Dick Gregory on ‘Django Unchained’: “Spike Lee is a punk and a thug”
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Legendary social activist, comedian, and author Dick Gregory weighed in on the controversial Quentin Tarantino film "Django Unchained," and he made some controversial comments about film director Spike Lee.
In an interview posted to YouTube.com, Gregory says that the movie spoke to him in ways that no film had in all his years on earth. He then calls out Lee for criticizing a film that he's never seen, saying that if anyone has created movies that are disrespectful to our ancestors, it's Lee himself:
"I've seen 'Django Unchained' 12 times. Never in the history of Hollywood, have they ever made anything that freed the inside of me. The inside of me. I'm 80-years-old, I saw cowboy movies, wasn't no Black folks in cowboy movies. I'm looking at a Western, plus a love story. To those of you all that see it, you'll never see a love story about a Black man and a Black woman where it wasn't some foul sex and foul language, huh. And Spike Lee can't appreciate that. The little thug ain't even seen the movie; he's acting like he White.
So it must be something personal. And all them Black entertainers that know Spike Lee, how you gone attack this man and don't be attacking them ... and then say everyone's a fool but me. [Talking about] 'it offended my ancestors,' but when you did 'She's Got To Have It' and some of those other thug movies you did...you took Malcolm X and put a Zoot suit on him...did that offend your ancestors, punk?
It's a game, man. So whatever he's mad about is something that happened way, way long ago. Thank God it didn't work [to stop the movie from being successful].
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