At the Sundance Film Festival a couple of months ago I was shocked to learn that Spike Lee had a new film there, titled Pass Over. Somehow it had slipped by me, and when a friend of mine saw it I asked him if Spike was actually behind the camera for it, not just a producer or something. Turns out, Spike had quietly shot the stage production of Antoinette Nwandu‘s play Pass Over at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, and turned it into a feature film.
The trailer for the filmed production is here, and it's taking Spike back to the core themes that he built a career on. The play is a modern update of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. The story, much like Beckett's, centers on two men waiting for a third, whiling the day away in endless conversation on a variety of hot-button topics. Lee gets credit for directing the film while Danya Taymor directed the stage production. Here's the synopsis:
Moses and Kitch, two young black men, chat their way through a long, aimless day on a Chicago street corner. Periodically ducking bullets and managing visits from a genial but ominous stranger and an overtly hostile police officer, Moses and Kitch rely on their banter to get them through a day that is a hopeless retread of every other day, even as they continue to dream of their deliverance.
Starring John Michael Hill, Julian Parker, Ryan Hallahan and Blake DeLong, Pass Over hits Amazon Prime on April 20th.
