Spike Lee Gets a G Rating, At Last

By Stephen M. Silverman And Susan Mandel

Monday November 04, 2002 12:00 PM EST

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Yahoo Buzz
• E-mail

Director, producer, actor and screenwriter Spike Lee has added a new title to his resume: children's book author.

Lee and his wife, Tonya, who teamed up to write "Please, Baby, Please," were among the authors at the Kennedy Center's seventh annual Children's Multi-Cultural Book Festival in Washington, D.C., Saturday, PEOPLE reports.

"It was her idea" to do the book, said Lee, referring to Tonya. "We used our children as guinea pigs. Once they liked it, then we knew that we had something."

The Lees have two children: daughter Satchel, 7, and son Jackson, 5.

The often-controversial filmmaker ("Bamboozled"), 45, also took the time to weigh in on a few timely topics. Lee said it's still too soon to say whether the 2002 Academy Awards -- in which Halle Berry and Denzel Washington took the top acting honors -- marked a turning point for black actors in Hollywood.

"You really can't say it's a major breakthrough now because you don't know what's going to happen next year, the next 10 years," he said. "Now, if it's another 40 years till that happens again, then that wasn't a breakthrough."

Lee also addressed the controversy over the movie "Barbershop" and its jokes at the expense of two civil rights icons.

"I would not have done those jokes about Rosa Parks and Dr. King," he said. "Number one, they're not funny ... (But) I don't think Jesse (Jackson) and Rev. Al Sharpton should've advocated a boycott of the film. What that boycott did was really put more money in the box office."

Closing the book on that subject, he said, "They're already writing the sequel. It's going to be coming out probably next year. And there are definitely going to be some Reverend Jackson jokes in that, I already heard."