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When prompted by a question from Chris Rock, who was seated in the audience, he blurted out a small, clear truth: He said one reason we did Red Hook Summer independently was that he could not get Hollywood to green-light the follow-up to Inside Man -- which cost only $45 million to make and grossed a whopping $184,376,240 million domestically and worldwide, plus another $37 million domestically on DVD sales.

Within minutes, the Internet lit up with burning personal criticism of him stitched into negative reviews of Red Hook Summer by so-called film critics and tweeters. I don't mind negative reviews. That's life in the big leagues. But it's the same old double standard.

The recent success of Red Tails, which depicts the story of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen, is a clear example. Our last film, Miracle at St. Anna, which paid homage to the all-black 92nd Division, which fought on the ground in Italy, was blasted before it even got out of the gate. Maybe it's a terrible film. Maybe it deserved to bomb. The difference is this: When George Lucas complained publicly about the fact that he had to finance his own film because Hollywood executives told him they didn't know how to market a black film, no one called him a fanatic. But when Spike Lee says it, he's a racist militant and a malcontent.

Spike's been saying the same thing for 25 years. And he had to go to Italy to raise money for a film that honors American soldiers, because unlike Lucas, he's not a billionaire. He couldn't reach in his pocket to create, produce, market and promote his film the way Lucas did with Red Tails.

But there's a deeper, even more critical element here, because it's the same old story: Nothing in this world happens unless white folks say it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller -- writer, musician, filmmaker.

Being black is like serving as Hoke, the driver in Driving Miss Daisy, except it's a kind of TV series that lasts the rest of your life: You get to drive the well-meaning boss to and fro -- you love that boss, your lives are stitched together -- but only when the boss decides that your story intersects with his or her life is your story valid. Because you're a kind of cultural maid.

You serve up the music, the life, the pain, the spirituality. You clean house. Take the kids to school. You serve the eggs and pour the coffee. And for your efforts, the white folks thank you. They pay you a little. They ask about your kids. Then they jump into the swimming pool and you go home to your life on the outside, whatever it is.

And if you're lucky, you get to be the wise old black sage that drops pearls of wisdom, the wise old poet or bluesman who says "I been 'buked and scorned," and you heal the white folks, when in fact you can't heal anybody.