Happy 20th Birthday, Do the Right Thing!

Dre will appear in 3...2...1...

Love this film. It was #1 pick in the 80's draft.

I found this thread: http://chud.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69059

Super-loaded Blu-Ray coming on June 30th. Must own.

"1989...a summer....."

Might as well celebrate with a Miller High Life and a trashcan through the window.

And yet they gave Crash, a dumbed down heavy handed and preposterous version of Do The Right Thing, Best Picture fifteen years later. Cuz God knows racism was more relevant in 2004.

I'm sure Spike took consolation from Kim Basenger's advocacy during the Oscar telecast. Wasn't awkward at all.

There's never a bad time to slam Crash, IMO, but are the two really that similar aside from the fact that they're about race?

One of the (many) things that makes Do the Right Thing so powerful is that it uses such a small canvas. It's this one tiny pocket of the world where the connections and conflicts among the characters make perfect sense. Crash is bullshit because, among other things, it uses contrived situations to push the characters into interacting. It's as if Haggis thinks that scope can equal importance, while Lee recognizes that it's individuals that count, even when it comes to Big Issues.

Maybe he did...to a point.


NYMAG: Do the Right Thing never won an Oscar.

Lee: Remember what Kim Basinger did? Onstage she said, “The best film of the year is not even nominated, and it’s Do the Right Thing.” I didn’t even know her. But when Driving Miss Motherfucking Daisy won Best Picture, that hurt … No one’s talking about Driving Miss Daisy now.

Okay, so I found Basinger's fist pumping awkward.

To elaborate on why Crash pales to translucent compared to Do The Right Thing (and why they aren't even comparable): so many characters, so many easy character resolutions. It's like Haggis is arguing that all people need is a car crash, or a bad day, (or a lonely slip on the stairs in Sandra Bullock's case) and then empathy will fix everything associated with racial issues. It's neat, easy, clean and designed to make the audience feel better about themselves leaving the theater. They know how to think and feel regarding the characters, the issues, and the "lessons" they've "learned."

Lee, on the other hand, understands that the world isn't black and white but incredibly gray. Even though he denies that the ending is ambiguous (a black mans life far outweighs a piece of property, he says), after showing the movie to my students (none of whom had seen it, which is surprising) they got into a spirited debate about whether Mookie did do the right thing, and that argument is obviously underlined by the picture of X and King pinned on the wall of the burning pizza shop, followed by the dueling philosophy from each.

I think, despite Lee's insistence that there is no intended ambiguity, that's just the director taking one side of his own argument. In this instance, the tale he tells is more important then the point of view he's expressing, which is the mark of a truly incredible work of art that only comes around once in a lifetime.

I've never seen My Left Foot, but all four of the other nominees pale in comparison to Do the Right Thing (only one of them is actually a good film IMHO, but I'm biased against sports movies so I'll accept Field of Dreams in addition to Dead Poets).

Right Thing is one of my favorite movies. If nothing else I'll always feel some gratitude to Kevin Smith for hyping it up enough in various interviews/features that it got me to see it.

And maybe that's why Crash got the Oscar and Do the Right thing did not:

Crash provides a neat, simplistic "Answer", wrapped up in a nice pretty package, like a McDonald's Cheeseburger.

Do the Right Thing can be interpreted as giving no answer at all, or one of two nasty alternatives. It makes the audience work

My own opinion (and it's been a while since I've seen the film) is that Mookie does do the right thing: trashing the pizza parlor means the mob is diverted from beating and/or killing the Italian family. But the end result is a lifetime of good will and memories destroyed, probably for good

I still vivedly remember the first time I watched this on video back in '91, as a young aussie kid who was fascinated by the black experience in America and how utterly blown away I was by it. It's a first viewing experience that has never left me. I remember less than a year later when the LA riots exploded, it all making total sense to me while the adults around me kept shaking their heads.

I need to own this film, never has their been an equal or better filmic treatise on race in the US for my money.

...and fuck I feel old considering it's turned 20.

I bought it on VHS at a thrift store a few years ago and it really blew me away. I think it was the first Spike Lee movie I had ever seen and it lingered in my mind for a long time afterward.

One thing that really impressed me that hasn't been commented on yet is the oppressive atmosphere the film created. It's like I could FEEL the intense heat and the irritation and anger radiating off the screen, and then when the rain came I was relieved. Powerful movie.

I recommend seeing Spike Lee's Malcolm X if you have not already. It is a great companion piece to Do the Right Thing.

See, this is how I felt after I saw the movie, but after watching the interviews with Lee, I actually felt ashamed for having that opinion. I believe Lee when he says there is no ambiguity to the morality of the ending. Radio Raheem is dead, who gives a fuck about Sal's Pizza parlor? Sal's may not have been the most appropriate target for Mookie's rage, but he needed a target none-the-less. I know Lee said it bugged him to this day that people were trying to decide which was worse. In that respect, I think he created an even better sociological experiment. It's not "Which was worse?", it's " I bet you're trying to decide which was worse, and that's fucked up".

I just watched this film for the first time since I rented the Criterion Collection dvd shortly after its release all those years ago.

Wow, does it push my buttons more than ever (because of my time working at my family's convenience store). And sadly, getting my buttons pushed harder doesn't mean that my understanding of anything is any clearer. Shameful to say, but I think my sadness for the pizzeria is stronger than ever. Isn't that sick? Yea, I think it's sick. All of the shouting bouts and arguments I've gotten into with customers (black, white, Native American, Hispanic, Asian) really give me a distorted perspective on the whole thing. All those emotions running high. It doesn't matter what either side is saying. Nobody is listening to anything the other is saying (though I'd like to think that I try).

Was it JUST a pizzeria? Wasn't it JUST a radio? Raheem was fully prepared to strangle Sal to death over it til the cops just come in, kill, and drive off leaving the neighborhood in chaos. Both 'sides' were ready to kill each other. One clump of the mob immediately started to go after the Steve Park's grocery. Just like that. The whole thing is just so fucked up. Really, it's just brilliant.

I think Spike Lee is more sympathetic to Sal than a lot of people give him credit for. The only people that Spike Lee doesn't humanize are the NYPD, and I don't think you can blame him for that, especially in 1989. But yeah, there is sadness to the pizzeria being destroyed. That was a man's legacy. So is it sick to be sad about it? No.

But a pizzeria is a pizzeria. Raheem is dead and he didn't need to be.

I agree with Patrick. It's certainly sad that the pizzeria goes. It happens for no more reason than the death of Radio Raheem. But if you're thinking about the pizzeria more than Raheem or it's all you're thinking about, then that's where something being wrong with you comes into play. I'd also like to think that Lee believes that the Giancarlo Esposito character is a moron, but who knows.

I don't think there's any doubt that Lee is sympathetic to the Sal character. After all, he himself plays key scenes opposite Danny Aiello. Of course, the pizzeria is just a pizzeria. I was just saying that I was surprised that I felt even more for Sal's legacy than I did when I was younger.

Obviously, it's all what-ifs and Lee would've never ended the film this way... but I wonder how audiences would react if there was no police and Raheem had actually strangled Sal to death. It would've been over a smashed radio and pictures not on the Wall of Fame (while not actually being about that, of course). Would roles be reversed? Does it even 'work' that way?

I'm gonna watch this again.

I think to an extent Lee has sympathy, or at least understanding, for almost all the characters, otherwise he wouldn't have given them all believable, complex motivations for how they think and act. What makes the film great is that your own perspective plays such a big part in how you feel about what happens.

This STILL is unavailable on dvd in this country and I cannot for the life of me work out why. I still remember watching this way back in 1991 and it kicking my arse around the block. A real filmic awakening for me, like seeing the righteous anger of a Public Enemy track (who I was also a massive fan of at the time) in cinematic form.

I'm dying to watch it again because I honestly haven't been as affected by a Spike Lee film as I was when I was that innocent 14 year old on my living room floor putting the VHS tape in the machine.

Watching the LA Riots unfold on my TV a little over 6 months afterwards was like watching all that anger that had been threatened in the US pop culture I had been tuned into over the previous few years finally bubble over and make good on its threats. One of the main things that kept coming back to me in the week I spent glued to my television was Mookie with the trash can over his head and it hurtling through Sals window. At the time it seemed almost prophetic.

ETA: and less than a year later I essentially repeat myself. Shit how did I miss my post above???

Having just picked up the Blu Ray not too long ago, I'm willing to run with this.

Which is funny, because I remember living in a poorer neighborhood in Jersey when the movie came out, and for every teenager living there, Buggin' Out was a fucking hero.

Not surprisingly, a lot of those same teenagers, a few years later, were adults that threw parties the night OJ got acquitted.

In the commentary for Bamboozled, Lee says that the Mau Maus (the militant rap group) have their heart in the right place but approach things from completely the wrong direction, and compares them to Buggin' Out in DTRT.

I think that the scene where the biker scuffs his Nike is a play on that, an example of how he may think he's forward thinking but still buys into a lot of the dumb shit that everyone else does.

Buggin' Out was the character that grated on me hard. I see some of him in a lot of my customers, black or not. They are always in a rush to turn anything into racism (or any kind of social injustice) at the drop of a hat. I'll try to explain my actions/words if they ask, as they often demand that I do. But it's usually pointless as nobody really hears anything I say and just use it as a way to keep up the rant.

Too close. Just too close.

Another check off my Top 100 AFI list, a movie that should be shown in every classroom in America. Well, maybe not the Rosie Perez (body double) seduction scene, but all the rest.

 

What a palpable movie. I chose this thread because it's the most recent, but there's a link above to an earlier thread that features an attempt at debate over whether or not Mookie does "the right thing" at the end. Devin tears everyone a new one, good times are had for all.

 

This is world building right here. The movie simultaneously feels like Real Life, U.S.A. while being a heightened reality. I've never been to Brooklyn, but this feels believable. At the same time the use of color (bright reds and oranges, pastels), the dutch angles and the extreme close-ups give everything a sense of hyperbole. Everything is in the face of the viewer, to an uncomfortable degree.

 

Kudos to Spike Lee for playing a rather thankless role. It's not always easy to like Mookie, who is kind of mooching off his sister and neglecting his girlfriend, son, and job, but it's easy to understand him. That's the key word here, understanding, as every character in the movie is given a chance to shine and state their case. Even Pino has his moments of humanity amidst the racism and hate.

 

And the heat, man, the heat. What with the heatwave smothering the nation this last month, and living in the south, I can understand how unbearable it must've been on that summer day in 1989. Ths movie lets you feel it, and even as things spiral into violence and death very quickly at the end I knew the movie had earned and justified every moment.

Edited by Bartleby_Scriven - 8/14/11 at 12:03pm

Beautiful film, one of my favorites, and it's aged so well...

 

except for that Clemens v. Gooden debate. *Single tear.*