Inside the "Inside Man" Team
Throughout his 20-year career, Spike Lee has been considered "outside" of Hollywood, against Hollywood, or angry with Hollywood. For his new film, Inside Man the Brooklyn-raised filmmaker is working inside a typical movie genre - the cops-and-heist thriller - and giving it his own unique touch.
Topping his cast are two Oscar-winning actors, Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster, who themselves have directed (Antwone Fisher for him, Little Man Tate and Home for the Holidays for her), as well as English actor Clive Owen (Sin City, Closer). In tone and energy, the movie comes across like a modern-day version of 1975's Dog Day Afternoon.
Filmed last summer over 39 days in locales around the city - including the Financial District, where most of the action takes place - Inside Man isn't lacking for some of the concerns that have marked Lee's recent films (Bamboozled, 25th Hour, She Hate Me). Here, shadowing a bank robbery and hostage-taking, are ideas about evil corporations and the slippery morals of politicians and power-mongers.
In an interview, Lee, Washington and Foster shared their thoughts about breaking the rules, taking the heat and making Inside Man.
Q: This really seems like a film that could have been made in the 1970s - it has that toughness and urgency.
Foster: Spike showed us all a bunch of `70s films, like a film a night, to get us in the mood for this.
Lee: 
When I read Russell Gewirtz's script, it seemed like a chance to show New York City as the diverse place that it is. And it did feel like those `70s movies. In fact, in this film, the actor who delivers a pizza to the bank is the same guy who delivers a pizza in Dog Day Afternoon!
Foster: To have Spike do a movie like this that's smart, and add his social-political element to it, it's the best of all possible worlds. And I think we're ready to have those kinds of movies start up again, it's just from a different angle.
Q. Spike, it feels like you're no longer seen as the guy who riles up Hollywood.
Lee: I never really ever paid attention to that kind of stuff. I'm just trying to move on and continue making films. ... I think this is a happy medium, in which I found a project where I can sort of do my thing and make it in the studio system.
Q: Denzel, this is your fourth film with Spike (after Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm Xand He Got Game). Do you two have a verbal shorthand?
Washington: Yeah, we're pretty much ready to just get to it! Spike asked if I'd be interested, and I was finishing up doing Brutus in Julius Caesar here in New York, so I said, "I have a four-week window, so we gotta do it fast."
Lee: And I'd ask him how scenes would go, like "D, you think we got that one?" (laughs)
Washington: 
"Yeah, yeah, we got it!" There was no time. And that was a good thing, actually. Because sometimes, it's like, "Think long, think wrong." And we just didn't have the money to take our time. So it's like, "C'mon, man, go, go!"
Lee: I think it's also great when you have actors who've also directed, because they know what you have to do. The thing about it is, I'm very lucky, when I get to working with people like Jodie, Denzel, Clive - that's like Phil Jackson when he coached the Chicago Bulls! It makes my job easier.
Q. Jodie, in Inside Man you play a shady expert in political dirty deeds, and Denzel, you play an NYPD hostage negotiator. What kind of research did you do into your characters?
Foster: 
I always felt like my character, Madeline, owned a successful brothel 20 years ago, and now she works in a reputable arena, but she's brought the same immorality to it. I think there are people, in Washington especially, who know what has to be done in certain situations - people who don't have to talk very loud in order to assume power.
Washington: 
(Co-star) Chiwetel Ejiofor and I hung out with cops from downtown. And I didn't meet anybody in the detective office that wasn't a real New Yorker! I'm working now on a film in New Orleans, and some people have accents, some don't. But man, everybody in the detectives' office had that New York thing, you know?
Q. Are there things any of you would change about any of your films?
Foster: I'll sometimes look at something in a film I directed and say, "Oh, man, that was stupid, and I held onto it for so long! Now look at it, it's bad!"
Lee: The one thing I would change is the rape scene in She's Gotta Have It - there's no reason for that scene to be there other than my immaturity and naivete. I got called on it, and rightfully so. That'd be my do-over.
Q. Any projects you would love to do but don't know if they will ever get made?
Foster: 
Flora Plum would be my back-pocket movie. I've almost had it going, but I don't want to do it with the wrong cast or not enough money. It's a circus movie set in the 1930s - it should be done right or not at all.
Washington: More Shakespeare, definitely. We're talking about putting "Julius Caesar" on film, but it's in the early stages.
Lee: The Joe Louis story is the one for me. First, Ali came out, then Cinderella Man, and in both cases, people said, "Boxing films just don't make money." It's crazy when people say, "This film wasn't successful, so you can't make more films like that." I don't understand that. It's not the same story! And people need to take chances.
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