What really ignited Tyler Perry's tirade against Spike Lee?

The other day we had almost a ton of fun writing about how much Spike Lee's trash talk has gotten under Tyler Perry's skin. If you recall, Perry was in the middle of a news conference promoting his new movie, the one with the incredibly possessive-laden title, "Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family," when Perry went off on a rant about Lee, who has criticized Perry for making insulting, minstrel-like comedies. It didn't stop the film from cleaning up at the box office, making $25.8 million in its opening weekend.

But none of the stories I read about the news conference ever noted exactly what set Perry off. Now the mystery has been solved. Carl Kozlowski, a writer for Andrew Breitbart's conservative Big Hollywood website, says he was the one who provoked Perry into his Lee rant.

The fascinating thing is that Kozlowski never even mentioned Lee. The writer wanted to know if Perry's core audience, the black churchgoing community, might be upset over the amount of pot smoking and enthusiastic remarks about the drug that were in the movie. According to Kozlowski, a new character in the film, Aunt Bam, "smokes more pot than is consumed in a Cheech and Chong movie." Here's how Kozlowski's query elicited an eruption:

Q: Do you ever get any flak ...?

Perry: I knew this was coming -- flak about what?

Q: Not about Madea. No, a lot of your audience is church folks, I was wondering if they give you a hard time about pot jokes?

Perry: I was really ready to get you. I thought you was going to ask about Spike Lee. I'm so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee .... 

And with that, Perry was off to the races, complaining about Lee and all sorts of supposed hypocrisies, like why Perry gets in trouble for stereotyping outrageous black folk but Jewish people never complain about the comic stereotypes of "Seinfeld." When Perry started comparing himself to W.E.B. DuBois I knew he was in deep trouble, but because Perry was at a Hollywood news conference, no one got around to asking him just how he could imagine himself being used in the same sentence with a great social philosopher like DuBois. And for that matter, nobody else asked Perry about the pot references, which he never got around to discussing again.

Actually, the best part of Kozlowski's account is getting to see the embarrassing softball questions Perry was asked in the press conference. I'm not sure if my favorite was "Is it harder to work with adults or kids?" or "Why does everybody love Madea so much?...And have you ever discussed teaming up with Martin Lawrence as Big Momma?"

After a steady diet of those kind of questions, is it any wonder why Perry figures that if he's going to win over his audience, he should probably aim as low as possible?

-- Patrick Goldstein

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Photo: Tyler Perry as Madea in a scene from "Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family." Credit: Lionsgate Entertainment

Comments

[Mike]

You'd think someone as talented as Tyler would be able to think up more characters than an obnoxious drag queen! I'm an educated African American and Tyler Perry is what's wrong with Black America. Hasn't there been enough black slap stick? Can we move forward a little bit?

[Erlampo]

"Those kind...."? How did you ever get published in a national newspaper writing English like that? You should be ashamed.

[woof-woof]

Here, we have white people telling black people what movies they aren't supposed to like and using Spike Lee to back up their paternalism. No surprise that Tyler Perry, black America's favorite black filmmaker, is annoyed by criticism from Spike Lee, white America's favorite black filmmaker.

[utzworld]

This whole "debate" is ridiculous. Neither Tyler Perry nor Spike Lee represent the singular voice of Black America. We are just as diverse as every other culture and group in the world. Just as, in mainstream America, both "The King's Speech" and "Your Highness" can share the same cinematic space, surely TP and Spike's films can share similar space. African American audiences - all audiences for that matter - have the right to pick and choose what films they will support between these 2 filmmakers and any other filmmaker who comes along. You don't see Spielberg & Peter Jackson beefing with each other like this, do you?

[Patricia]

There has always been tension and drama between artists who aim high on the intellectual scale and artists whose aim is more popular and mass-oriented.

I am pleased that now we have enough black artists working and making money in the cinema to have one of these fights to break out between two black directors.

That's the good news here -- that we have both a Spike Lee and a Tyler Perry now.

So in that sense, I must decree -- It's All Good.

It will be even better, however, when there are enough women directors around for women directors to go at each other like this.

[7th planet from the Sun]

Mr Goldstein: Where were you when all the softball questions were thrown to Barack Obama during his campaign?

[blackman]

25 million? All you serious black actors better throw on a wig cause blacks just want to laugh.

[Quiet Fire]

Movies are entertainment, one has the right to choose which one they will watch

[Quiet Fire]

hey tyler keep up the talent, one day i'll be controversial too.

[Lisa Williams]

Spike Lee should remember that he also looked down on Step and Fetchit, but they were trailblazers in their own right. Lee's movies were not that great, and everyone didn't like them. I did not. As a black woman I have always read and watched movies for entertainment--to laugh, or cry; not to be
preached to concerning race relations.

Perry did not address the pot smoking because he knows that about 50%, or more of "good chruch going folks" either have in the past, or now smoke weed. I know one minister that says he give his best sermons after smoking a joint.