Filmed for about $175,000 on 16mm film in 1985. This was the first of Spike Lee's "joints" to get international acclaim. After it's released he was compared to
Woody Allen routinely.
It played to a packed house at the Cannes film festival and was one of the first films to profile sexuality from an African American woman's point of view.
Nola Darling, played convincingly by Tracy Camilla Johns, was a strong-willed heroine at the center of this urban love comedy. She can't decide among her three "macho" men boyfriends: serious Jamie; selfish Greer; or goffy pip-squeek and bike messenger Mars Blackmon (played by Spike himself). The film does an excellent job of dissecting Nola's dilema and gives the viewer a slice of Black American life that is rarely seen in the movies.
Supposedly, Lee interviewed hundreds of women to get insight into thier collective experiences with life and love. His tactics worked, the character Nola is one hell of a woman, unapologetic and fiercely independant who goes after love exclusively on her own terms.