*Acclaimed director Spike Lee was recently honored with the 2008 Behind the Lens Award, presented by Chrysler.

      More than 400 of Lee’s closest friends came out to Beverly Hills to celebrate the celebrated and often controversial director, including his good friends composer Rosie Perez, Terence Blanchard, and Delroy Lindo.

      In addition to the award, the Chrysler Foundation will donate $25,000 to Lee's alma mater, Morehouse College to benefit the Morehouse College School of Sports Journalism, a program launched with the help of Lee to expand the field of sports journalism for African American students.

      “I’m touched,” Lee said of receiving the honor. “It’s great to see all these people that have been with me these last 20-something years and 21 feature films. It’s ... a big family reunion.”

      “Twenty-five years ago, we did not know who Spike Lee was,” Frank Fountain (Chrysler's Senior Vice President, External Affairs and Public Policy) said of the famed director. “The movie industry back then was different. Twenty-five years later, it’s tough to imagine this industry today without Spike Lee. Spike has become a legend in that period of time and it’s because what he's brought to the table. He addresses issues that others have strayed away from, and our society is richer because of that.”

      Lee is the sixth recipient of the trailblazing award, and is now in the company of industry legends who’ve received the Behind the Lens honor, such as Ruben Cannon, Gordon Parks, and Melvin Van Peebles.

      “Chrysler believes in lifting those in society that have not had a chance and opportunities to fully realize their talent," said Fountain. We believe that until more of us are able to do that, we will have fewer and fewer people, especially of color, who are able to experience what we think, are products that are also influenced by culture.”

     Lee, the director of groundbreaking films “She’s Gotta Have It,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Malcolm X,” is currently finishing up work on his latest film “Miracle at St. Anna.” The film, based on the novel by James McBride, is expected to hit theaters in mid-October, and stars Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alanzo, Kerry Washington, and John Leguizamo.

      “It’s my first World War II film,” Lee told reporters. “It’s about the Buffalo Soldiers, the black soldiers, caught in Italy against the Nazis and the Fascists. It’s epic – brothers in Italy, kickin’ Nazi a$$.”

      “[These] young, up-and-coming actors,” Fountain said of the cast, “we’ll learn more about because Spike is giving them a chance to demonstrate their talents in a way that they may not have were it not for Spike Lee behind the lens. What that does is communicate to our young people that there are opportunities and there is power in positions and roles and jobs behind the lens that can influence the direction of what happens in front of the lens.”

      “My brothers and I always loved war films, but ‘we’ weren’t always in them,’” Lee said of his motivation to make the film. “But one of the main reasons I wanted to do this was, World War II [was] the last war that the United States was right about. People were not divided about going to war against Japan and Italy and Germany.”

      “And these guys talk about how they felt more free in Italy than they did in their own country,” he continued. “A lot of people don’t know that in World War II, German POWs were being sent back to America, and they were imprisoned on the same camps that the black soldiers were being trained in the South. In those camps, the Nazi POWs got better housing, better food, and better [healthcare] than the Negro soldiers that were being trained to kill these [men].”

      Always avant-garde, Lee is once again using the big screen to tell an African American story that didn’t make it into the history books. And while Lee is known for doing just that, he admitted that it is getting more difficult to get his movies made than when he first started out.

      “It’s much more difficult,” Lee said. “I couldn’t get the money for [‘Miracle at St. Anna’] and this is coming off my biggest hit ever, ‘Inside Man.’ I couldn’t get the money for my James Brown film; couldn’t get the money for the LA Riots film. Now if I had been doing some ‘cooning and buffoonery, I could get all the money I want.”

      When EUR’s Lee Bailey asked the famed director about his take on how Tyler Perry is succeeding in getting his films made, Lee declined to comment and just added that the fact that the industry is producing more and more black filmmakers is actually making it harder to get funding and support.

      “This is not 1986, where there was an event every time,” Lee said. “There was an event with ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ came out – and ‘Boyz N the Hood,’ ‘Do the Right Thing,’ or ‘Hollywood Shuffle’. Every week there’s a black film coming out. It’s not an event anymore.”

      Ironically, it seems that Lee’s pioneering spirit – the reason he’s been honored – may have caused the industry to become flooded with filmmakers that he inspired.