News of President Trump’s surprisingly friendly meeting with New York Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani traveled quickly, with at least one Mamdani voter taken aback by the president’s sudden change in tone.
“During the election, President Trump called him a communist and said New York City was going to decline,” director Spike Lee said at a press conference at the Turin Film Festival. “I mean, the president said he was going to cut off federal funding. So given the statements leading up to this quick response…I’m perplexed.”
“We’ll see what happens next,” Lee continued, still perplexed by the sudden Oval Office bromance. “If you go back and look at what the president said about him and what New York City would look like if (Mamdani) wins, it seems…” he trailed off. “It seems like they somehow found common ground.”
Of course, like the two politicians he met on Friday, the filmmaker himself, a loquacious New York icon, was equally willing to roll with the punches. “There were a lot of people saying they were going to leave New York City if Mamdani won. Now, if anyone is actually leaving New York City, I want to know the real numbers!”
The Oscar-winning director arrived in Turin just days after meeting with Pope Leo
“People who didn’t know who I was now know because of this photo of the Pope holding up his jersey,” Lee said with a laugh, shortly after exclaiming, “I knew this question was going to come up!”
Nearly a week after the meeting, Lee remained enthusiastic, especially considering he couldn’t believe it when he first received the invitation. “I got an email from his office and I thought it was fake,” he laughed. “Another word for fake in English is ‘fugazi’…But they wrote back and said it was going to be about a movie, so I was instantly hooked.”
“The Pope was speaking the truth as he saw it, about how movies can have a great impact on humanity,” Lee continued, adding, “His people are black. Check it out. His family is from New Orleans, which is Creole. There’s a lot of interracial marriage. So, black people, we claim him. We call him our brother!”
Lee spoke equally enthusiastically about Sinners’ creator Ryan Coogler, calling the blues-and-bloods vampire story his favorite movie of the year (“I jumped out of my seat. It was amazing!”) and praised the young filmmaker as a similarly helpful force.
“Hollywood is getting better because there are more people of color behind and in front of the camera,” Lee said. “So we’re a lot better now than when we started in 1986.”
