On 16 October 1995, around a million African-American men congregated in Washington DC. Their march through the city was intended both as a protest and as a grand gesture of solidarity.
Not since the heyday of the Civil Rights movement had there been an event on this scale. Spike Lee was determined to commemorate it, “so it's not deemed a relic or something that's from the past”. Hence his latest film, Get On The Bus.
Unusually, this wasn't a project originated by Lee himself. Producer Barry Rosenbush had the idea for the movie after seeing a late-night news report about a bus load of Los Angeles men travelling cross country to the march. Rosenbush and his producing partners, Bill Borden and Reuben Cannon, set the project rolling in double-quick time. Lee came on board, a script was commissioned from Reggie Rock Blythwood, and, within a matter of months, the film was complete. Its US$2.4 million budget was raised outside the studio system from prominent black Americans, attorney Johnny Cochran, baseball star Charles D Smith, and actors Danny Glover and Wesley Snipes among them.
“Seventy-five percent of the film takes place on a bus,” Lee admits.
This presented a considerable technical challenge and also tested Lee's storytelling abilities to the hilt. He opted for a fluid, documentary-style approach. His 20 or so characters were intended to represent black America in microcosm.
Regardless of his material, whether in his tiny budget sex comedy She's Gotta Have It or in a stirring, polemical epic like Malcolm X, one of Lee's great strengths has always been his ability to coax strong performances from ensemble casts. Teamwork was again the key here. “We were together; we were a family,” Lee has since observed, “fighting sometimes, hugging other times. People kind of assumed their characters over the course of the filming.”
Released in the US on the first anniversary of the march, Get On The Bus is at once a road movie, a historical document, and, Lee hopes, a model not only for the black community but for independent filmmakers too. As the credits note, “This Film Was Completely Funded By 15 African American Men.” Geoffrey Macnab
Regie (Dir): Spike Lee Buch
(Scr): Reggie Rock Bythewood Darsteller (Cast) Richard Belzer,
Andre Braugher, Ossie Davis Länge (Running Time): 120 Minuten
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