Spike Lee Defends His Kickstarter: F*ck The Haters

Jen Carlson

Published Jul 25, 2013

Modified Jul 25, 2013

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Jen Carlson

Published Jul 25, 2013

Modified Jul 25, 2013

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Earlier this week wealthy, accomplished, connected Spike Lee launched a Kickstarter aimed at raising $1.25 Million for his upcoming movie, which he says will be "sexy" and is about “human beings who are addicted to blood." This kind of celebrity panhandling through the crowdsourcing platform has been criticized before, and now the director is taking some heat for it. Because, c'mon. As Kevin Smith said,The Famous should not "suck any loot out of the crowd-funding marketplace that might otherwise go to some first-timer who can really use it." So what does Spike have to say about all this? According to what he told the Village Voice, he's thinks it's "bullshit," and FYI he's actually introducing "black folks" to Kickstarter.

"That criticism is bullshit. The founders of Kickstarter told me, 'Spike, Kickstarter is for everybody.' They did tell me there would be some flak. Zach Braff got some flak. This is not new. What people are missing is that the people who are pledging money have never been on Kickstarter before. Most hadn't even heard of it. A large percentage of that is Black folks who had never heard of Kickstarter, so that complaint that I'm hurting somebody is not true. Plus, I've always been a champion of young filmmakers. Why have I taught at NYU for the past 15 years? You know the phrase, 'haters gonna hate'? We're not worrying about that. We have a goal, and the people hating don't like my films anyway. So fuck 'em."

Maybe he has some tips for Brendan Fraser.