Do the Right Thing Ending Explained: Did Mookie Do the Right Thing?
Do the Right Thing setting time?
On June 30, 1989, the writer-director Spike Lee’s celebrated third feature film, Do the Right Thing—a provocative drama that takes place on one block in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, on the hottest day of the year—is released in U.S. theaters.
The block in question is home to Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, the only white-owned business in the neighborhood. Mookie (played by Lee) delivers pizza for Sal (Danny Aiello); he is friendly with Sal’s younger son, Vito (Richard Edson), a fact that angers Vito’s brother, Pino (John Turturro), who resents the Black majority in the neighborhood. As various characters talk and circulate around Sal’s and the nearby Korean-owned convenience store, tensions build to the breaking point, and violence breaks out, with tragic consequences. Among Do the Right Thing’s memorable supporting characters are the neighborhood staples Da Mayor and Mother-Sister (real-life couple Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee); Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), who continually blasts Public Enemy’s rap song “Fight the Power” from his massive boom box; Mookie’s sister (Joie Lee, Spike’s own sister); his Puerto Rican girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez, making her feature film debut); and the smooth-talking radio disc jockey Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson).
Upon its release, Do the Right Thing caused a sensation for its incendiary portrayal of race relations, including specific allusions to some notorious recent events in New York. Some critics, including David Denby (then of New York magazine) speculated that the film would incite Black audiences to anger and violence. In an interview with New York magazine in April 2008, Lee recalled of the controversy: “One of the big criticisms was that I had not provided an answer for racism in the movie, which is insane. And what’s even more insane is people like Joe Klein [who also wrote about the film for New York] and David Denby felt that this film was going to cause riots. Young Black males were going to emulate Mookie and throw garbage cans through windows. Like, ‘How dare you release this film in summertime: You know how they get in the summertime, this is like playing with fire.’ I hold no grudges against them. But that was 20 years ago and it speaks for itself.”
Do the Right Thing: Crash Course Film Criticism #6
Nominated for two Oscars—Best Supporting Actor for Aiello and Best Original Screenplay for Lee—Do the Right Thing was later called “culturally significant” by the U.S. Library of Congress and stands to this day as one of Hollywood’s most notable portrayals of modern-day racial tensions.
How do you explain Do the Right Thing?
Doing the right thing generally means making decisions that are not based on your own personal needs, that don't expand your popularity, or enforce your personal beliefs. It means doing what is best for the greater or common good.
Some examples are:
Maintaining your character when no one is watching.
Focusing on alignment at the expense of short-term profits and conflict avoidance.
Being honest with a client about a product defect that may cause them not to buy from you.
Another example is being willing to terminate those who are great at what they do but are unwilling to stay true to the core culture values and vision of the company. That was what happened to us with someone who I will refer to as “Larry.” Larry was a senior management team member at Carolina Ingredients who was a great example of a silent tumor in the workplace. Larry worked hard and usually produced above-average results. You could even say he was in the right seat on the bus. The problem was his attitude. The core culture values he displayed in the senior management team meetings were not the same values he displayed toward his direct reports. As in many cases, the CEO is last to learn of a leader running rogue. Such was the case with Larry. I didn’t know just how negative of an environment he was creating among his team until much later than I should have. We learned he was undermining the senior management’s processes to build his own agenda within his team, creating a divide among the departments as a result. Rather than explain to his team the reasoning behind certain decisions we made in SMT meetings, Larry often opted to stoke the fire and encourage their confusion and dissatisfaction. In other words, when Larry had an opportunity to do the right thing, he preferred to take another road.
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Spike Lee Explains How ‘Do the Right Thing’ Has Remained Relevant | Anatomy of a Scene
It took me some time to realize that we elevated Larry’s status and position inside the company based on him being a good performer rather than him being right for the role. He was the right person on the bus for an earlier position, but he wasn’t the right person to sit in the operations manager’s seat. He was over his head, and the pressure and demands of a role he was not qualified for were heavier than they should have been.
When people reach a point where they can’t lead or do the job to the level that’s required, they often use a deflection process. This is where they create scenarios that deflect focus from them and place it elsewhere. So rather than see the individual and his shortcomings, you’re looking at another problem because he has created noise around it. That’s why it took me so long to see the reality of Larry’s shortcomings. As a leader, you have to be intentional about listening to others and keeping your pulse on the organization by engaging regularly with everyone throughout the organization.
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Sometimes, as a leader, you are too willing to overlook a person’s personality so long as they’re a good performer. Because Larry was a good producer in the company, I didn’t look at him as objectively as I should have. However, everyone is watching and listening to what the leader does. When I received more complaints about Larry and discovered incriminating emails he had written, I knew if I did not terminate him, it was going to increase negative morale throughout the company. It was not our culture to let someone create a toxic environment, and it was of paramount importance that I prove my dedication to our core culture values.
Doing the right thing is often the hard thing to do, which is why it can be an uncommon outcome. In Larry’s case, we weren’t aligned and while it was a difficult and painful decision to go our separate ways, it was the right thing to do.
Do the Right Thing is a 1989 American comedy-drama film produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee. It stars Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, and Samuel L. Jackson, and is the feature film debut of Martin Lawrence and Rosie Perez. The story explores a Brooklyn neighborhood's simmering racial tension between its African-American residents and the Italian-American owners of a local pizzeria, culminating in tragedy and violence on a hot summer day.
The film was a critical and commercial success and received numerous accolades, including Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Aiello's portrayal of Sal the pizzeria owner. It is often listed among the greatest films of all time.[4][5][6][7][8] In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.[9][10]
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Contents
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production
3.1 Casting
3.2 Filming
4 Reception
4.1 Critical reception
4.2 Controversies
4.3 Awards and nominations
5 Home media
6 Soundtrack
6.1 Track listing
7 In popular culture
8 Related films
9 See also
10 References
11 Bibliography
12 Further reading
13 External links
Plot
Twenty-five-year-old Mookie lives in Bedford–Stuyvesant with his sister Jade, has a toddler son named Hector with his girlfriend Tina, and works as a delivery man at a local pizzeria that has been owned and operated for 25 years by Sal, an Italian-American who lives in another New York neighborhood. Sal's racist eldest son Pino is antagonistic towards Mookie, clashing with both his father, who refuses to move his business out of the majority African-American neighborhood, and his younger brother Vito, who is friendly with Mookie.
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Many distinctive residents are introduced, including friendly drunk Da Mayor; Mother Sister, who watches the neighborhood from her brownstone; Radio Raheem, who blasts Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" on his boombox wherever he goes; and Smiley, a mentally disabled man who meanders around the neighborhood trying to sell hand-colored pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
At Sal's, Mookie's friend Buggin' Out questions Sal about his "Wall of Fame", decorated with photos of famous Italian-Americans, and demands that Sal put up pictures of black celebrities since the pizzeria is in a black neighborhood. Sal replies that it is his business, and that he can have whoever he wants on the wall. Buggin' Out attempts to start boycotting the pizzeria.
During the day, local teenagers open a fire hydrant and douse the other neighbors to beat the heat wave before officers Mark Ponte and Gary Long intervene. After a phone call, Mookie and Pino debate race. Mookie confronts Pino about his contempt towards African-Americans, although Pino's favorite celebrities are black. Various characters express racial insults: Mookie against Italians, Pino against African-Americans, Latino Stevie against Koreans, white officer Gary Long against Puerto Ricans, and Korean store owner Sonny against Jews. Pino expresses his hatred for African-Americans to Sal, who insists on staying in the neighborhood.
That night, Buggin' Out, Radio Raheem, and Smiley march into Sal's and demand that Sal change the Wall of Fame. Sal demands that Radio Raheem turn his boombox off, but he refuses. Buggin' Out calls Sal and sons "Guinea bastards" and threatens to shutter the pizzeria until they change the Wall of Fame. A frustrated Sal calls Buggin' Out a "nigger" and destroys Raheem's boombox with a bat. Raheem attacks Sal, igniting a fight that spills out into the street and attracts a crowd. While Raheem is choking Sal, the police arrive, break up the fight, and apprehend Raheem and Buggin' Out. Despite the pleas of his partner Ponte and onlookers, Long tightens his chokehold on Raheem, killing him. Realizing their error, the officers place his body in the back of a police car and drive off.
The onlookers, devastated and enraged about Radio Raheem's death, blame Sal and his sons. Da Mayor tries to convince the crowd that Sal did not cause his death but the crowd remains stationary. Mookie grabs a trash can and throws it through the window of Sal's pizzeria, sparking the crowd to rush into and destroy the pizzeria. Smiley sets the building on fire, and Da Mayor pulls Sal and sons away from the mob, which then turns towards Sonny's store, preparing to destroy it too. However, a panicked Sonny eventually dissuades the group. The police return to the site, along with firemen and riot patrols to extinguish the fire and disperse the crowd. After they issue a warning, the firefighters turn their hoses on the rioters, leading to more fighting and arrests, while Mookie and Jade watch bewilderedly from the curb. Smiley wanders back into the smoldering building and hangs one of his pictures on the remnants of Sal's Wall of Fame.
The next day, after arguing with Tina, Mookie returns to Sal. He feels that Mookie had betrayed him, but Mookie demands his weekly pay. The two men argue and cautiously reconcile, and Sal finally pays Mookie. Local DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy dedicates a song to Radio Raheem.
Before the credits, two quotations expressing different views about violence, one by Martin Luther King and one by Malcolm X, appear, followed by a photograph of both leaders shaking hands. Lee then dedicates the film to the families of six victims of brutality or racial violence: Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller Jr., Edmund Perry, Yvonne Smallwood, and Michael Stewart.
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Cast
Spike Lee as Mookie
Danny Aiello as Sal
Ossie Davis as Da Mayor
Ruby Dee as Mother Sister
Giancarlo Esposito as Buggin' Out
Bill Nunn as Radio Raheem
John Turturro as Pino
Richard Edson as Vito
Roger Guenveur Smith as Smiley
Rosie Perez as Tina
Joie Lee as Jade
Steve White as Ahmad
Martin Lawrence as Cee
Leonard L. Thomas as Punchy
Christa Rivers as Ella
Robin Harris as Sweet Dick Willie
Paul Benjamin as ML
Frankie Faison as Coconut Sid
Samuel L. Jackson as Mister Señor Love Daddy (credited as Sam Jackson)
Steve Park as Sonny
Rick Aiello as Officer Gary Long
Miguel Sandoval as Officer Mark Ponte
Luis Antonio Ramos as Stevie
John Savage as Clifton
Frank Vincent as Charlie
Richard Parnell Habersham as Eddie Lovell
Ginny Yang as Kim
Nicholas Turturro as Extra (uncredited)
Production
Lee first got the idea for the film after watching the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Shopping for Death," in which the main characters discuss their theory that hot weather increases violent tendencies. He was also inspired by the 1986 Howard Beach racial incident, in which an African-American man was killed; and also the shooting of Eleanor Bumpurs by police.[11] Lee wrote the screenplay in two weeks.[12]
The original script of Do the Right Thing ended with a stronger reconciliation between Mookie and Sal than Lee used in the film.[13] In this version, Sal's comments to Mookie are similar to Da Mayor's earlier comments in the film and hint at some common ground, and perhaps Sal's understanding of why Mookie tried to destroy his restaurant. Lee has not explicitly explained why he changed the ending but his contemporaneous notes compiled in the film's companion book indicate Lisa Jones expressed Sal's reaction as "too nice" as originally written.[14]
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Casting
Lee campaigned for Robert De Niro to play Sal the pizzeria owner, but De Niro had to decline due to prior commitments. Aiello eventually played Sal and his son Rick played Gary Long, the police officer who kills Radio Raheem. Roger Guenveur Smith, who was pestering Lee for a role in the film, created the character of Smiley, who was not in the original script.[15]
Four of the cast members were stand-up comedians: Martin Lawrence, Steve Park, Steve White, and Robin Harris. Lee originally wanted Nunn to play the role of Mister Señor Love Daddy, but later recast him as Radio Raheem. The acting couple Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, who were friends of Lee's father Bill, were cast as Da Mayor and Mother Sister.[11] Perez was cast as Mookie's love interest Tina after Lee saw her dancing at a Los Angeles dance club. Perez decided to take the part because her sister lived four blocks from the set. She had never been in a film before and became upset during the filming of Radio Raheem's death scene.[11]
Filming
The film was shot entirely on Stuyvesant Avenue between Quincy Street and Lexington Avenue in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Production designer Wynn Thomas altered the street's color scheme, using a great deal of red and orange paint to convey the sense of a heatwave. The Korean grocery store and Sal's pizzeria were built from scratch on two empty lots. The pizzeria was fully functional and the actors cooked pizzas in the ovens. During filming, the neighborhood's crack dealers threatened the film crew for disturbing their business there. Lee hired Fruit of Islam members to provide security.[11] Jackson later revealed that he spent much of his time on set sleeping as he has no scenes outside.[11]
Reception
Critical reception
At the time of the film's release, both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert ranked the film as the best of 1989, and later each ranked it as one of the top 10 films of the decade (No. 6 for Siskel and No. 4 for Ebert).[16] Siskel described the film as "a spiritual documentary that shows racial joy, hatred and confusion at every turn",[17] while Ebert lauded it for coming "closer to reflecting the current state of race relations in America than any other movie of our time."[18] Ebert later added the film to his list of The Great Movies.[19] In a retrospective review in 2019, Kambole Campbell of the British magazine Little White Lies noted the film's lasting relevance and called it "a bold expression of love and frustration and care and anger that is so vivid and expressive it feels like it exists in the here and now."[20] New York Times film critic Wesley Morris has called Do the Right Thing his favorite film.[21]
Redhead Kingpin & The FBI - Do the Right Thing .
Some critics were less favorable in their reviews. Dave Kehr of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two stars out of four; while calling the film "amiable", he resented it for employing white guilt and "seeing violence as a liberating symbol rather than a debasing reality."[22] Ralph Novak, writing for People, panned the film as incoherent and having an unclear message and no likable characters: "If Lee is saying that racism is profoundly painful, frustrating and confusing, no one will argue. But this film states the case without offering any insight."[23]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 93%, based on 98 reviews, with an average rating of 9.10/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Smart, vibrant and urgent without being didactic, Do the Right Thing is one of Spike Lee's most fully realized efforts – and one of the most important films of the 1980s."[24] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 93 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "universal acclaim", and placing it as the 68th-highest film of all-time on the site.[25] According to online film resource They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, Do the Right Thing is the most acclaimed film of 1989.[26]
Controversies
After release, many reviewers protested its content. Some columnists opined that the film could incite black audiences to riot.[27] Lee criticized white reviewers in turn for suggesting that black audiences were incapable of restraining themselves while watching a fictional motion picture.[28] In a 2014 interview, Lee said, "That still bugs the shit out of me," calling the remarks "outrageous, egregious and, I think, racist." He said, "I don't remember people saying people were going to come out of theaters killing people after they watched Arnold Schwarzenegger films."[29]
An open question near the end of the film is whether Mookie "does the right thing" by throwing the garbage can through the window, inciting the riot that destroys Sal's pizzeria. Some critics have interpreted Mookie's action as one that saves Sal's life by redirecting the crowd's anger away from Sal to his property, while others say that it was an "irresponsible encouragement to enact violence".[30] The quotations by two major black leaders used at the end the film provide no answers: one advocates nonviolence, the other advocates armed self-defense in response to oppression.[30]
Spike Lee has remarked that only white viewers ask him if Mookie did the right thing; black viewers do not ask the question.[31] Lee believes the key point is that Mookie was angry at the wrongful death of Radio Raheem, stating that viewers who question the riot are explicitly failing to see the difference between damage to property and the death of a black man.[28]
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Lee has been criticized for how he represents women. For example, Bell Hooks said that he wrote black women in the same objectifying way that white male filmmakers write the characters of white women.[32] Rosie Perez, who made her acting debut as Tina in the film, said later that she was very uncomfortable with doing the nude scene in the film:
"My first experience [with doing nude scenes] was Do the Right Thing. And I had a big problem with it, mainly because I was afraid of what my family would think — that’s what was really bothering me. It wasn’t really about taking off my clothes. But I also didn’t feel good about it because the atmosphere wasn’t correct. And when Spike Lee puts ice cubes on my nipples, the reason you don’t see my head is because I’m crying. I was like, I don’t want to do this."[33]
In June 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine placed Do the Right Thing at No. 22 on its list of The 25 Most Controversial Movies Ever.[34]
In the 2021 Cannes Film Festival award ceremony, Chaz Ebert, the wife of the late film critic Roger Ebert, noted that her husband had been appalled that the film had not received any awards from the Cannes jury in 1989, and had even threatened to boycott the festival as a result. While Spike Lee noted that the U.S. press at the time thought the film “would start race riots all across America”. Drawing a loud applause from attending press, he pointed to the continued relevance of the film's story, more than three decades on, saying:
“You would think and hope that 30-something motherf***ing years later that Black people would have stopped being hunted down like animals.”[35]
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Awards and nominations
List of awards and nominations
Award Date of ceremony Category Recipients and nominees Result
Academy Awards March 26, 1990 Best Supporting Actor Danny Aiello Nominated
Best Original Screenplay Spike Lee
Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics 1990 Grand Prix
Boston Society of Film Critics 1990 Best Supporting Actor Danny Aiello Won
Cannes Film Festival[36] May 23, 1989 Palme d'Or Spike Lee Nominated
Chicago Film Critics Association 1990 Best Picture Won
Best Director Spike Lee
Best Supporting Actor Danny Aiello
Golden Globe Awards January 20, 1990 Best Motion Picture – Drama Nominated
Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture Danny Aiello
Best Director – Motion Picture Spike Lee
Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
Los Angeles Film Critics Association December 16, 1989 Best Film Won
Best Supporting Actor Danny Aiello
Best Director Spike Lee
Best Screenplay 2nd place
Best Music Bill Lee Won
MTV Movie Awards June 6, 2006 Silver Bucket of Excellence
NAACP Image Awards December 11, 1989 Outstanding Actress Ruby Dee
Outstanding Supporting Actor Ossie Davis
National Society of Film Critics Awards January 8, 1990 Best Director Spike Lee 3rd place
New York Film Critics Circle January 14, 1990 Best Film 5th place
Best Screenplay Spike Lee 4th place
Best Cinematography Ernest Dickerson Won
The 20/20 Awards 2010 Best Picture Nominated
Best Director Spike Lee Won
Best Supporting Actor Danny Aiello Nominated
John Turturro
Best Original Screenplay Spike Lee
Best Film Editing Barry Alexander Brown Won
Best Original Song "Fight the Power"
Music and Lyrics by Chuck D, Hank Shocklee,
Eric Sadler, and Keith Shocklee
American Film Institute lists
AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
"Fight the Power" – No. 40
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – No. 96
Home media
Do the Right Thing was released on VHS after its theatrical run, and on DVD by The Criterion Collection on February 20, 2001.[37] It was released on Blu-ray on June 30, 2009, for the 20th anniversary. A special edition Blu-ray with a 4K restoration of the film was released by The Criterion Collection on July 23, 2019, for the film's 30th anniversary.[38]
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Soundtrack
The film's score (composed and partially performed by jazz musician Bill Lee, father of Spike Lee) was released in early July 1989 while the soundtrack was released in late June 1989 on Columbia Records and Motown Records, respectively. The soundtrack was successful, reaching the number eleven spot on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and peaking at sixty-eight on the Billboard 200.[39]
On the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart, the Perri track "Feel So Good" reached the fifty-first spot, while Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" reached number twenty, and Guy's "My Fantasy" went all the way to the top spot. "My Fantasy" also reached number six on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales chart, and sixty-two on Billboard's Hot 100. "Fight the Power" also charted high on the Hot Dance Music chart, peaking at number three, and topped the Hot Rap Singles chart.[40][41]
Do the Right Thing: Original Motion Picture Score
Film score by Bill Lee
Released 1989
Recorded December 12, 1988 – December 16, 1988
Genre Film score
Length 35:36
Label Columbia
Producer Spike Lee (exec.)
Track listing
Do the Right Thing: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Soundtrack album by Various artists
Released June 23, 1989[42]
Genre Soundtrack
Length 53:14
Label Motown Records
Producer Gregory "Sugar Bear" Elliott (exec.), Ted Hopkins (exec.), Mark Kibble (exec.), Spike Lee (exec.), Johnny Mercer (exec.)
Singles from Do the Right Thing: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
"Fight the Power"
Released: July 4, 1989[42]
No. Title Music Producer(s) Length
1. "Fight the Power" Public Enemy Hank Shocklee, Carl Ryder, Eric Sadler 5:23
2. "My Fantasy" Teddy Riley, Guy Teddy Riley, Gene Griffin 4:57
3. "Party Hearty" E.U. Kent Wood, JuJu House 4:43
4. "Can't Stand It" Steel Pulse David R. Hinds, Sidney Mills 5:06
5. "Why Don't We Try?" Keith John Vince Morris Raymond jones larry decarmine 3:35
6. "Feel So Good" Perri Paul Laurence, Jones 5:39
7. "Don't Shoot Me" Take 6 Mervyn E. Warren 4:08
8. "Hard to Say" Lori Perry, Gerald Alston Laurence 3:21
9. "Prove to Me" Perri Jones, Sami McKinney 5:24
10. "Never Explain Love" Al Jarreau Jones 5:58
11. "Tu y Yo/We Love [Jingle]" Rubén Blades Blades 5:12
In popular culture
In 1990, the film was parodied in a sketch on In Living Color.[43] Many television series have parodied the trash can scene, including The Boondocks and Bob's Burgers.[44]
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The scene where Buggin' Out confronts the white Celtics fan about scuffing his Air Jordans is parodied in the music video for the 2008 Nelly song "Stepped on My J'z".[45]
In 2016, Air Jordan released a special Radio Raheem sneaker.[46]
In 2014, the film's 25th anniversary, Barack and Michelle Obama praised the film, and said they went to see it together on their first date.[47][48][49] This was later referenced in the 2016 film Southside with You where Barack discusses Mookie's motives with a white colleague after seeing the film.
Related films
Officers Gary Long & Mark Ponte return in Jungle Fever (1991). In Lee's 2006 film, Inside Man, the police provide Sal's pizza to the hostages.[50]
Mookie makes another appearance in the 2012 film Red Hook Summer, where he is shown delivering pizzas. According to Lee, Sal took the insurance money from his burned pizzeria and reopened the restaurant in Red Hook. He then rehired Mookie, agreeing to include black celebrities on his Wall of Fame.[51]
In the second season of Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, based on the film of the same name, Rosie Perez returns to portray Tina once more and it is revealed that not only is she the mother of Mars Blackmon (Anthony Ramos), but that Mookie is Blackmon's biological father.
How long did it take to make Do the Right Thing?
Universal is pulling out all the stops for the 30th anniversary of the release of Spike Lee’s masterpiece 'Do the Right Thing,' bringing the new 4K restoration of the lauded racial drama to theaters on June 28 and to select one-day only showings on June 30, the actual day of its limited release in 1989.
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BY SUSAN KING
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'Do the Right Thing': Spike Lee
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Universal is pulling out all the stops for the 30th anniversary of the release of Spike Lee’s masterpiece Do the Right Thing, bringing the new 4K restoration of the lauded racial drama to theaters on Friday and to select one-day only showings on Sunday, June 30, the actual day of its limited release in 1989.
But 30 years ago this month, Universal was being pressured not to release the film, or at least push the pic back out of the summer months for fear of racial unrest. “Tom Pollock, the president of Universal Pictures, was 100 percent behind the film,” director Spike Lee recalls. “Universal was not afraid.”
Adds Lee, “People forget that Tom Pollock had just went through hell with Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ when he received death threats. So, he could have easily said to me, ‘Spike, I can’t put my family through this again.’ He didn’t do that. Tom Pollock was not scared at all.”
As the drama hits its three-decade anniversary, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Lee, as well as editor Barry Alexander Brown, cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, costume designer Ruth E. Carter and actors Joie Lee, Richard Edson and Steve Park, about Do The Right Thing’s visceral relevance to political debate in 2019 and the fearmongering that met the film before its release.
Several New York film critics, Lee claims, fanned the flames of racial divide with their first takes. “The atmosphere was sparked by the racist reviews of David Denby, Joe Klein and Jack Kroll. These reviews were absolute racism. Racism. Blood was going to be on my hands. ‘Spike Lee is playing with dynamite.’ The film would spark riots,” the filmmaker says.
Joie, the filmmaker’s younger sister, who plays the sibling of Spike’s character Mookie, agrees with her brother. She knew the film was special when it was screened in May 1989 at the Cannes Film Festival. “We all went, and it blew my mind,” she says. “The reception, the ovation.” (In a review from Cannes on May 23, 1989, THR columnist Robert Osborne wrote that the film would trigger intense debate about “whether or not it’s a dangerous flick” and praised the director, saying that the drama “reaffirms Lee’s position as a filmmaker with audacity, courage and ideas.” Osborne also predicted, “Business will be best in the big cities, and Europe will also like it, judging from the reaction here at Cannes.”)
Agile: Do the Thing Right... or Do the Right Thing?
Meanwhile, adds Joie, “back at the ranch [the U.S.], you had white film critics fear mongering about the violence it might incite. They weren’t taking into account that art imitated life, that the film was representational of the sociopolitical and racial climate of the U.S. and, in particular NYC, which was the hotbed of racially motivated hate crimes.”
The racial drama opened over the July 4 holiday corridor in 1989, and, as THR‘s box office reporter noted days later, “At No. 8, Spike Lee’s controversial new feature Do The Right Thing — contrary to doomsayers’ predictions, incited nothing but good business at its 353 outings — took in $3.6 million, for $10,095 a screen. According to a studio spokesman, the film, which deals with racial tensions, played ‘equally well in the black and white neighborhoods.'” The film eventually took in $27 million at the domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.
Set on the hottest day of the year in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Do the Right Thing crackles from the opening sequence of Rosie Perez, in her film debut, dancing to Public Enemy’s pulsating “Fight the Power.”
“The rhythm of the film still has a push to it,” says film historian Donald Bogle, the author of Hollywood Black: The Stars, the Films and the Filmmakers. “Even the opening is interesting because the actual music we hear — it’s just a bit — is the melody of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ which is considered the Negro national anthem. We then jump into Public Enemy and we see Rosie Perez dancing. There’s something that’s in there that just pulls us in right away before we know it.”
Lee’s Mookie is a delivery man from the local pizza joint, Sal’s, owned by the Italian-American Sal (Danny Aiello). John Turturro plays Sal’s volatile racist older son, Pino, and Edson is his younger son, Vito, who is friends with Mookie. The neighborhood is filled with distinct personalities, including the alcoholic Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) and Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), who watches the world from her window. Bill Nunn plays Radio Raheem, an imposing young man who walks around blaring Public Enemy on his boom box and dies when the police get him in a chokehold. Giancarlo Esposito is Buggin’ Out, Mookie’s friend who wants Sal to remove pictures of Italian-Americans from his wall and replace them with black stars. And Perez plays Tina, Mookie’s girlfriend. As the day progresses, racial tensions rise, causing the death of Raheem and the destruction of Sal’s.
Before landing at Universal, Do the Right Thing was originally set up at Paramount. “At the last minute, Paramount wanted Mookie and Sal to hug at the end of the movie,” Lee recalls. “I said, ‘Hell, no fucking way.’ I had a friend who was an executive at Universal. It was a Friday. I called him up and he got the script that day. He gave to it [executive] Sean Daniels. And Daniels read it and gave it to Tom Pollock. Friday, the end of the workday, we’re at Paramount. Monday, we were at Universal.
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“Tom Pollock told me, ‘Spike, make the film you want, but it can’t be a penny over $6.5 million.’ We came in under. It was a 40-day shoot.”
“At the time of Do the Right Thing, we were still pretty young and pretty green,” recalls editor Brown, who has worked with Lee for over three decades, earning his first Oscar nomination for 2018’s BlacKkKlansman. “I remember we did a screening of a film to listen to our sound mix, and Spike invited Jonathan Demme. After the screening, when Spike and I were beginning to talk about what we’d like to do and tweaking, Demme came over and said, ‘You guys are in the big leagues now.'”
Park, who plays Sonny, the Korean owner of a grocery store not welcomed by the community, had just started acting when he went into audition for Do the Right Thing. “I remember walking in the room,” he says. “Spike was there, and I told him I loved his work. After my audition, he told me right there I got the part. He stood up and I gave him a big hug.”
Park recalls two off-the-cuff moments in the film during the riot sequence. “I was grateful to Spike for keeping them in the movie,” he says. “‘You and I are same!’ was a line I improvised after yelling, ‘I not white! I not white!’ And when the cops are driving away with the dead body of Radio Raheem in the back seat, you see my character come up from behind the squad car.”
Edson agrees that Lee allowed the cast to improvise, but added that “he was also very tough. He ran a tight set. I mean, it was loose, but when it was time to work, it was time to work. He didn’t take any shit from anybody.”
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Lee did his own bit of improv involving handling a light in a scene in the back of the pizza parlor where Pino is bullying Vito over his friendship with Mookie.
“Spike goes, ‘Well, why don’t you guys come up with something and see what happens?”’ says Edson. “Just before Spike goes ‘Action,’ he hits the light, so it starts swinging back and forth. John comes at me so hard and so quick, I was completely thrown. John is a real strong actor and he put everything he had into it. Then about 30 seconds into it, the DP says ‘Cut.’ Everybody turns and looks at the DP and he said, ‘We ran out of film!’”
Lee gave cinematographer Dickerson, costumer designer Carter and production designer Wynn Thomas orders that their work had to reflect the hottest day of the year. “Everybody worked in unison,” notes the filmmaker. “I told them in preproduction, ‘When people watch this film, even if they are sitting in a fucking air-conditioned theater, they have to be sweating.’”
Dickerson, who has been a director since the early 1990s, had been working with Lee as his DP since they were students at NYU. “One of my influences in cinematographer is Jack Cardiff,” he says. “His work on Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death — his use of color in those influenced me.”
Dickerson and Lee weren’t going for a documentary feel with Do the Right Thing. “We were definitely going after a stylized feel to get the audience to feel what the characters would be feeling,” says Dickerson. “We were trying to create more of an experiential cinema. We wanted to put the audience right in the middle of the story, and that always dictated how I used the camera and how Spike wanted to use the camera.”
For the destruction of Sal’s and the riot after Radio Raheem’s death, Dickerson brought in friends who were DPs to operate the B and C cameras. “Spike asked me to supervise the storyboarding of it because he was getting really busy pulling together so many elements together,” he says. “I actually worked with Jeff Balsmeyer, who was the storyboard artist. Over a period of a couple of weeks, I sat down with Jeff and I would do thumbnails and then from that, he would do the actual drawings.”
Those storyboards were also used to show the stunt people and special effects what was needed and what the camera angles were, so “everything they were going to use for the fire could be put out of camera range. It was a controlled burn,” explains Dickerson.
Carter, the Oscar-winning costumer designer of Black Panther who began working with Lee on 1988’s School Daze, had many conversations with the director about the costume design: “Because he had very colorful and special names [for the characters] — Mother Sisters, Da Mayor, Mookie — we had a conversation about growing up, about people in our neighborhood and who these people are.”
Carter took notes from those conversations and visualized it: “Sometimes, I do a mood board. With Spike, it becomes a bit more creative. I have done collage work that shows how the characters interact with their neighborhood. So, I will have location photos, as well as ideas for the characters. Sometimes, pictures from fittings. I share with him in mainly fitting photos because sometimes concepts can be very broad. He really engages when we start seeing how were dressing the people.”
Because it was the hottest day of the year, Carter wanted to saturate the colors to “make things pop,” adding a lot of “the styles and fashions of the day had color blocking.” The costumes, she noted, were a “collage of colors and color blocking, so when they went from day to night, those colors would stay very vibrant. Even if you didn’t see the faces, you would see the colors.”
Do the Right Thing is perhaps almost too relevant today. “Here in New York, we have the case of Eric Garner, who was killed with a choke hold,” says Bogle. “We have been through a period where we’ve been told we were living in a post-racial rage, which we never were. And now, it’s rather obvious that the familiar tensions and conflicts are still with us.”
Dickerson feels that in “this America, Trump’s America, things have gotten a lot worse, especially in terms of civil rights, in terms of what people of color are feeling in America. I think in the film, that danger is always on the edge, it’s just outside the frame. I think we’re feeling the dangers that film was highlighting more today than they did 30 years ago.”
Lee had been inspired to write Do the Right Thing based on real incidents that had happened to African-Americans, most notably the death in 1983 of artist Michael Stewart, who died following his arrest by New York police for spray-painting graffiti on the New York subway, and 1986’s murder of Michael Griffith, who was killed when he was hit by a car in Howard Beach after he was chased by a mob of white youths who had beaten him and his friends.
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When he heard of Garner’s death in 2014, Lee called up Brown and said, “’Come on up to 40 Acres. I want to put something on the internet.’ So, Barry came over to my office. We intercut between the real-life life murder of Eric Garner and the murder of Radio Raheem, based on the real-life murder of Michael Griffith. It’s eerie to cut back and forth between Radio Raheem and Eric Garner. It’s like this shit is still happening.”
Needless to say, the drama did not incite riots in the summer of 1989. Do the Right Thing, which was Lee’s third film, cemented him as a major director. He earned an Oscar nomination for his screenplay, and Aiello received one for best supporting actor. The movie was later deemed “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1999.
Then, in 2014, President Barack Obama revealed that Do the Right Thing was the film he and first lady Michelle Obama saw on their first date. Such acclaimed African-American filmmakers as the late John Singleton and Ryan Coogler have been influenced by Lee, who received an honorary Oscar in 2015.
And though he’s had highs and lows in the past 30 years, Lee had one of his biggest critical hits in last year’s BlacKkKlansman, for which he earned a best screenplay Oscar and a best director nomination.
“Spike has an incredible work ethic,” says Joie. “Spike possesses a lot of first-born qualities. He always has something to say on everything; conversely, he can also be a man of few words. Being the eldest, Spike has to shoulder a lot of responsibility. Spike is driven. Spike is a pioneer.”
Thirty years ago, she adds, “I didn’t know that I could improv or didn’t think I could, or trust. But it’s his style to improv and he encourages it. Being directed by my brother, there is a shorthand. He gives you a lot of freedom.”
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