Spike Lee supports Hollywood boycott of Georgia over abortion bill

Originally posted Friday, June 7, 2019 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog

Director Spike Lee told the Associated Press Thursday that he supports a boycott of Georgia over the anti-abortion bill signed into law last month by Gov. Brian Kemp.

"I know it's going to affect people's livelihood. But that's how things change," Lee told AP at the arrivals line for Denzel Washington's American Film Institute lifetime achievement tribute. "You've got to be on the right side of history, and the state of Georgia and those other states, they're wrong."

Louisiana, which also provides tax credits for producers to shoot films and TV shows, passed a similar restrictive abortion law a week ago, but Hollywood types have not called for a similar boycott of that state.

A boycott does not appear to impact Lee right now.

The Academy Award winning filmmaker, whose second season of “She’s Gotta Have It” just debuted on Netflix, shoots almost all his films in his home state of New York. Since he became a big-time film-maker, Lee has shot one film in Georgia: “School Daze” in 1988.

He did graduate Morehouse University in 1979 and visits Atlanta on a regular basis.