Spike Lee at Mizzou campus for film to focus on football team boycott
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Movie director Spike Lee visits the University of Missouri campus to work on an ESPN documentary about the football team's threatened boycott last fall.
The Columbia Daily Tribune reports Lee was in town on Saturday night to attend a screening of the student-made documentary "Concerned Student 1950 at the True/False Film Festival.
Lee's film titled "2 Fists Up" is planned for digital release May 31. ESPN says the film examines how the Black Lives Matter Movement sparked activism at the University of Missouri and the rest of the U.S.
Lee also was on campus Monday to interview subjects for the film and record footage of the Concerned Student 1950 group as it protested at multiple spots on campus.
The two-time nominee and honorary Oscar recipient also recently made headlines when he decided not to attend this year's Academy Awards ceremony, but instead, was at his usual court-side spot at Madison Square Garden.
"My beloved New York Knicks hopefully will put up a good performance against the Miami Heat," Lee said on "CBS This Morning," ahead of the Oscars.
Lee, who released a new Michael Jackson documentary called "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall," was among the first in Hollywood to announce he would not be attending the ceremony. It was the second year in a row only white actors were nominated in the top four acting categories.
"For those keeping score at home, sports fans, 20 to zip. Two years in a row, 20 to zip. Forty-zip, two years, you know that's ridiculous. And I think so many performances that got overlooked," Lee said. "And my wife and I said, 'We can't go.' We didn't call anybody. I was not on the phone with Jada or Will. We did this independently. They did it independently, and other people [have] done it independently too. It's pervasive, and people said, 'We're fed up. We're not going.'"