The 80’s film, School Daze, was about college life on a predominately Black college campus, “Mission College,” but it was also about the ever-present stereotypes and stigmas that still plague society today in regards to skin complexion, race and hair. Well the truth of the matter is that director, Spike Lee, did a great job recreating that tension not just on-camera, but off-camera as well. In order for him to get the best out of the actors, he wanted to create a real life atmosphere that may spark some tension between those who played the high-sadity “Wanna-be” characters and those who played the self-aware, “JigaBoo” characters, so he did something about it.
Spike separated the actors’ living quarters throughout the duration of filming. He had the “Wanna-Be” actors stay in a higher end hotel and the “JigaBoo” actors stay in a less extravagant hotel without as many accommodations and frills.
And that is where the REAL-LIFE tension was probably bred. So much so, that the fight scene we saw during the “Daddy Long Stroke” chant that “Dap” (Laurence Fishburne) and his boys were performing at the Greek show was as REAL as a hundred dollar bill! That’s right, when “Dap” and the fellas started chanting “So just get back, or we’ll kick your Gamma a$$” to the “Gamma Phi Gamma” fraternity, things got really real. A fight broke out between the actors -that was NOT in the script- and Spike apparently told the camera crew to keep filming as the fight continued. Kadeem Hardison revealed that the by the time the step show scene was filmed, the off-camera tension was already on level 10, so all it took was for actor/musician, Branford Marsalis, to playfully grab Tisha Campbell’s hair in the scene for all hell break lose between the light skin versus the dark skin actors as they were exiting the stage during the step show scene. As you can see, they kept that chaotic scene in the movie. That is crazy right?!! LOL.
Check out the fight below and see if you can tell where it got real at…
