On Monday night, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman electrified the Cannes Film Festival with a comic-tragic retelling of the incredible true-life story of Ronald Stallworth (John David Washington), a black Colorado police detective who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1970s. Riding a razor’s edge tonally, Lee draws a straight line through American history, from D.W. Griffith’s incendiary Birth of a Nation to the racist buffoons battled by Stallworth and his Jewish police partner, played by Adam Driver, to news footage from devastating Donald Trump-era events like the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally.

The morning after his premiere, Lee spoke to Vanity Fair about making Trump a key figure in his film, repudiating the legacy of Gone with the Wind and John Wayne, and what needs to happen to make meaningful change in Hollywood.

Vanity Fair: Why did you want to premiere this movie at Cannes? It’s such an American story.

Spike Lee: Cannes is the world’s greatest film festival, and it aligned with when we finished shooting the film. First, there was no guarantee we were going to get into Cannes. But I wanted this to come out in the summer. I really wanted it to come out around the one-year anniversary of Charlottesville.

Some of the news footage you include in the film—the Charlottesville neo-Nazi protest, for instance—happened after you were already on board the project. How did you decide to incorporate those contemporary events in your 1970s-set story?

I live and breathe where Agent Orange is the president of the United States of America. I had to be flexible. This stuff is happening in the world, and I had to incorporate it into the film to make it fit. It still keeps the narrative going. From the very beginning, my co-writer, Kevin Willmott, and I—once Jordan Peele brought us on, we wanted to connect this film. Cannes asks directors, “What’s the song you want to walk into [the theater] to?” The song we came into last night was the great Temptations song “Ball of Confusion.” It’s also in the film. It’s a great song, and the troubles they spoke about back then, in the early 70s, are still relevant today.

What were your initial conversations with Jordan Peele about getting involved in the film?

He called me out of the blue. I congratulated him about Get Out. He told me the story [of BlacKkKlansman], and the first thing I said is, “Is this true?” He said it is, and he sent me the book. I told him my writing partner and I, Kevin Willmott, we wanted to take a try. They said, “We want to hear your pitch,” so they flew Kevin and I out. We spoke and they said, “Good.” Then we had to re-write a script.

Why do you think he came to you?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to discover why; he wanted a bad motherfucker to direct this, the subject matter. I have to give a love shout-out to Jordan, because he was doing his thing, on top of the world. There was probably a list. There’s no guarantee he had to come to me. I want to thank him for that.

There’s a poignancy in seeing the two of your names on the screen in the same film. A kind of intergenerational connection.

My wife went to Sarah Lawrence. She and J.J. Abrams were in the same class. She was on the board and asked me to speak there. I came, and [Peele] was there. He saw me speak at Sarah Lawrence as a student.