I’m going to hear it from him if I’m not bringing it,” Lee tells Vanity Fair. “I don’t want my brother to get my ass slapped. Can’t do that. There’s a standard we have.”

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington's "Highest 2 Lowest" hits theaters on Aug. 15 and in a joint interview with Vanity Fair published Thursday, the pair discussed the film's limited theatrical release and how Apple played a big part in getting the film made.

In choosing to adapt Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, Spike Lee set the bar for himself formidably high. That 1963 thriller is one of the Japanese auteur’s finest, a study in stark social contrasts that unfolds in two discrete acts: the first a tense chamber drama set in the hilltop home of a wealthy manufacturer,