Spike Lee’s ‘Pass Over’ brings the drama of live theater to Amazon Prime

Despite Spike Lee going over to Netflix to reimagine his classic film She's Gotta Have It as a series, the cinema auteur has deep ties with Amazon. He created its first original film, the musical Chi-Raq, and has another project debuting on the streaming provider later next month: Pass Over, a film-play hybrid.

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Lee filmed a 2017 performance of the play Pass Over during the its run at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater. The production takes Waiting For Godot's two-person existentialist setup and stages it in a city, besetting the pair of black leads with a predatory cop and clueless white bystander. It's a recording of a play before an audience, but this isn't local Shakespeare on public access: Lee brings all his deft cinematic flair to frame powerful performances by actors Jon Michael Hill and Julian Parker. The filmed play comes to Amazon Video on April 20th.