Life imitates art — Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing, a title now drenched in irony, ended with violent looters (led by the character played by Lee) destroying their favorite neighborhood pizza restaurant after a minor character in the film was killed by the police. In the wake of the MSM’s Trayvon Martin meltdown, Spike seems to determined to see this sort of scene played out in real life.
The Smoking Gun reports:
With Twitter and Facebook continuing to explode with posts purporting to contain the address of George Zimmerman, property records and interviews reveal that the home is actually the longtime residence of a married Florida couple, both in their 70s, who have no connection to the man who killed Trayvon Martin and are now living in fear due to erroneous reports about their connection to the shooter.
The mass dissemination of the address on Edgewater Circle in Sanford–the Florida city where Martin was shot to death last month–took flight last Friday when director Spike Lee retweeted a tweet containing Zimmerman’s purported address to his 240,000 followers.
The original tweet was sent to Lee (and numerous other celebrities like Will Smith, 50 Cent, and LeBron James) last Friday afternoon by Marcus Davonne Higgins, a 33-year-old Los Angeles man who uses the online handle “maccapone.” Higgins included the direction, “EVERYBODY REPOST THIS.”
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The residence on Edgewater Circle is actually the home of David McClain, 72, and his wife Elaine, 70. The McClains, both of whom work for the Seminole County school system, have lived in the 1310-square-foot lakefront home for about a decade, records show.
In an interview tonight, Elaine McClain told TSG that she and her husband were “afraid” due to the online linking of her address to Zimmerman. “We’re keeping everything locked,” she said. McClain added that the couple was particularly unnerved by a letter mailed to them at their home. On the envelope, she said, were printed the words “Taste The Rainbow,” the slogan for Skittles. Martin was carrying a pack of Skittles and a can of ice tea when he was gunned down by Zimmerman.
McClain said her husband returned the envelope unopened to the post office.
The McClains only became aware that their address was being widely circulated online two days ago, when a TV reporter arrived at their home asking for “George.” Bewildered by their sudden–and erroneous–connection to Martin’s killer, the elderly couple’s distress can only be heightened by posts made by Twitter and Facebook users who threaten to visit their residence in search of Zimmerman. Or other posts that goad followers to vigilante action.
Back in 2006, the Weekly Standard noted that Lee may be the only superstar director whose name is anathema for marketing purposes:
Spike Lee, quite simply, is not a profitable director, and he hasn’t been for some time. His first two major motion pictures, School Daze and Do the Right Thing, were both produced for around $6.5 million. The first made more than double its budget domestically, and the second is his most profitable film to date (other than The Original Kings of Comedy, which owes its success far more to the standup comedians performing in it than the man behind the camera), with a domestic gross of $27.5 million. His winning streak continued for two more films: Jungle Fever made an $18.5 million profit, and Malcolm X brought home just over $14 million more than its budget. Since then, however, Lee hasn’t made a drama that ended up in the black. Some have been modest failures (Crooklyn, for example, lost only about $400,000). Others have been much bigger flops. (She Hate Me cost $8 million to produce and brought in less than $400,000 at the box office. Clockers lost even more money; the $25 million piece was almost $12 million in the red.)
The question becomes, then, how does one make a Spike Lee movie profitable? Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment is probably banking on the fact that white audiences are unlikely to attend what they imagine will be a two hour lesson on why society is racist. Removing the “Spike Lee Joint” tag from his picture will almost certainly increase its marketability at the box office with whites. It’s not too much of a stretch to guess that Inside Man might wind up as Lee’s highest grossing movie; his previous best is Malcolm X’s $48.4 million.
After the dust — and the lawsuits — settle, this could actually be the best thing to happen for Spike’s Hollywood employment. Hollywood can’t get enough radical chic, and the more loathed a star or in this case a star director is by Red State audiences, the more beloved he becomes within the Hollywood artistic compound. Or as John Nolte writes today at Big Hollywood regarding another far left star gone wild, if you live in flyover country, “while this might be reminder number 11,487 that Hollywood hates you, it’s reminder number 22,641 that Hollywood is driven by ideology not profits.”
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