As hard as it may seem to believe, legendary director Spike Lee had never actually won a competitive Oscar before he finally took home a trophy on Sunday. Lee won in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for BlacKkKlansman, his critically acclaimed film about the Ku Klux Klan that’s also nominated for Best Picture.
After 3 decades of nominations and snubs, Spike Lee finally won an Oscar
Spike Lee just won his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman — four years after getting an honorary nod.
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Aja Romano wrote about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they’re considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars.
Lee was famously nominated in 1990 for his screenplay for Do the Right Thing — and just as famously passed over in that category, in addition to being snubbed in the Best Director category, where he wasn’t nominated at all.
Then he was nominated again in 1998 for his documentary 4 Little Girls, though he did not win.
Lee did receive an honorary Oscar in 2015 for his decades of groundbreaking cinema, but until the 2019 Oscars, he’d never actually won in one of the Oscars’ competitive categories.
Lee has been frank in the past about his lack of recognition from the Academy, but his Oscar acceptance speech was about positivity in the face of overcoming huge obstacles. He started by thanking his grandmother, a descendant of slaves who saved to put him through college and film school.
“She called me Spikie-poo,” he joked, before going on to remember his ancestors:
Before the world tonight, I give praise to my ancestors who built our country, along with the genocide of our native people. We all connect with ancestors, to regain our humanity. It will be a powerful moment.
Lee also referenced his original 1990 nomination for Do the Right Thing — to make a point about continuing to change history:
The 2020 presidential election is around the corner. Let’s all mobilize, let’s all be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love versus hate. Let’s do the right thing!
Watch an excerpt of his speech below.
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By Alexia Fernández Campbell
