomas to be a prominent black conservative.
Check out Schrader’s full quote after the cut. What do you think about this potential project?
[via The Dissolve]Paul Schrader on a possible Clarence Thomas film in collaboration with Spike Lee:
I was exchanging emails today with Spike Lee, and we were talking about this whole concept of Kickstarter, Internet financing. I said, ‘Spike, you and I should do a film about Clarence Thomas. I’ll write it, you direct it. Clarence Thomas is probably the most complex and interesting black power figure in America today. But if either one of us did it alone, it wouldn’t have as much strength to it. But we should do this together.’ Now when that comes up, and a project starts to have a kind of heat to it, then you say ‘Well we could crowdfinance this too.’
