Spike Lee Can’t Get Funding, Ashton Kutcher vs. Village Voice in Social Media Brawl

Spike Lee can’t get financing for his films, even with Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster joining a follow-up to Lee’s most successful feature, Inside Man. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Lee griped about everything from Do the Right Thing’s Academy snub in 1989 and making a film with LeBron James to his hesitancy about acting and Obama’s reelection. Lee's difficulties acquiring backers are countless, but he's particularly peeved that due to his 2008 financial disaster, the World War II period piece Miracle at St. Anna, even though Inside Man was his most successful film, "we can’t get the sequel made. And one thing Hollywood does well is sequels. The film’s not getting made. We tried many times. It’s not going to happen.”

In a tizzy over a story in the Village Voice that he and his wife Demi Moore used exaggerated numbers to raise awareness about underage prostitution, Ashton Kutcher has taken to twitter to blast his revenge. The battle has unfolded in a way that flatters no one. While the Voice said that the number is lower than Kutcher suggested (100,000-300,000), they also supported increased funding for victims of child prostitution, and invited Kutcher to dispute the facts. Kutcher accused the Voice of having advertisements of underage prostitutes in their publication—calling out their advertisers American Airlines, Domino’s, and Disney. Yesterday Kutcher asked: "are you aware that you are advertising on a site that supports the Sale of Human Beings (slavery)?" In Kutcher's mind: why talk it out, when you can tweet it?

[Spike Lee/ Photo by Leslie Hassler]