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May 30 - June 6, 2004 |
Cinqué Breaks the Lee Mould
Spike's little brother takes a break in Jim Jarmusch's collection of shorts Coffee & Cigarettes
By Angela Baldasssarre
Originally Published: 2004-05-23
Cinqué Lee is cracking me up. It's so hard to get a straight answer about his latest film, Jim Jarmusch's Coffee & Cigarettes, in which he stars opposite sister Joie Lee.
The fifth of six children (that's not why he's named Cinqué), Lee comes from a long line of creative talent. His mother, Jacquelyn Shelton, was an educator whose teaching ranged from art to Black Literature. His father is a composer and writer. Cinqué attended Saint Ann's school for gifted children for nine years, then the School of Art and Design for three years where he studied film, writing, and literature. Older brother, of course, is filmmaker Spike.
"Our parents never encouraged competition among us," says Lee. "We were pretty much individuals on our own. It's not like our parents wanted to form a band together and this person was the leader. They all thought we should learn an instrument. Spike plays the violin, my sister plays the flute, David plays piano, I plays drums. But they encouraged us to do whatever we wanted to do, which was great because at that point at an early age we didn't know what we wanted to do with our lives."
Lee's talent for characterization has gained him a great deal of recognition on both the screen and paper. His short stories have appeared in magazines Pump, Crawl, and Hangover. His script, Floaters, was adapted for Dark Horse Comics. As an actor he's appeared in Spike's Sarah and Horn of Plenty, as a deranged mental patient in Eric McDaniels Occupational Hazard, and as a mad composer in Huggo Wolff (directed by David Nelson), but his most memorable role was as the bell hop in Jarmusch's Mystery Train.
As a filmmaker Lee has portrayed many roles on both sides of the camera, including features Window on Your Present and Nowhere Fast, which he wrote, produced and directed. He was also co-writer and co-producer on Spike's Crooklyn.
In Coffee & Cigarettes, a series of vignettes featuring famous actors sitting around talking, Lee appears in two segments: "Twins" centres on Evil Twin (Cinqué) and Good Twin (Joie) who meet up with a wacko waiter (Steve Buscemi) in Memphis; and in "Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil" he plays The Kitchen Guy who upsets the plans of Jack White and Meg White (from the White Stripes).
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