Spike Lee Receives Oscar Full Intro and Speech from YouTube

Then I went away to college, Morehouse College. I was third generation; my grandfather and father went there, too. He was a freshman when Martin Luther King was a senior. And my mother and grandmother went to Spellman College. They were two historic black schools across the street from each other in ATL. So I went to college. My first two years I was lost in the wilderness. I was D+, C- student. It wasn’t that I wasn’t smart. I wasn’t motivated. At the end of my sophomore year, it was time to back to New York City, I had to choose a major because I’d exhausted all my electives. I came back to New York the summer of 1977. I thought up to that point, I could always get a job in New York. But that summer, there were no jobs. I made a film about that summer, The Summer of Sam. I was on my stoop — we call them stoops, not porches, in Brooklyn — and thought, let me go see my friend, who was very smart. Let me see what’s she doing, I got to her house, I’m sitting in the living room, and in the corner is a box. I asked her, “What’s in the box?” She says “A Super 8 camera. I’m going to be a doctor so you can have it.” I asked “What’s in the other box?” She says, “That’s film for the Super 8 camera. I’m going to be a doctor, so you can have it.” So now I had something to do for the summer! It was a great summer to shoot. A couple days later, there was a blackout. My friend and I drove around in a yellow station wagon. My Brooklyn brothers and sisters, my fellow Puerto Rican brothers and sisters, started to loot. I filmed it — the looting. Color TVs, Pampers. I filmed that. That summer was also the summer of disco … I filmed that. It was also the summer where a guy named David Berkowitz … it was the Summer of Sam. He had most of New York terrified. This was before gentrification. 1977. If the Summer of Sam had to come Harlem or Bed-Stuy, they would have killed him! So I had all this footage and I go back to school. A teacher there … encouraged me to make a documentary out of all this footage. From there, my junior and senior year, I was an A+ student. I didn’t get smarter, I was just interested. I didn’t find film — film found me. So, three years of film school, my thesis film was called Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop. I won the Student Academy Award. Man, I thought Spielberg was going to call! Fox Universal … too. I had a little apartment at the time on Myrtle Ave in Fort Green, before gentrification. The Student Academy Award is not like not this [Oscar]. It’ s a wooden box with a circle … I’m going to be take over Hollywood! But a funny thing happens when you don’t pay Ma Bell, Con Edison and Brooklyn Union Gas, The phone gets turned off, the heat gets turned off, the power gets turned off. I was in the dark, but I had my Student Academy Award! Then I woke up. That’s when I learned the tough lesson: nothing happens overnight. There is no such thing as an overnight success. That’s the biggest thing I try to tell young people. You have to bust your ass, roll up your sleeves, and attack attack attack attack. So at this point, I’m very happy. But it hasn’t been easy, I’m just as proud about this award as I am with the people in this industry [like me] who are now behind the camera. That was always the goal. If I got in, I was going to try and bring as many motherfuckers with me as possible! We’re getting ready to shoot Malcolm X and we’re meeting with the teamsters and I say, Sir, do you have any black teamsters?” He says, “No.” I say, “That’s a problem. Until we get some black teamsters, we’re going to have the Fruit of Islam drive trucks. Do you want to come to set and fuck with the Fruit of Islam? Come on!” The next day, five black teamsters showed up! I had to make change like that or we wouldn’t be where we are today. I want to commend Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs because she is trying to do something that needs to be done. Not sure if you now this, but the US Census Bureau says by the year 2043, white Americans are going to be the minority in this country. People in positions of hiring, you better get smart. Your workforce should reflect what this country looks like. Everybody here probably voted for Obama! But in [Hollywood] offices, I see no black folks except for the man who’s the security guard who checks my name off the list as I got into the studio. So we can talk “Yabba yabba yabba,” but we need to have a serious conversation about diversity and get some flavor up in this! It’s easier to be president of the United States as a black person than be the head of the studio or head of a network. So President [Isaacs], keep it going, I know it’s tough … peace and love to the people in France. And the last thing: Is Brooklyn in the house? Thank you very much.