Spike Lee Spike Lee Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut with "She's Gotta Have It" (1986), and has since directed such films as "Do the Right Thing" (1989), "Malcolm X" (1992), "The Original Kings of Comedy" (2000), "25th Hour" (2002), "Inside Man" (2006), "Chi-Raq" (2015), and "BlacKkKlansman" (2018). Lee has also acted in 10 of his own films. Lee's films have examined race relations, colorism in the black community, the
John Spike Director and Chief Curator of the Muscarelle Museum of Art since 2012. Spike grew up in New York City and Tenafly, New Jersey where he was a friend and classmate of the actor Ed Harris at Tenafly High School. His father was the Rev. Robert W. Spike, a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and his brother is Paul Spike, an author and the first American to be named editor of the British satirical magazine "Punch". After undergraduate studies at Wesleyan University, he earned his PhD from Harvard University in art history in 1979. His dissertation