Spike Lee is plan­ning to direct a Via­gra ori­gin sto­ry musical

Credit’s due to Spike Lee, now well into his six­ties, for los­ing none of his vital­i­ty as he’s passed mid­dle age. He was out pop­ping cham­pagne on the street in Brook­lyn in the wake of Joe Biden’s offi­cial elec­tion vic­to­ry, and onscreen, he’s made some of his most ripely randy films with the recent Chi­raq, BlacK­kKlans­man, and Da 5 Bloods. Now, he’s one-upping himself.

Today brings the news of Spike’s next direc­to­r­i­al project, a musi­cal about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the cre­ation of won­der drug Via­gra. The Dead­line item that broke the news described the project as a ​“tumes­cent tuner,” a phrase I now have to live with some­one else hav­ing thought of first.

The overnight suc­cess sto­ry con­cerns the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mega-com­pa­ny Pfizer’s inad­ver­tent dis­cov­ery (the erec­tile dys­func­tion-fight­ing pill was con­ceived as an aid for heart-relat­ed chest pain) and lucra­tive release of the mag­i­cal blue bon­er-starter, a nar­ra­tive tan­gen­tial to sim­i­lar sex com­e­dy Love and Oth­er Drugs. This film, how­ev­er, has orig­i­nal songs from the Tony-win­ning team of Stew Stew­art and Hei­di Rode­wald, recent­ly of the Broad­way smash Pass­ing Strange.

For Spike, this could be a return to the all-out, no-holds-barred sex com­e­dy of She Hate Me, the ani­mat­ed sequence involv­ing sper­ma­to­zoa with human faces a pos­si­ble ref­er­ence point for this erec­tion-heavy project. In char­ac­ter­is­tic form, the direc­tor him­self has pre­pared a state­ment includ­ed in the Dead­line item, repro­duced here as written:

“First And Fore­most, I Thank Ms. Jacque­lyn Shel­ton Lee. I Thank My Late Moth­er For As She Would Say Tak­ing ​‘My Narrow,Rusty Behind’ Drag­ging, Kickin’ And Screamin’ To The Movies When I Wuz A Nap­py Head­ed Kid Grow­ing Up In Da Streets Of Da People’s Repub­lic Of Brook­lyn. I Did Not Want To See Corny Peo­ple Sin­gin’ And Dancin’. I Instead Want­ed To Play With My Friends On Da Block, Stoop Ball, Stick Ball, Punch Ball, Soft Ball, Bas­ket­ball, 2 Hand Touch, Tack­le Foot­ball, Coco Lee­vio, John­ny On Da Pony, Hot Peas And But­ter, Crack Top, Down Da Sew­er And Of Course-Booty’s Up. All The Great New York City Street Games That Might Be Sad­ly Lost For­ev­er. My Father, Bill Lee, Jazz/​Folk Bassist,Composer HAT­ED Hol­ly­Weird Movies, Hence­forth And What Not, Me Being The Eldest Of 5 Chil­dren I Became Mommy’s Movie Date. She Was A Cine­file. Thank You Lawdy She Didn’t Lis­ten To My Ongo­ing Com­plaints About Musi­cals. So Final­ly Going Into My 4^th Decade As A Film­mak­er I Will Be Direct­ing A DANCIN’,ALL SIN­GIN’ MUSI­CAL Spike Lee Joint And I Can’t Wait. My Moms Has Been Wait­ing TOO!!! And Dats Da Rodgers And Ham­mer­stein Truth, Ruth.”

Not much more to be said than that.