CHICAGO (AP) – Flanked by parents holding photographs of the children they’ve lost to gun violence in Chicago, filmmaker Spike Lee on Thursday defended his choice to make a movie about the city with the Iraq-inspired title “Chiraq.”
“This is not a joke. This is not a game,’ the Oscar-nominated director said at a news conference about his planned film about violence in Chicago. “This is real life and death and that’s the way we’re going to approach this.”
Lee has faced criticism from city officials, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who last month said he told the director that he was not happy about the working title of Chiraq, a combination of the names of Chicago and violence-torn Iraq, and pronounced (shy-RAK’). He said he thought it unfair to the residents of the Englewood neighborhood where the film takes place. One member of the city council has pushed for the city to deny Lee’s company a multimillion dollar tax break for shooting the film unless he changes the title.
Lee did not take questions or say whether he will change the name of the film. But he did have harsh words for critics and any suggestion that the film would hurt tourism or business in the city, comparing them to those who predicted that his 1989 film ‘Do The Right Thing’ would trigger rioting across the country. That movie tells the story of simmering racial tension in a New York neighborhood that erupts in violence on a hot summer day.
“Those people ended up on the wrong side of history and the same thing is going to happen in Chicago,” he said.