Photograph by Carrie Mae Weems for TIME
TIME

Spike Lee Wants BlacKkKlansman to Wake America Up

Adam Driver, left, with John David Washington, whom Lee has known his whole life: “I didn’t have him audition,” Lee says
David Lee—Focus Features Adam Driver, left, with John David Washington, whom Lee has known his whole life: “I didn’t have him audition,” Lee says

It’s a picture-perfect day on Martha’s Vineyard. Families stream by on a heavily foot-trafficked thoroughfare, while white men in cargo shorts dock their boats and crack open their beers. In the middle of it all is Spike Lee, sitting on a bench, delivering an earful of Saturday-afternoon real talk. “Agent Orange is in office,” he says. “If this isn’t a motivation to get off our asses and register to vote, I don’t know what is.”

It soon becomes clear why Lee picked this spot. He wants to talk about President Trump and Barack Obama and Colin Kaepernick and the Ku Klux Klan. But why do that in private when you could do it loudly, outside, for everyone to hear?

Read the full cover story here.

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