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In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series each Friday. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.The assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a tipping point for African-American Vietnam War soldiers in this scene from Spike Lee’s latest film, “Da 5 Bloods” (streaming on Netflix). Following a group of veterans who travel back to Vietnam in search of a fallen soldier’s remains (and possibly buried treasure), the movie has a lot on its mind.This sequence flashes back to a moment during the war when the Bloods learned from a radio broadcast of King’s death. The scene is intercut with archival footage of King’s funeral and the uprisings that ensued in multiple American cities. Narrating the sequence, Lee discusses basing it on stories he heard about the vehement response black soldiers in Vietnam had to the news and about how retaliation was considered. He also notes the parallels between that period and the current moment of protest over the killing of George Floyd.Read the Critic’s Pick review of “Da 5 Bloods.”Read an interview with a star of the film, Delroy Lindo.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

My name is Spike Lee, and I’m the director of “Da 5 Bloods.” “This is the voice of Vietnam.” That character you see is Hanoi Hannah, and that’s a real life character. She was the voice of Radio Hanoi during the Vietnam War, and like Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose in World War II, their job was to play music that the American soldiers wanted to listen to. And in between the music, they would start with propaganda. And so this scene is when our five bloods are told over the radio two days after the fact that Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. And this scene is skillfully intercut with archival footage of many of those over 122 cities that were aflame— black folks enraged. We also deal with how the armed forces, the National Guard were sent out to quell the uprising— I’m not going to use the word riot. I use the word uprising. “Negroes are only 11% of the US populations, but among troops here in Vietnam, you are 32%.” I remember that day when Dr. King was assassinated. I was 11 years old, and also the Vietnam War was the first war that was televised into American homes. A little known story is that, when the bloods, the black soldiers in Vietnam heard that Dr. King had been assassinated, when they heard their brothers and sisters were burning down over 122 cities, they were very, you might say, hot. “Be safe.” There almost was a civil war in Vietnam, where black soldiers were getting ready to take up arms, and they would not be shooting at the Viet Cong. “We need to kill some crackers.” I had four screenings of this film for black and Puerto Rican Vietnam vets that they were there. Each one of them confirmed this happened. Thank god it didn’t. “I’m as mad as everybody. All us bloods got a right to be, but we bloods don’t let nobody use our rage against us. We control our rage.” But it was about to— to be the jump off for those black soldiers. “Stand down! That’s an order!” Knowing they’re fighting an immoral war, knowing they have nothing against the Viet Cong. “You’re gonna have to kill me.” But also knowing their brothers and sisters are fighting for their justice, and that’s what this film is about— how we, as descendants of slaves, have fought for this country from day one. The first person that died for this country in a war— the American Revolutionary War— was a black man, Crispus Attucks at the Boston Massacre. So you can make the case that we’ve been more patriotic than anybody. And even today, we’re still being shot down, choked to death, and people are marching all over the world, seeing the gruesome 8 plus minutes of our king, king Floyd’s life. And Black Lives do matter. Black Lives have to matter. That’s what this scene is about. More

The iO theater, a mainstay of Chicago’s comedy scene and part of the foundation of modern improvisation, is closing permanently, its owner said.“This pandemic has made the financial struggle too difficult and I can’t even see the light at the end of the tunnel at this point,” Charna Halpern wrote in an email that was posted on her Facebook page on Wednesday. “Over my 40 years, I have met many struggles to keep going and I did it to keep a place for my community to have stage time. But at this point in my life, I can’t continue the struggle to stay open.”On Thursday, Halpern, who created the theater with Del Close, architects of a style of comedy that influenced Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, the filmmaker Adam McKay (“The Big Short”) and legions more, confirmed that she was not planning to reopen iO after the pandemic subsides.On top of the closure of the theater’s four performance spaces during the coronavirus quarantine, Halpern said, she couldn’t afford the taxes. “The county is continuing to make us pay property tax,” she said in an interview over email. “The mantra from the city is ‘We are in this together’ but the county mantra is ‘You’re in this alone.’”After developing their improv tenets for decades, Halpern and Close opened iO (then called the ImprovOlympic) in 1995 as a permanent space for a style of performance that prized in-the-moment, supportive honesty and a codified three-beat comedic structure. This vision helped inform comedy troupes and artists ranging from the Upright Citizens Brigade to many stars of “Saturday Night Live.” While Close, who died in 1999, was considered the patriarch of improv, Halpern was, by many accounts, the foremother who helped it grow.Her tenure was not without its rocky moments; in 2016, female students accused an artistic director at the theater’s Los Angeles outpost of harassment. Halpern’s initial response did not sit well with them, though she later fired the director and created new avenues to report abuse. More recently, performers of color signed a petition demanding changes to make the theater more inclusive and to decentralize decision making. Halpern responded on June 10, apologizing and saying that she would work to meet their demands.But in that note, too, Halpern, 68, suggested that the theater was in danger of closing. “The future of iO is fragile,” she wrote then. More