Spike Lee considers this documentary on a pivotal moment in Alabama history ‘my best filmmaking ever’

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — Throughout a conversation spanning over an hour, there was only one question that Spike Lee thanked comedian and podcaster Marc Maron for asking.

While promoting his new film, “Highest 2 Lowest,” the filmmaker spoke with Maron on his “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast, which is set to end this fall after a 16-year run. During the conversation, Lee discussed his films, his hometown of New York City, and the characters that have stuck with him over the years. However, it wasn’t until Maron brought up “4 Little Girls,” Lee’s 1997 documentary on the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963, that Lee began to give a different side of himself.

“I was hoping you would ask that,” lee said. “‘4 Little Girls’ is, I think, my best filmmaking ever.”

The documentary covers the bombing, where members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Birmingham church, killing Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair, all of whom were 14 years old when they were killed. In ‘4 Little Girls,” Lee spoke with the victims’ families, as well as an ailing Gov. George Wallace just before he died in 1998.

In fact, Lee himself said his documentary was one part of the FBI reopening the case to arrest additional people over 30 years after the bombing. By that point, only one man, Robert “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss, had been arrested and tried for the bombing.

“So let me tell you this story: we wanted to be nominated for Best Feature Documentary (Oscar). In order to do that, you have to have a one-week of theatrical run. In New York, there’s the Film Forum. We began that one-week run and I get a call from the FBI. They want to see a print of the film,” Lee said.

By July 1997, the FBI reopened the case, leading to the arrest and eventual convictions of of Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry.

“I send them a print and a couple of days later they open up the case and indicted two of the other murderers who were still running around,” Lee said.

However, Lee said he believed that people like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had known who had bombed the church, but did nothing.

“(He) knew who those guys were,” he said. “They knew within the week the week who it was. The guy’s nickname was ‘Dynamite Bob.'”

Nonetheless, Lee considered “4 Little Girls” his “proudest moment” and was nominated for an Academy Award. In fact, the story touched him so much that he named Denzel Washington’s character in “He Got Game” after Alabama civil rights activist Fred Shuttlesworth.

Lee also has a connection through his father, bassist Bill Lee, who was born and grew up in Snow Hill, Alabama before making his way to New York.

“Highest 2 Lowest” in now streaming on Apple TV+ and in select theaters.