Spike as seen through his brother's lens, in a new book
ABC News
“Spike” is a new photograph book to be published November 17
NEW YORK -- When David Lee was growing up in Brooklyn, his older brother would drag him out of the house whenever he got the urge to make a film.
“Spike would say, ‘You gotta come with me. I’m shooting something,’” says David Lee. “His early impulse was to document. The ’77 blackout, he went out and filmed. He would yank me and say, ‘Come on. Come on.’”
In an artistic family (Spike and David’s father, Bill Lee, is a well-regarded jazz musician who scored several of Spike’s early films), David took up still photography. David, four years Spike’s junior, discovered photography when an upstairs tenant in their family’s brownstone taught him how to process 35mm black-and-white film.
Spike, meanwhile, was already on his way as a movie director. And from the beginning, no one had a front-row seat to the birth and evolution of the master American filmmaker like David. From Spike’s first feature film, “She’s Gotta Have It,” and ever since, David has been his brother’s on-set photographer.
