Spike Lee
Clockers

"Clockers" is a novel by Richard Price centered on the character of detective Rocco Klein, an aging officer perpetually at odds with his colleagues, with a marriage in shambles and an actor on his heels, ready to steal his expressions for the right scenes. Klein stumbles onto a murder - four shots for a black man selling hamburgers in Brooklyn - and ends up falling, as with all stumbles, not at the exact point where the drift begins... among the Clockers, precisely. Crack dealers, active twenty-four hours a day, ready to do anything to get by.

Martin Scorsese bought the rights to the novel and, determined to direct it, worked with Price himself on the screenplay for a year before reconsidering and limiting himself to the role of producer. I believe it went more or less like this: having decided not to direct the work, he called a sleepy Spike Lee, who, between a couple of fucks and shits, told him that he'd "think about it," and he seriously did. Spike Lee changed the starting point, turned the camera, and focused it on Strike, a son of the ghetto, a hardened clocker, attracted to electric trains, chocolate milk, and gangsta rap.

"You might shit positive on spray, but this fucking world isn't positive; it's negative, and all this sex and violence just sells more records."

"Clockers" is a collection of sequences, cases, and situations where people do nothing but descend, day after day, moment after moment, circle after circle, into the arms of Satan, embracing their ever-heavier cross. You're born good and become bad; you're born bad and, deep down, you're good; you're born good, remain good, and end up becoming bad... a bad corpse, to be precise. It's the life of the ghetto, the consequences of street life. Tyrone is a sharp and kind twelve-year-old, and being kind in a place like that means being a loser. Tyrone decides to change his life; he chooses a life teacher, a bad life teacher. The teacher is Strike, the clocker who makes $1500 a week, who doesn't smoke crack because for him, it's all about making money. Between the two, there's affection, compassion for the violent life that's broadcast, and in which they are protagonists. Rocco sticks himself to Strike's ass, to Victor's (Strike's real brother), and stumbles onto Tyrone's.

Spike Lee is sharp and someone sharp who's seen things, known them, and anyone who's been known by things themselves will always be sharp to the third power. A survivor, one with perhaps a sly look but who won't be screwed by the first arrival. There are no good or bad, there's no right or wrong... there's life and what life forces you to do, and ghetto life isn't roses and flowers. "Clockers" is a telecast made with images of what happens when you're born in a place that selects you day after day, gesture after gesture. Hard-faced, ready to hit something even harder.

"Clockers" begins with a sequence of photos of black boys killed, with bullets passing through them from side to side, cold on the cold asphalt of New York. As Lee himself said: "It's aimed at the inhabitants of the New York ghetto. I wanted to bring out their contradictions to show that being born black and poor doesn't necessarily mean being born a gangster, dealer, junkie, dancer, or rapper, but that you can even study, have a job, and start a family."