The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, presents
BLU-RAY EDITION
The 1986 premier of Spike Lee’s first feature, She’s Gotta Have it, marked the emergence of a powerful new voice in American film: honest, original and distinctly black. Filmed in 12 days on an initial budget of $22,000, this fresh, sexy, romantic comedy created a worldwide sensation that opened the door for a new wave of black filmmakers including John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) and the Hughes brothers (Menace II society). From the moment Nola Darling rises from beneath the bedcovers in her Brooklyn loft and proclaims, “Some people call me a freak,” we know we’re in for something different. Nola is educated, articulate and unapologetically sleeping with three men. Not since Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song has black sexuality been so honestly depicted on the screen - so honestly, in fact, that the MPAA attempted to give the film an X rating. The Criterion Collection is proud to present She’s Gotta Have it in the uncut, unrated form Lee originally intended.
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 / Audio Commentary 1.0 Mono Subtitles: English Main title: 1080p Supplementary material: 480p Laserdisc source
A LEE KE SPI INT JO
SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT Is under exclusive license from MGM Home Entertainment TM ® © 2020 by MGM Home Video. All Rights Reserved. © 2020 The Criterion Collection. All Rights Reserved. Cat. no. CC1381L. ISBN 1-5594-0517-.1 Warning: unauthorized public performance, broadcasting, or copying is a violation of applicable laws. Printed in the USA. First printing 2020.
1986
SPECIAL FEATURES -------- Exclusive presentation of the unrated director’s cut, featuring material censored from the original theatrical release -------- Audio commentary by director Spike Lee, cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, sound designer Barry Brown, and production supervisor Monty Ross -------- Scene deleted from the final cut -------- Outtakes -------- Original theatrical trailer -------- “She’s Gotta Have It” music video -------- Still photo gallery with audio commentary by Spike Lee’s brother, unit photographer David Lee -------- Still photos of She’s Gotta Have It props, paraphernalia and memorabilia -------- NIKE ads featuring Spike Lee and Michael Jordan
1986 88 MINUTES BLACK AND WHITE MONO 1.66:1 ASPECT RATIO
The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality, with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of film. Visit us at Criterion.com
Design and Layout - pineapples101@gmail.com
LD 229
The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, presents
BLU-RAY EDITION The 1986 premier of Spike Lee’s first feature, She’s Gotta Have it, marked the emergence of a powerful new voice in American film: honest, original and distinctly black. Filmed in 12 days on an initial budget of $22,000, this fresh, sexy, romantic comedy created a worldwide sensation that opened the door for a new wave of black filmmakers including John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) and the Hughes brothers (Menace II society). From the moment Nola Darling rises from beneath the bedcovers in her Brooklyn loft and proclaims, “Some people call me a freak,” we know we’re in for something different. Nola is educated, articulate and unapologetically sleeping with three men. Not since Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song has black sexuality been so honestly depicted on the screen - so honestly, in fact, that the MPAA attempted to give the film an X rating. The Criterion Collection is proud to present She’s Gotta Have it in the uncut, unrated form Lee originally intended.
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 / Audio Commentary 1.0 Mono Subtitles: English Main title: 1080p Supplementary material: 480p Laserdisc source
A LEE KE I SP INT JO
SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT Is under exclusive license from MGM Home Entertainment TM ® © 2020 by MGM Home Video. All Rights Reserved. © 2020 The Criterion Collection. All Rights Reserved. Cat. no. CC1381L. ISBN 1-5594-0517-.1 Warning: unauthorized public performance, broadcasting, or copying is a violation of applicable laws. Printed in the USA. First printing 2020.
1986
SPECIAL FEATURES -------- Exclusive presentation of the unrated director’s cut, featuring material censored from the original theatrical release -------- Audio commentary by director Spike Lee, cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, sound designer Barry Brown, and production supervisor Monty Ross -------- Scene deleted from the final cut -------- Outtakes -------- Original theatrical trailer -------- “She’s Gotta Have It” music video -------- Still photo gallery with audio commentary by Spike Lee’s brother, unit photographer David Lee -------- Still photos of She’s Gotta Have It props, paraphernalia and memorabilia -------- NIKE ads featuring Spike Lee and Michael Jordan
1986 88 MINUTES BLACK AND WHITE MONO 1.66:1 ASPECT RATIO
The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality, with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of film. Visit us at Criterion.com
Design and Layout - pineapples101@gmail.com
LD 229
The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, presents
DVD EDITION
The 1986 premier of Spike Lee’s first feature, She’s Gotta Have it, marked the emergence of a powerful new voice in American film: honest, original and distinctly black. Filmed in 12 days on an initial budget of $22,000, this fresh, sexy, romantic comedy created a worldwide sensation that opened the door for a new wave of black filmmakers including John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) and the Hughes brothers (Menace II society). From the moment Nola Darling rises from beneath the bedcovers in her Brooklyn loft and proclaims, “Some people call me a freak,” we know we’re in for something different. Nola is educated, articulate and unapologetically sleeping with three men. Not since Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song has black sexuality been so honestly depicted on the screen - so honestly, in fact, that the MPAA attempted to give the film an X rating. The Criterion Collection is proud to present She’s Gotta Have it in the uncut, unrated form Lee originally intended.
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 / Audio Commentary 1.0 Mono Subtitles: English Main title: 480p Supplementary material: 480p Laserdisc source
SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT Is under exclusive license from MGM Home Entertainment TM ® © 2020 by MGM Home Video. All Rights Reserved. © 2020 The Criterion Collection. All Rights Reserved. Cat. no. CC1381L. ISBN 1-5594-0517-.1 Warning: unauthorized public performance, broadcasting, or copying is a violation of applicable laws. Printed in the USA. First printing 2020.
A E E LE K I SP INT JO
1986
Special Features -------- Exclusive presentation of the unrated director’s cut, featuring material censored from the original theatrical release ------- Audio commentary by director Spike Lee, cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, sound designer Barry Brown, and production supervisor Monty Ross -------- Scene deleted from the final cut -------- Outtakes ------- Original theatrical trailer -------- “She’s Gotta Have It” music video ------- Still photo gallery with audio commentary by Spike Lee’s brother, unit photographer David Lee -------- Still photos of She’s Gotta Have It props, paraphernalia and memorabilia -------- NIKE ads featuring Spike Lee and Michael Jordan
1986 88 MINUTES BLACK AND WHITE MONO 1.66:1 ASPECT RATIO
The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality, with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of film. Visit us at Criterion.com
Design and Layout - pineapples101@gmail.com
LD 229
LASERDISC PRODUCTION CREDITS Producers Executive producer Technical director Production manager Audio commentary editor Audio coordinator/mix Editorial coordinators Videographic design Videographic coordinator Film-to-tape supervisor Film-to-tape operator Jacket Design
Donna Michele Edge and Mary G. Pratt Peter Becker Morgan Holly Antonia Smithson Ben Shapiro Mark C. Brems Holly Willis and Nancy Bauer Erik C. Loyer Julia Jones Maria Palazzola Bill Stokes, Du Art Video, New York Karen Zayer
SPECIAL THANKS This special edition of She’s Gotta Have It would not have been possible without the generous participation of Spike Lee. Thanks also to Barry Brown, Ernest Dickerson, David Lee, Monty Ross, Ricky Gordon, Pat Johnston and Victoria Thompson/EFX Systems, Michael Jordan, NIKE, Inc., Neil Pilzer and Stuart Mann/Motion Picture Enterprises, Anton Salakas, Earl Smith, Ron Stetler/The Tape House, Ursula Williams, Irwin Young/Du Art Film Laboratories.
LEE A SPIKE
JOINT
F
rom the opening credits of Spike Lee’s seminal film, She’s Gotta Have It, viewers in 1986 were able to recognize the presence of an extraordinary talent. For it was Lee, a graduate of the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (which also produced Down by Law director Jim Jarmusch), who brought black cinema back to the forefront of American consciousness, simultaneously reintroducing black characters, reinvigorating an independent mode of production, and creating a new aesthetic. Black film had had an extraordinary presence in America in the ‘30s when director Oscar Micheaux’s “all colored” or “race” films played to large but segregated audiences. By the ‘80s, however, black film was largely a joke. Blacks appeared in Hollywood films as comic relief, either as male, sexless buffoons or as sexually inert mammies. Neither character type touched the other, maintaining an asexuality that offered comfort in the alabaster wasteland of historical misrepresentation. This was a condition that Lee rectified in perhaps the film’s most significant contribution to black cinematic history: real people with real lives, touching. From the beginning, Lee’s plan was to represent the real life concerns of black men and women. As a native of Brooklyn and the son of a school teacher and musician, Lee had been exposed from an early age to the myriad complexities of life. From this grew an unparalleled filmic intelligence, one that rushed past the slower eddies of standard cinema, pushing into unexplored ravines of thought and offering a form of visual presentation we did not know we were prepared to accept. In the darkened cinema space, during the opening sequence, beautiful in its black-and-whiteness, David Lee’s startlingly fresh photographs set the scene (Brooklyn) of Nola Darling’s life and loves. We prepared ourselves for a quiet evocation of complacent youth - not at all what the film turned out to be, but I am writing here of expectations, and what we had grown to expect of black cinema in general. We did not expect anything of Nola Darling, really, except a watered-down version of her forebears. But Nola was different. Nola was different because she was a studied, amused, and distanced subject with a being apart from Lee’s vision, even as he created her. And that is the hallmark of an artist: to create the frame in which a character can exist fully, independently. Nola, then, was the first image of the independent black woman and this image is doubly provocative in being wholly female and entirely sexual. She stands surrounded by a gallery of male characters (including Lee himself as the inimitable, classic, comedic creation, Mars Blackmon) who did not attempt to understand Nola because she interfered, jarred, and messed with their (very shaky) ideas about their own insecure male identity. None
of
this would have come to the fore had Lee not elected to tell his tale in the sparest terms imaginable, a style that Lee, the inveterate filmgoer, inherited from an artistic forefather, French filmmaker Robert Bresson. But Lee’s style is what he terms a “guerrilla style”. It is rough, confrontational, and makes the necessities of a low
budget into virtues. Part of the credit for the film’s incredible visual style must go to Ernest Dickerson, the cinematographer. Dickerson and Lee met at NYU and began working together on Lee’s student film, Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, and the collaboration has continued through all of Lee’s films to date. She’s Gotta Have It is a watershed in American filmmaking, and in Lee’s career, for a number of reasons: it depicts love with very little external torment; it shows youth culture being responsible for itself; and it offers humor without buffoonery. Lee made the film for a song ($175,000 at final cost, including post-production) and as always, ingenuity was the key. This ingenuity has since inspired other filmmakers, low on financing but high on ideas and the desire to continue a tradition. In terms of Lees own career, She’s Gotta Have It demonstrates a certain innocence. Never again would Lee see relationships between men and women (a central motif in his work) with such lyricism. Indeed, School Daze, Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X are marked by a deep, romantic cynicism and watchfulness which Lee did not have in She’s Gotta Have It: his first film demonstrates a certain folly and trust that has since been lost. Sitting in the dark, watching Spike Lee at the beginning with She’s Gotta Have It felt like the beginning of something, something made over, something made new. By Hilton Als JUN 21, 1994
LASERDISC PRODUCTION CREDITS Producers Executive producer Technical director Production manager Audio commentary editor Audio coordinator/mix Editorial coordinators Videographic design Videographic coordinator Film-to-tape supervisor Film-to-tape operator Jacket Design
Donna Michele Edge and Mary G. Pratt Peter Becker Morgan Holly Antonia Smithson Ben Shapiro Mark C. Brems Holly Willis and Nancy Bauer Erik C. Loyer Julia Jones Maria Palazzola Bill Stokes, Du Art Video, New York Karen Zayer
SPECIAL THANKS This special edition of She’s Gotta Have It would not have been possible without the generous participation of Spike Lee. Thanks also to Barry Brown, Ernest Dickerson, David Lee, Monty Ross, Ricky Gordon, Pat Johnston and Victoria Thompson/EFX Systems, Michael Jordan, NIKE, Inc., Neil Pilzer and Stuart Mann/Motion Picture Enterprises, Anton Salakas, Earl Smith, Ron Stetler/The Tape House, Ursula Williams, Irwin Young/Du Art Film Laboratories.
T
EE JOIN
L A SPIKE
F
rom the opening credits of Spike Lee’s seminal film, She’s Gotta Have It, viewers in 1986 were able to recognize the presence of an extraordinary talent. For it was Lee, a graduate of the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (which also produced Down by Law director Jim Jarmusch), who brought black cinema back to the forefront of American consciousness, simultaneously reintroducing black characters, reinvigorating an independent mode of production, and creating a new aesthetic.
filmmaker Robert Bresson. But Lee’s style is what he terms a “guerrilla style”. It is rough, confrontational, and makes the necessities of a low budget into virtues. Part of the credit for the film’s incredible visual style must go to Ernest Dickerson, the cinematographer. Dickerson and Lee met at NYU and began working together on Lee’s student film, Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, and the collaboration has continued through all of Lee’s films to date.
Black film had had an extraordinary presence in America in the ‘30s when director Oscar Micheaux’s “all colored” or “race” films played to large but segregated audiences. By the ‘80s, however, black film was largely a joke. Blacks appeared in Hollywood films as comic relief, either as male, sexless buffoons or as sexually inert mammies. Neither character type touched the other, maintaining an asexuality that offered comfort in the alabaster wasteland of historical misrepresentation. This was a condition that Lee rectified in perhaps the film’s most significant contribution to black cinematic history: real people with real lives, touching.
She’s Gotta Have It is a watershed in American filmmaking, and in Lee’s career, for a number of reasons: it depicts love with very little external torment; it shows youth culture being responsible for itself; and it offers humor without buffoonery. Lee made the film for a song ($175,000 at final cost, including post-production) and as always, ingenuity was the key. This ingenuity has since inspired other filmmakers, low on financing but high on ideas and the desire to continue a tradition. In terms of Lees own career, She’s Gotta Have It demonstrates a certain innocence. Never again would Lee see relationships between men and women (a central motif in his work) with such lyricism. Indeed, School Daze, Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X are marked by a deep, romantic cynicism and watchfulness which Lee did not have in She’s Gotta Have It: his first film demonstrates a certain folly and trust that has since been lost. Sitting in the dark, watching Spike Lee at the beginning with She’s Gotta Have It felt like the beginning of something, something made over, something made new.
From the beginning, Lee’s plan was to represent the real life concerns of black men and women. As a native of Brooklyn and the son of a school teacher and musician, Lee had been exposed from an early age to the myriad complexities of life. From this grew an unparalleled filmic intelligence, one that rushed past the slower eddies of standard cinema, pushing into unexplored ravines of thought and offering a form of visual presentation we did not know we were prepared to accept. In the darkened cinema space, during the opening sequence, beautiful in its black-and-whiteness, David Lee’s startlingly fresh photographs set the scene (Brooklyn) of Nola Darling’s life and loves. We prepared ourselves for a quiet evocation of complacent youth - not at all what the film turned out to be, but I am writing here of expectations, and what we had grown to expect of black cinema in general. We did not expect anything of Nola Darling, really, except a watered-down version of her forebears. But Nola was different. Nola was different because she was a studied, amused, and distanced subject with a being apart from Lee’s vision, even as he created her. And that is the hallmark of an artist: to create the frame in which a character can exist fully, independently. Nola, then, was the first image of the independent black woman and this image is doubly provocative in being wholly female and entirely sexual. She stands surrounded by a gallery of male characters (including Lee himself as the inimitable, classic, comedic creation, Mars Blackmon) who did not attempt to understand Nola because she interfered, jarred, and messed with their (very shaky) ideas about their own insecure male identity. None of this would have come to the fore had Lee not elected to tell his tale in the sparest terms imaginable, a style that Lee, the inveterate filmgoer, inherited from an artistic forefather, French
By Hilton Als JUN 21, 1994
© 2 0 2 0 b y M GM TM ® Home Vide en t o. ainm iolation of applicable laws. t r v Prin All R te a n s i ted E ig g e n i in t hts m opy o R he H c US ese M , or G A. rv M ing Fi ed t m s rs . ro dca tp a
All Rights Reserved. Cat. n o. C C13 81L . IS BN 1-5
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Criterion Collection - Laserdisc Preservation She’s Gotta Have It: Special Edition #229 (1987) (Uncut) [CC1381L] https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/05645/CC1381L/She’s-Gotta-Have-It:-Special-Edition Blu Ray - Region A/B/C DVD - Region All Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 / Audio Commentary 1.0 Mono Subtitles: English Main title: 1080p Supplementary material: 480p Laserdisc source
Artwork Criterion Blu Ray Case - Inlay 273mm x 160mm Standard Blu Ray Case - Inlay 269mm x 148mm Standard DVD Case - Inlay 272mm x 182mm Criterion 4 Page Booklet - Exterior Fold down middle 240mm x 160mm Criterion 4 Page Booklet - Interior Fold down middle 240mm x 160mm Standard 4 Page Booklet - Exterior Fold down middle 235mm x 145mm Standard 4 Page Booklet - Interior Fold down middle 235mm x 145mm Blu Ray Disc Art 115mm x 115mm