The ??? ?? ????crowd stood up and roared with appreciation for six straight minutes as the credits rolled on Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, which premiered at Cannes on Monday. Meanwhile, this trailer gives us all a first look at the prolific filmmaker's latest work.
BlacKkKlansmanrecounts the true-life story of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in 1979. He was working at the Colorado Springs Police Department when he came across a classified ad for the hate group and decided to call the number.
SEE ALSO: You can't shut down 'This Is America' memes. That's what 'This Is America' is about."I eventually spoke with a gentleman over the phone responding to that ad, and the gentleman explained to me that he was starting a Klan chapter in Colorado Springs and was looking for new people," the real-life Stallworth explained in a 2006 interview with NPR.
With help from a white undercover officer working at the department's narcotics desk -- he posed as the man behind the call for in-person meetings -- Stallworth joined the KKK. His certificate of membership was even signed by David Duke, the hate group's former Grand Wizard.
The trailer strikes a humorous tone, but the movie comes with a serious message. It ends, in a much-buzzed-about coda, with a montage of scenes from the summer 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va. that turned deadly.
The sequence wraps up with a dedication to Heather Heyer, the woman who was killed when one of the white supremacist marchers, James Fields, Jr., plowed his car into a crowd. BlacKkKlansmanhappens to open on Aug. 10, just a couple days before the one-year anniversary of Heyer's death.
At the film's Cannes press conference, Lee described Heyer's death as "an ugly, ugly, ugly blemish on the United States of America." He also noted that he'd received permission from Heyer's mother, Susan Bro, before inserting imagery of Fields "murderous act."
"I was not gonna put that murder scene in the film without her blessing," Lee said. "Mrs. Bro said, ‘Spike, I give you permission to put that in.’ Once I got permission, I said, ‘Fuck everybody else, that motherfucking scene is staying in the motherfucking movie.’ Cuz that was a murder."
Lee's comments about Heyer and the Charlottesville formed the start of what turned into a five-minute monologue, during which he discussed Donald Trump -- "I'm not gonna say his fucking name" -- and hatred, both in the United States and around the world.
You can read a full transcript of what he said right here.
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