Spike Lee and the stars of his new film Chi-Raq denounced Rahm Emanuel at the movie’s premiere on Tuesday, hours after the Chicago mayor fired his police chief over a video showing a teen shot 16 times by an officer.
At the New York premiere of the satire about gun violence, Lee predicted that police superintendent Garry McCarthy was “not going to be the only one” punished for how the city handled the case of Laquan McDonald, the 17-year-old whose killing was recorded in a dashcam video.
“Some more heads are gonna roll,” predicted Lee, who built his reputation with films that confront racial and political issues. He and about 150 people, including other members of the film’s cast, joined a march from midtown to Times Square to protest gun violence on Tuesday.
Lee clashed with Emanuel earlier this year when the mayor – a former chief of staff to Barack Obama – summoned the director to complain that the film’s title would hurt tourism.
“I’m not the bad guy, but that’s how he was trying to portray it,” Lee told Chicago Magazine of his meeting with the mayor. “Do I have the guns? Am I the one pulling the trigger? To be honest, he’s a bully.”
Chicago-born actor John Cusack, who plays a priest in the film, suggested at the premiere on Tuesday night that the 2014 video of McDonald’s killing – released to the public for the first time only last week – had been kept away from the public for political reasons.
“It’s very tragic that information was suppressed for an election cycle,” he said.
Emanuel narrowly won a runoff election in April that pit him against Chuy Garcia, a candidate who campaigned against police abuses and gained the backing of black leaders. The mayor is now under scrutiny for what role he may have played in delaying the video’s release.
Cusack also lamented the crisis of gun violence that has racked Chicago for months. “I think that 2,200 people being shot per year, and 500 murders, [are] unacceptable,” he said.
At least 2,300 people have been shot in the city this year, according to statistics tracked by the Chicago Tribune, 400 more than were shot during the same months of 2014. Emanuel called for stricter gun laws after 14 people were shot in one day in September.
Last week, a nine-year-old boy was shot dead in what police say was a targeted gang shooting. The murder has provoked anger among some Chicagoans about Lee’s film, whose plot mechanics are driven by a child’s death by a stray bullet.
Chi-Raq is inspired by the 2,400-year-old play Lysistrata, in which Athenian women withheld sex until the men of Greece end the Peloponnesian war. In Lee’s retelling, women of Chicago’s South Side organize to a similar end, with the motto “no peace, no piece”.
“There’s the saying, ‘Sometimes you’ve got to laugh to keep from crying,’” the film’s lead, Teyonah Parris, told the Los Angeles Times when asked about criticisms of Chi-Raq’s tone.
“While it’s a heightened reality, the truth of the matter is that the scope of killings and murders that we portray doesn’t come close to what’s actually happening in Chicago right now.”
Actor Nick Cannon, who plays a gangster named Chi-Raq in the film, said he and other cast members participated in the march on Tuesday “to get out here and express our pain the right way”.
Lee, Cannon and others referred to tense demonstrations that erupted after the release of the McDonald video in late November, saying they hoped people would protest peacefully.
“I am hopeful that nothing crazy happens, but I’m glad the tape is being released,” Lee told talkshow host Stephen Colbert in November. “This is democracy, and I sometimes don’t think we can pick and choose what America should see.”
The Rev Al Sharpton also appeared at the premiere, saying he thought the firing of McCarthy was “huge”.
“Young people in the long-term will remember what happened in this film and why people why people like Rahm Emanuel must be held accountable,” he said.
Another Chicago-born actor, George Willborn, said that the cast members’ march was meant to urge Chicagoans toward an alternative to the cycle of poverty and crime. “I’m standing with people who believe in hope.”
Catholic priest and activist Michael Pfleger, the man on whom Cusack’s character is based, asked fellow marchers to do more to stop gun violence, saying: “I make a pledge to stop violence in my home, on my block and in my city.”
