A feud grows in Brooklyn! Michael Rapaport continued his ongoing gentrification battle with Spike Lee, calling the famous director a "s— stain" on HuffPost Live Tuesday, July 22. The stars' public debate over the topic of Brooklyn's shifting population began in the spring when Rapaport slammed an epic rant delivered by Lee back in February.
"Spike lives on the Upper East Side [in Manhattan]," Rapaport, who appeared in Lee's 2000 movie Bamboozled, sniffed of the director while appearing on HuffPost Live in April. "The majority of those neighborhoods that have been gentrified have been abandoned… It's good that it gets better."
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Lee, one of Brooklyn's most famous natives, refused to back down when he caught wind of Rapaport's comments.
"Rapaport doesn't know what the f— he's talking about," he told HuffPost Live in May. "What Michael Rappaport left out… because he's stupid… [are] the people who could no longer afford to live in Williamsburg. Who could no longer afford to live in Fort Greene. Who could no longer afford to live in Clinton Hill."
The Do the Right Thing director, 57, added: "People are being displaced, and they never talk about the people who are forced to live outside of their neighborhoods because of gentrification!"
(In his famous rant from February, Lee said newcomers in the Brooklyn borough should be more respectful towards longtime residents. "I'm for democracy and letting everybody live but you gotta have some respect. You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now s— gotta change because you’re here? Get the f— outta here!")
While Rapaport, 44, had every intention of promoting his new film, My Man Is a Loser, on Tuesday, instead, he spent the vast majority of the segment slamming Lee. "When's the last Spike Lee film you saw?" Rapaport remarked. "Nobody goes to see them s—s." He hypothetically imagined what he would say to the legendary director if they were to ever run into each other face to face.
"I'm going to see him sooner or later," Rapaport said, directly challenging Lee: "I wanna see you say 'You're stupid and your movie sucks' right to my face."
