Dear Spike Lee

So basically Spike Lee doesn't do the right thing?

An unfortunate but common sequence of events, where this:

We never signed any contracts or work-for-hire agreements

...leads to these:

The agency told me that I could publish the work as my own for the "exposure"

I never even got paid the peanuts they owed me

The agency responded by threatening me with legal action and worse

Whenever a client states or implies that "the exposure" will be payment enough, alarm bells should be ringing.

So the agency played hardball but the guy didn't budge, then tried to rip him off? Their bad faith effort seems to deserve punitive damages, I hope he takes them to court.

Whew...I thought this was going to be an indictment of the Oldboy remake. Sure, the original was great, but I was interested in how an American director would handle the material.

That said, this was probably not the kind of controversy Spike Lee needs attached to this project.

side note: Roger Ebert's raving review of Oldboy was what got me to watch the original Oldboy and that spurred a whole new appreciation of independent foreign films for me:

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2005

Would've loved to see what he thought about this one, though Ebert's successor only gave the remake 3 stars

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2013 http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2013

He probably doesn't know what happened. The designer dealt with the agency, not Spike. That's why it's addressed to him.