Spike Lee doesn’t like white people moving into black neighborhoods in Brooklyn — but he is okay with white directors making black movies.
The director of “X” and “Do the Right Thing” denies a rumor I heard about him being unhappy that Ken Burns is set to direct a 4-hour documentary on Jackie Robinson.
“Lee wears a number 42 jersey to Knicks games. He has wanted to do the Robinson story for many years,” a film industry source told me.
But Lee e-mailed me, “Not true at all. I never wanted to do a documentary on Jackie. I wanted to do a feature film. Ken Burns is great. I wish him the best, and for [Jackie’s widow,] Ms. Rachel Robinson and her family.”
In 1987, Lee criticized Steven Spielberg’s “The Color Purple” as “weak” and said, “That was no surprise. We, I, gotta make our own Goddamn films. F - - k having these white boys f - - k up telling our stories.”
Lee missed out when Brian Helgeland, of Norwegian descent, directed last year’s feature film “42,” the story of how Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. It starred Chadwick Boseman as Robinson.
Besides Robinson, the prolific Burns — who has made documentaries on the Civil War, baseball, jazz, the Dust Bowl and the Central Park Five — is lining up projects about country music, Ernest Hemingway, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Burns’ latest, “The Address,” which chronicles a group of disabled students as they memorize the Gettysburg Address, premieres April 15 on PBS.