NEWSTyler Perry to Spike Lee: "Go Straight to Hell!"
April 20 2011, Published 9:46 a.m. ET
Tyler Perry is angry at his critics and he's focusing his frustration at Spike Lee. According to Box Office Magazine, Tyler spoke out against Spike with some very harsh words on Tuesday during a press conference.
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"I'm so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee," Tyler said during a press conference in Beverly Hills (via Box Office Magazine). "Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, ‘This is a coon, this is a buffoon.' I am sick of him talking about black people going to see movies. This is what he said: ‘You vote by what you see,' as if black people don't know what they want to see."
"I am sick of him — he talked about Whoopi Goldberg, he talked about Oprah Winfrey, he talked about me, he talked about Clint Eastwood," he added. "Spike needs to shut the hell up!"
Tyler, who is promoting his new film, Madea's Big Happy Family, explained that he does get frustrated by the criticism he receives from his own community.
"I was writing about just people and how hard people work to discourage people from seeing my work," he explained of a letter he recently wrote to his fans on his website. "I don't even understand it but this is where the whole Spike Lee comment comes from — the negativity, this is Stepin Fetchit, this is coonery, this is buffoonery, and they try to get people to get on this bandwagon with them, to get this mob mentality to come against what I'm doing."
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"I've never seen Jewish people attack Seinfeld and say 'This is a stereotype,' I've never seen Italian people attack The Sopranos, I've never seen Jewish people complaining about Mrs. Doubtfire or Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. I never saw it," Tyler added. "It's always black people, and this is something that I cannot undo. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois went through the exact same thing; Langston Hughes said that Zora Neale Hurston, the woman who wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, was a new version of the 'darkie' because she spoke in a southern dialect and a southern tone. And I'm sick of it from us; we don't have to worry about anybody else trying to destroy us and take shots because we do it to ourselves."
And Tyler doesn't believe the critics who say his films don't reach other ethnic groups.
"So me being frustrated with it, and then they go on to say that people of other ethnic groups or white people don't go see my movies, and that's all a lie," he said. "I'm standing on stage looking at thousands of people, thousands of faces, with every race represented, and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of just laying down, tired of just being nice and letting them say whatever they want to say however they want to say it without people knowing what the intent really is."
