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Do the Right Thing
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Do the Right Thing is a 1989 film written, produced and directed by Spike Lee. The film tells a tale of bigotry and racial conflict in a multi-ethnic community in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York on the hottest day of the year. Filmed on Stuyvesant Avenue between Lexington Avenue and Quincy Street, the film stars Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, and John Turturro. Do the Right Thing marks the feature film debuts of both Martin Lawrence and Rosie Perez.
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Encyclopedia
Do the Right Thing is a 1989 film written, produced and directed by Spike Lee. The film tells a tale of bigotry and racial conflict in a multi-ethnic community in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York on the hottest day of the year. Filmed on Stuyvesant Avenue between Lexington Avenue and Quincy Street, the film stars Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, and John Turturro. Do the Right Thing marks the feature film debuts of both Martin Lawrence and Rosie Perez. Samuel L. Jackson plays DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy, an alternative voice of the author to Spike Lee's character.
In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, one of five films to do so in its first year of eligibility. A Criterion Collection DVD of Do the Right Thing has been released. 97 in the Criterion series. In 2007, the American Film Institute listed the film as the 96th greatest American Movie in Film History.
The song "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy is a recurring aural motif in the film, as blasted from a huge boombox toted by Radio Raheem (Nunn). It appears 15 times in the film.
Do the Right Thing has a 100% "Fresh" rating on the critics' site Rotten Tomatoes.
Synopsis
Do the Right Thing is set on a single street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The street is populated primarily by African Americans and Puerto Ricans. At one end of the street is a pizzeria run by the Frangiones, an Italian-American family and a Korean-owned corner store.
The film features a multitude of characters. The main character in the film is Mookie (Lee), a young man who lives with his sister and works as a pizza delivery man for the local pizzeria. Salvatore "Sal" Frangione (Aiello), the pizzeria’s Italian-American owner, has owned the shop for twenty-five years. His older son Giuseppe, better known as Pino (Turturro), "detests the place like a sickness" and holds racial contempt for the neighborhood blacks. His younger son Vito (Edson) is friends with Mookie, which Pino feels undermines their fraternal bond.
The street corner, which the characters populate, is filled with distinct personalities, most of whom are just trying to find a way to deal with the intense heat and go about their regular day-to-day activities. A philandering drunk called Da Mayor (Davis) is constantly trying to win both the approval and affection of the neighborhood matron, Mother-Sister (Ruby Dee). Three unemployed men on the corner...Sweet Dick Willie, Coconut Sid and M.L. continuously crack jokes. M.L. detests the presence of a Korean owned and run market in their black neighborhood, when many in the African American community are jobless. The character of Sweet Dick Willie replies that he will go to the market and that one of them (Coconut Sid/Frankie Faison) "came off the boat", not long ago. Mookie's girlfriend, Tina (Perez), is constantly nagging him about caring for their young son, Hector, and stopping by more often. A young man named Radio Raheem (Nunn) lives for nothing else but to blast Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" on his boombox wherever he goes. He wears a "love" and "hate" four-fingered ring on either hand which he explains in one scene to symbolize the struggle between the two forces, a scene directly lifted from Charles Laughton's 1955 film The Night of the Hunter . A mentally disabled man named Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) constantly meanders about the neighborhood, holding up hand-colored (with marking pens) pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.. Mookie's sister, Jade (Joie Lee, the director's real life sister), and the local DJ, Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) round out the cast of characters.
Buggin' Out (Esposito) makes sure his points are heard by whoever is in ear shot. Upon entering Sal's shop, he notices that Sal's "Wall of Fame" is decorated with dozens of pictures of celebrity actors, athletes, etc. – all of them Italian. Buggin' Out questions Sal about the "Wall of Fame" and demands he place some pictures of black celebrities on the wall (since, he explains, Sal's pizzeria is situated in a black neighborhood and sells pizza to black people). Sal replies that it is his store, he is proud of his Italian heritage, and that he isn't going to put anyone but Italians on his wall. Buggin' Out attempts to start a protest over the "Wall of Fame", but no one will support his protest except Radio Raheem, who got into an argument with Sal about playing his boombox loudly in the store.
Buggin' Out's own angst from gentrification comes to the front when he verbally attacks a white bicycler (John Savage), who accidentally bumps into him without apologizing and unknowingly scuffs his shoe. Buggin' Out begins to harass the man, regardless of the man's apology, telling him to "go back to Massachusetts" (because the man was wearing a Larry Bird Boston Celtics jersey). The small crowd continues to harass him and they unanimously object by exclaiming "Awwwww!" when he replies that he was born in Brooklyn.
Radio Raheem and Buggin' Out march into Sal's and stage a sit-in, protesting that Sal change the pictures on the wall. Radio Raheem's boombox is blaring, as always, Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," at the highest volume possible in lieu of their protest. Sal demands that they turn the radio down or leave the shop, which the two men refuse to do. Reaching his wit's end, Sal snaps and destroys Radio Raheem's boombox with a baseball bat. Radio Raheem's prized possession destroyed, he becomes enraged and begins choking Sal. Vito and Pino jump onto Radio Raheem in attempt to pull the men apart, at which point the other black men in the restaurant join the scuffle. A fight ensues between Radio Raheem and Sal on one side and Buggin' Out and Pino on the other, with Vito and Mookie trying to break it up. The fight spills out into the streets, to a crowd of spectators cheering on the fight. White policemen arrive at the scene and begin to apprehend Radio Raheem and Buggin' Out. Radio Raheem is placed in a choke hold that kills him (a reference to a 1983 incident where graffiti artist Michael Stewart was apprehended for defacing public property and killed by the arresting officer in a similar manner). An underlying issue in this series of arrests is that of six officers present in this mostly black neighborhood, only one officer on the scene is black and the rest are white. Buggin' Out yells angrily "You ain't gonna give a fucking beatin' to Pino, huh? Or Sal!?", and "You can't kill us all!" as he is arrested. Officers continue to beat him from the front seat of the car as they drive him away from the scene.
The fight drew a large crowd of onlookers, all of whom are enraged about Radio Raheem's death. Deciding that the floodgates are going to burst open eventually, Mookie grabs a trash can and, screaming "HATE!", slings it through the window of Sal's restaurant. The angry crowd becomes an angry riotous mob, and rushes into the restaurant and destroys everything within and Smiley starts a fire. The crowd yells "Burn it down!" as the fire spreads.
From there, the mob led by M.L., begins to head for the Korean's market. "It's your turn now, mothafucka!" yells M.L. But Sunny, the owner, tries to fight them off with a broom all the while yelling, "I no white! I black! You...me...same! We same!", trying to explain he is one of them. The mob spares his store, and begins to disperse with Coconut Sid saying to M.L., "Leave the Korean alone! He's alright!"
Firefighters arrive and begin spraying Sal's building as the crowd are held back by riot patrol. The firefighters, after several warnings to the crowd, turn their hoses on the mob, further enraging them.
When it is all over, Sal's pizzeria is burned beyond recognition, while Sal and his two sons were saved by Da Mayor just before the riot started. Smiley, with no one else around to see, wanders back into the smoldering restaurant and, sympathetic to Buggin' Out's cause, hangs on what's left of Sal's "Wall of Fame" one of his pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. shaking hands.
The next day, Mookie, who has been at Tina's, goes to Sal's, where Mookie gets his weekly pay he had earlier been demanding to receive early. He and Sal cautiously reconcile.
The film ends on an ambiguous note due to . The first, from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., argues that violence is never justified under any circumstances. The second, from Malcolm X, argues that violence is "intelligent" when it is self-defense.
Scenes
- 1. Opening Credits/"Fight the Power"
- 2. Summer in the City
- 3. A Slice of Trouble
- 4. Can't Stand the Heat
- 5. Buggin' Out
- 6. Time Out!
- 7. Love Story
- 8. Family Pride and Civic Unrest
- 9. Melting Hearts
- 10. Cooling Out with Tina
- 11. Temperatures Rising
- 12. The Night the Music Died
- 13. Mookie's Revenge
- 14. Aftermath
- 15. Two Views/End Credits
Characters
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Major Characters
Supporting Characters
Minor Characters
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Production
Spike Lee wrote the screenplay in two weeks. The original script of Do the Right Thing ends with a stronger reconciliation between Mookie and Sal. Sal's comments to Mookie mirror Da Mayor's earlier comments in the film and hint at some common ground and perhaps Sal's understanding of why Mookie was motivated to destroy his restaurant. It is unclear why Lee changed the ending.
The film was shot entirely on a real street in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood. The street's color scheme was heavily altered by the production designer, who used a great deal of red and orange paint in order to help convey the sense of a heatwave.
Spike Lee campaigned for Robert De Niro as Sal the pizzeria owner, but De Niro had to decline due to prior commitments. The character of Smiley was not in the original script; he was created by Roger Guenveur Smith, who was pestering Spike Lee for a role in the film. In contrast to the serious nature of the film, three of the cast members were stand-up comedians – Martin Lawrence, Steve White, and the late Robin Harris.
Controversies
The film was released to protests from many reviewers, including Joe Klein in New York magazine; it was openly stated in several newspapers that the film could incite black audiences to riot. No such riots occurred, and Lee criticized white reviewers for assuming that black audiences were incapable of restraining themselves while watching a fictional motion picture.
One of many questions at the end of the film is whether Mookie 'does the right thing' when he throws the garbage can through the window, thus inciting the riot that destroys Sal's pizzeria. The question is directly raised by the contradictory quotations that end the film, one advocating non-violence, the other advocating violent self-defense in response to oppression. Spike Lee himself, however, has stated that only white viewers ask this question. Lee believes the key point is that Mookie was angry at the death of Radio Raheem, and that viewers who question the riot's justification are implicitly valuing white property over the life of a black man. Mookie tells Sal to "Motherfuck a window. Radio Raheem is dead". However, some of the other characters in the film, such as Da Mayor and Mister Señor, disapproved of the riot.
In June 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine placed Do the Right Thing at #22 on its list of The 25 Most Controversial Movies Ever.
Political allusions
The film contains several allusions to then-recent race-related violent acts.
In the scene in which Mookie shows frustration with his sister for getting too close to Sal, "Tawana told the truth!" is spray painted on the bricks in the rear of this shot, referring to the 1987 Tawana Brawley rape incident. Towards the end of the film, at the peak of the riot that ensues after Radio Raheem's death, the gathered characters yell the name of Eleanor Bumpurs and begin to chant "HOWARD BEACH! HOWARD BEACH!" referring to the 1986 Howard Beach incident.
Awards and nominations
1989 Academy Awards
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Danny Aiello (nominated)
- Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen – Spike Lee (nominated)
1989 Cannes Film Festival
- Golden Palm – Spike Lee (nominated)
1990 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards
- Best Director – Spike Lee (won)
- Best Picture (won)
- Best Supporting Actor – Danny Aiello (won)
1990 Golden Globes
- Best Director (Motion Picture) – Spike Lee (nominated)
- Best Motion Picture – Drama (nominated)
- Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture – Danny Aiello (nominated)
- Best Screenplay (Motion Picture) – Spike Lee (nominated)
1991 NAACP Image Awards
- Outstanding Lead Actress in a Motion Picture – Ruby Dee (won)
- Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture – Ossie Davis (won)
1989 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
- Best Director – Spike Lee (won)
- Best Music – Bill Lee (won)
- Best Picture (won)
- Best Supporting Actor – Danny Aiello (won)
1989 New York Film Critics Circle Awards
- Best Cinematographer – Ernest R. Dickerson (won)
AFI's 100 Years 100 Movies
- The American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the American film industry voted it the 96th greatest film of all time in its 10th Anniversary Edition, 2007
National Film Preservation Board
- National Film Registry (1999)
MTV Movie Awards
- The Bucket of Excellence (lifetime achievement award, 2006)
Connections with other Lee films
- In the surreal final scene of School Daze, Dap Dunlap (Laurence Fishburne) pleads with the other characters (and the audience) to "Wake Up!" This exhortation is repeated by Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) at the beginning of Do the Right Thing. The whole 'Wake Up' scenario would go on to appear in numerous ways in Spike Lee's films such as Jungle Fever.
- The child character (Eddie) to whom Da Mayor gives money to buy beer and whom he saves later on, wears a shirt with the inscription 'Da Butt.' 'Da Butt' was a song performed by Experience Unlimited that became popular after the band performed it in the party scene in Spike Lee's School Daze.
- The Air Jordan sneaker scuff scene was originally going to be in She's Gotta Have It, where a complete stranger steps on Mars Blackmon's black and red Jordans.
- Rick Aiello and Miguel Sandoval portray Long and Ponte, two police officers who eventually arrest Buggin' Out and kill Radio Raheem in a choke-hold. Long and Ponte reappear to harass Wesley Snipes' character Flipper in Jungle Fever. Rick Aiello would go on to play a police officer in the final scene in 1995 movie, Clockers which was directed by Spike Lee.
- In his 2006 movie Inside Man, Lee references Do the Right Thing by using pizza boxes that read "Sal's" on the lids.
- In Bamboozled, white television producer Thomas Dunwitty attempts to demonstrate his knowledge of African-American culture by pointing to photos of black athletes hanging in his office and saying, "Look at all the brothers on the wall." Dunwitty also refers to Al Sharpton as "Reverend 'Doo' Sharpton" similar to how John Turturro's character refers to Sharpton.
In popular culture
- President of the United States Barack Obama took his future wife Michelle Robinson to a screening of Do the Right Thing in Chicago, Illinois on their first date.
- The comedic scenes involving the trio of middle-aged black men chatting on the street corner inspired animator Mike Judge to create the television show King of the Hill. He recalls, "I loved the moments of the old guys sitting out there, talking about the Korean grocer. I thought somebody should make a movie like that, but just about my suburban neighborhood."
- The Boondocks (TV series) episode "The Block Is Hot" parodies Do the Right Thing.
- On the Homestar Runner series of animated Flash web cartoons, the Strong Bad Email "4 branches" references it when Strong Bad says, "or throw a trashcan through a plate glass window".
- In the Episode "Miserable" (S1E2) of The Critic, Mookie (wearing a Malcolm X hat) yells "Yo, Sal, I got something for you man!" and throws a garbage can into Sal's window. Sal predictablely rushes out but contrary to normal expectations says "Aw Mookie! You found my trashcan!" and both chuckle in affection and embrace each other in a hug.
- In an episode of Family Guy, Peter says "brothers and sisters fighting is as natural as a white man’s dialogue in a Spike Lee movie," leading to a cutaway to a black customer ordering a pizza and then focuses behind the counter to a character who vaguely looks like Danny Aiello drooling, clawing and snarling at the customer.
- Spike Lee and Do the Right Thing have been honored by the release of special edition Air Jordans. On April 14, the Do the Right Thing Jordan 3 was released. The toe of the Jordan 3 can be seen on the cover of Do the Right Thing.
- In the second season of Futurama, the episode "Mother's Day" sees a robot rebellion instigated by the villainous Mom. During a montage of the resulting carnage, a robotic trashcan leaps from the curb and throws himself through a plate glass window emblazoned with the words "Sal's Pizza".
- In the Space Ghost: Coast to Coast episode "Hungry", Moltar calls a pizza parlor called "Sal's Pizza". There is also a chef named Mookie.
- Canadian-Rapper Kardinal Offishall released a mixtape with Clinton Sparks entitled "Do the Right Thing".
- In the TV series Martin (starring Martin Lawrence, who made his film debut in the movie), the poster for the film can be seen on the wall in his apartment. Also, in the episode "The Hoedown in Motown," Lawrence gets upset and yells "Radio!" as he picks up a trash can and hurls it at a soundproof window, which doesn't break. When questioned about the action, he states "It looked fly when Spike Lee did it in the movie."
- In Living Color had a parody episode with Tommy Davidson spoofing Spike Lee's character Mookie.
- A reference to the film is made in the song "I Think They Like Me" by Dem Franchize Boyz, with the line: "Yeah I switched it up, I got a 9 cuffed tightly, so you better do the right thing, like Spike Lee".
- A reference to the film is also found in Kanye West's song "Good Morning" ("You got D's motherfucker, D's, Rosie Perez.")
- The Cool Kids reference the title of the film in their song, "Pump Up the Volume" when they say "Feels like Summer '89 in Do The Right Thing/Got my big-ass radio walking down the street."
- Common references the film in his song, "Southside" on his album Finding Forever saying "I write to 'Do The Right Thing' like Spike do."
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