She's Gotta Have It
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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She's Gotta Have It is a 1986 comedy-drama film written and directed by Spike Lee. It was also Lee's first feature-length film. The films stars Tracy Camilla Johns, Tommy Redmond Hicks and John Canada Terrell.
Plot
Nola Darling (portrayed by Tracy Camilla Johns) is a young, attractive, sexually independent Brooklynite who juggles three suitors: the polite and well-meaning Jamie Overstreet (Tommy Redmond Hicks); the self-obsessed model Greer Childs (John Canada Terrell); and the immature, motormouthed bicycle messenger Mars Blackmon (Lee). Nola is attracted to the best in each of them, but refuses to commit to any of them, cherishing her personal freedom instead, even though each man wants her for himself.
Background
She's Gotta Have It was Spike Lee's first feature length motion picture as a writer/director and a landmark independent film of American cinema. It marked a shift in African-American filmmaking away from the Blaxploitation era of the 1970s.
The New York Times wrote that the film "ushered in (along with Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise) the American independent film movement of the 1980s. It was also a groundbreaking film for African-American filmmakers and a welcome change in the representation of blacks in American cinema, depicting men and women of color not as pimps and whores, but as intelligent, upscale urbanites."
The film was shot in twelve days during the summer of 1985 on a budget of $175,000 and grossed $7,137,502 at the U.S. box office.Template:Ref Spike Lee details his trials and consolations on the making and distribution of the film in the book Spike Lee's Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Filmmaking. The highly stylized, black-and-white film features a jazz score by Lee's father, Bill. Culture critic Nelson George, a personal friend of Lee's, was one of the film's main investors.
