Scenes from 'Crooklyn' in Brooklyn last night, where Spike Lee himself introduced the film

'This film is very personal to me': The director introduced his 1994 classic at a special free screening in Fort Greene Park Thursday

By Brian Braiker

It is summer in Brooklyn.

Neighborhood kids race each other down the block past another group playing a game of hopscotch. A quartet of old timers play dominoes on a sidewalk card table. One girl is blowing bubbles on her stoop, her friends playing double dutch close by. Down the block a a stickball game is heating up. There isn’t a smartphone in sight. That’s because it’s 1973. And these are the opening credits of “Crooklyn.”

“This is a very personal film to me. I grew up here in the Fort,” said director Spike Lee, moments before screening of the film in Fort Greene Park on Thursday night. “Look at the opening credit scenes of this film. This is before all this technology, all these electronic games. We had to use our imagination.”

Standing near the park entrance at South Portland and Myrtle Avenues, blocks from his 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks headquarters, Lee described some of the more personal elements of the semi-autobiographical masterpiece to a crowd of roughly a thousand Brooklynites (many of whom he posed for selfies with before speaking).

Manushka Magloire and Emily Anadu of the Lay Out flanking Spike (Gabriela Gabrielaa)

“The Lees first lived in Crown Heights, 1490 Union street. And then the Lees were the first black family in Cobble Hill. Back then, Cobble Hill was stone Italian American. So we got called the n-word and ‘mulignan’ and that type of stuff, but when a ton Black people moved in after us, we were good,” he said.

Lee speaks (Gabriela Gabrielaa)

“My late mother always wanted to own a brownstone. She was looking around. Back then, we went to realtors, they wouldn’t even use the name ‘Fort Greene.’ They would say ‘downtown vicinity.’ Over here was called ‘Murder Avenue’,” he said pointing Myrtle. “But we bought our brownstone right here in Washington Park, for $45,000.”

Washington Park isn’t just the name of the street that borders Fort Greene Park, it was the original name of the park itself (Brooklyn’s first) until a year before the borough was incorporated into New York City. Sometimes old habits die hard. And nostalgia was thick in the air Thursday. The DJ, provided by the community group The Lay Out, spun throwbacks from Cameo, Chaka Khan and Biggie before and after Lee spoke.

The evening was the part of the “SHOWTIME® in the Park” summer film series, a collaboration between Brooklyn Magazine and Showtime as well as the Fort Greene Park Conservancy and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Reynoso was himself on hand: The borough president rode in with Lee with a crew of around 100 cyclists from the Good Company Bike Club, making for a dramatic entrance ahead of showtime.

“Look around you,” Reynoso told the crowd. “Look at this beauty; look at this peace; look at this love. This what Brooklyn is about!”

The Beep (Gabriela Gabrielaa)

Released in 1994, “Crooklyn” tells the story of a Black family — a working mother, a struggling musician father and five rambunctious kids — going through “trials and tribulations,” as Lee put it, in pre-gentrified Brooklyn.

“You think the kids were bad in the film? We were 10 times [worse]. I’m the eldest of five. We were crazy. There were times where, right here in Washington Park, Con Edison would come and turn the electricity off. Brooklyn Union Gas would turn the gas off. So there were some times where the only light was candlelight. So. Practically every thing you see in the film tonight is true,” he said.

(Gabriela Gabrielaa)

“Of all the films I’ve done in the last four decades, believe it or not ‘Crooklyn’ is the one people come up to me and say that’s their favorite film,” he continued. “Not ’She’s Gotta Have It,’ not ‘School Days,’ not ‘Do the Right Thing,’ not ‘Malcolm X,’ not ‘25th Hour,’ not ‘Inside Man.’ They say ‘Crooklyn’.”

This was the second to last Thursday of our free “SHOWTIME® in the Park” film series. Come back next week for “Clue” before we take the screen to Prospect Park for Wednesdays in August.

Here are a few more scenes from Thursday’s event.