Spike Lee, Stew, & a Rock Musical: ‘Passing Strange’

It wouldn't be hyperbole to say that Passing Strange might be one of the best movies of the year, if not easily the best documentary of it. And it's even stranger that it exists. Stew and Heidi Rodewald of The Negro Problem played in a band for years before putting together their rock musical opus Passing Strange. The show, a coming-of-age story about a black, middle class teenager leaving South Central to pursue his rockstar dreams of a "real" existence in Amsterdam and Berlin stars Stew, Heidi, their band, and a collective of some of Broadway's best stage talent. It's a rock show, it's a play, it's a musical, it's an experience. And it went from Berkeley, to downtown New York, to Broadway, taking their rock band on the most unlikely of paths, which got even stranger when it won a Tony, and then when legendary director Spike Lee decided to step in and permanently document the show on film before it closed. After taking awards home from Sundance, the rock doc's now being shown on IFC On Demand, at the IFC Center in New York, around the country, and soon, will be broadcast on PBS. We sat down with Lee, Stew (né Mark Stewart), and his co-writer/bassist Heidi Rodewald to wax poetic on the process of Strange.

Spike, where did you first see Passing Strange? How’d you hear about it?
Spike Lee: I saw it at The Public (Theatre, in New York). I can’t even remember who, but somebody told me about it.

What was your first reaction?
SL: Wow!

Did you know immediately that you wanted to do something with it?
SL: Yeah, but I didn’t what form it would be. First I was thinking it would be a feature film—not filming the stage performance.

And at what point along did you know that the concert film was what you wanted to do? Was it after you saw it on Broadway?
The second time. I saw it twice that same weekend.

And did you guys when you first started this out did you have a dream of being of being apart of the Spike Lee joint?
Stew: (Laughing) No. No! The nightmare was that at some point it was going to close and that it was just all going to all go away—that was the thing we (the band, against theater people) didn’t agree on about the theater.

Which is the scary thing about all theater. It’s so temporary. It’s fleeting.
Stew: Exactly, and we come from a documenting area of our, you know, our genre. Music. Records. So it didn’t compute to us. Theater people are cool with the nature of it, they like that ephemeral whatever, and they think it’s cool, and I’m like nah.

It drives me insane when I see a great show, and can’t transfer or share that experience anywhere else.
Stew: Right! So for us, it was something we were thinking--at the very least--we wanted to get one of those I pro people to stay at. I was ready to get some of my friends in with pirate cameras to do whatever I could (to tape it), because I couldn’t walk away from the show not having at least a decent document.
SL: When I saw it the first time at the public, I was telling everybody.

You tell your friends, you want everyone to see it.
SL: I was telling everybody.

When you wanted to approach the show, what was the idea?
SL: Don’t mess it up.

How’d you start to map out the plan to film it?
SL: It happened fast. I started going often, often so I could become familiar with the show, and just know all the numbers, all the stuff. And those times I really wasn’t there to enjoy it by any condition, it was shoot it: camera placement, camera placement, camera placement. And then, ‘what things can we tweak here and there?’

Were there ever any nerves about getting it right for the movie? Because you’d been performing this show for two and a half years, right?
Stew: You still have that excitement of performing it live, but you also know exactly what’s going to happen. That’s how I felt onstage. I felt like I had no nerves whatsoever, but I had all the excitement. I was anticipating every bit of it. My advice to anybody who’s trying to get their thing documented: get a great filmmaker, cause I’m telling you, it’s fun, it’s fun to have the shit shot knowing that its gonna look great and that whatever your work is, it’s gonna be documented like this, at such a high level.

There’s a real meta element to the show. You’re on stage, speaking to a character who might be you. And now, you’re watching you, speak to that character that might be you, on film. Is it strange?
Stew: Well, no, because I still don’t think of it as myself. That guy is a composite. I could go through point by point, everything in this film, and this play, that didn’t happen to me. These things are based on things that happened to everyone from Josephine Baker to James Baldwin to friends of mine. I went to Europe with two black artists and one Jewish artist, and we experienced all manner of everything from objectification—girls wanting to sleep with us ‘cause we were either black or Jewish all the way to like, you know, good stuff. What I am saying is: there’s stuff in that movie that’s from my Jewish friends’ experience, there’s stuff in there that’s from Dexter Gordon’s experience, there’s stuff there from Josephine Baker, from me, and just shit that just happened. So I mean, I don’t see that as “Stew” at all, I see that as a young man who has a lot in common with me, but probably has a lot in common with you.
Heidi Rodewald: Just take me, as the white girl in this. I try to keep saying: this is my story, too, just like everybody else’s. It just hits on so many things emotionally that everybody--whose lives there’re so many things in this that are so true--can own part of it. So, yeah: it all is coming from me too.

Stew and Heidi, you guys did the show for three years. But you’re a rock band. Was it sustainable to keep performing like that, night after night? Do you think you could’ve kept going?
Stew: Dude, I was privately...Okay, when I won the Tony for Best Book in a Musical, I was really, really happy. ‘Cause the book was the thing that took the most work. So I felt like these people had acknowledged our work. But for the business, everybody wants to win Best Musical, to keep the play open. I hate to admit I was proud, I was totally okay with it. And it was weird, man, ‘cause I was at odds with everybody else, cause everybody else was so hungry for the Best Musical thing, and I was happy, and I felt guilty for being happy. Even at our Tony after-party, I remember everyone was kind of bummed, and I’m like: I won a fucking Tony! I’m sorry that I’m bumming you out, but I mean...sorry you didn’t win. That’s how I felt.

When Spike Lee came to do the movie with you guys, what was the general feeling?
Stew: To me? That was the lord. I could look at every other musical going on that year, and go: okay, fine, you got what you got, but you know, a hundred years from now when someone’s trying to figure out what the hell is going on with America…

They can look back at this.
Stew: They look at it and see it and see it.

Spike, looking at the body of your work, how do you feel this fits into it?
SL: Perfectly. People tend to concentrate on Do the Right Thing being the focus of my worldview, but I think that if one takes time to look at it, the body of work also includes documentaries. Jim Brown: All American, When the Levees Broke, right? But this shows the vastness of the African American experience. That it’s not one-note, it’s not monolithic. I don’t think that we should disregard the brothers and sisters that are--because of whatever circumstances--livin’ in the ghetto. At the same time, I don’t think that…

...We should disregard the stories of the middle class.
SL: Yeah, we should not ridicule ourselves because of how we talk, or where we went to school, or how we live. I mean: there’s room for everybody.
Stew: Yeah, and he’s been doin’ it though, since the beginning. She’s Gotta Have It. School Days especially. People trip, like: what, a movie? Black college? A fraternity? He’s been doing it for a long time. This is just the next one.