Lee Butler Tells Gotham Awards Audience STFU, Admits Anger At Whites

Lee Daniels don’t hold no cut cards! “The Butler” director went off on the noisy audience at Monday night’s Gotham Independent Film Awards and later admitted he’d felt some anger toward white folks after doing research for his latest film project.

According to Deadline reports:

The Coen brothers‘ Inside Llewyn Davis won Best Feature tonight at the fourth annual IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards but lost some of the spotlight to presenter Lee Daniels, who made some eyebrow-raising remarks. Kicking off awards season in NYC, the trophy show propelled the CBS period folk music drama and Fruitvale Station, Dallas Buyers Club, and docu The Act of Killing toward the Oscars. The raucous audience at Cipriani Wall Street chattered so loudly during Daniels’ tribute speech to his The Butler star Forest Whitaker that he tried to shush them with a few f-bombs. Gotham Awards 2013 “Forest would like to hear all you talking through my speech, so shut the f*ck up,” admonished Daniels.

Sounds like a little cussing was in order.

It still managed to be a great night for black films with Fruitvale Station taking Best Breakthrough Director for Ryan Coogler and Best Breakthrough Actor for Michael B. Jordan.

Lee Daniels also credited Forest Whitaker with helping him deal with his “angry black man” issue:

After telling the Gothams crowd to STFU, Daniels shared high praise for friend and collaborator Whitaker. “When I did research for The Butler I became very angry at white people. That shit ain’t funny because it’s not funny what happened. … The lesson I learned when I did The Butler was that Forest told me to keep my anger in, to not be a stereotypical angry black man. Because if I were angry and I saw racism, then it became real. I had to step above it and pretend it wasn’t there. How do you tell your 17-year-old son that you can’t go into a 7-Eleven because you’re African-American and a dude? But Forest helped me through that. He taught me a lot.”

Yeah we can definitely relate to everything Lee is talking about, how about you?

Peep some more photos from the awards below:

WENN