In 1989, when directorSpike Lee’s explosive Do the Right Thingcame out, my wife and I hurried to see it, unaware that a key scene involvedBrawley. It took place when pizza parlor deliveryman Mookie (Spike Lee) andJade (the director’s real-life sister Joie) talked in front of a brick wallcontaining some graffiti. As the camera retreated, the scrawl became clear. Itread: “Tawana Told the Truth.”
Among Lee’s 20-plusfeature films, Do the Right Thing andMalcolm X (1992) are alone in beingnominated for Academy Awards. The former was nominated for Best Screenplay(Lee) and Best Supporting Actor (Danny Aiello), and the latter for Best Actor(Denzel Washington).
There’s little doubtthis is because most critics feel Lee’s stuff is too honest and toocontroversial. His films bring genuine black culture front-and-center andeffectively pull the covers off many layers of white racism, which is the mainreason I admire his work.
In honor of this year’s20th anniversary of Do the RightThing, Universal Studios has released atwo-disc, special-edition DVD with extras and new commentary by Lee. Meanwhile,the American Film Institute ranked the film No. 96 among the 100 greatestAmerican movies of all timeand it should have been even higher.
So just what makes thismovie so special? Perhaps the best thing is how black people around New York inthe late 1980s identified with its racial tensions, exemplified by the infamousdeath of Michael Griffith, who was hit by a car after being chased onto theBelt Parkway by a young white mob in the Howard Beach section of Queens in1986.
The searing Do the Right Thingwhose opening themesong is Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”takes place on a scorching hotSaturday in a single block of a mainly black neighborhood in Brooklyn’sBedford-Stuyvesant. An eclectic array of black people interact with a fewwhites, including police, and Korean owners of a mini-market. But the focalpoint is white-owned Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, where most patrons are black.
Friction between Sal(Aiello), his sons Pino (John Turturro) and Vito (Richard Edson) and blackcustomers explodes into violence as night falls after Buggin’ Out (GiancarloEsposito) organizes a boycott when Sal again refuses to include black stars inthe photo “Wall of Fame” depicting famous Italian-American entertainers such asFrank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Al Pacino, Sophia Loren and Sylvester Stallone.
In its wake, Sal tellsRadio Raheem (Bill Nunn) to turn off his gigantic boombox in the store. When Raheemrefuses, Sal calls him a racial slur and smashes his radio with a baseball bat.Raheem drags Sal over the counter and beats him as they surge out the door.
A crowd gathers as threewhite cops arrive; Raheem resists when the police try to subdue him. One copgets him in a chokehold with a nightstick and Raheem is killed, sparking ariot. An enraged Mookie throws a garbage can through the pizza parlor’s windowand people rush inside and trash the place, igniting a fire. Firemen arrive andthe cops turn hoses on the black rioters as the pizza parlor burns down.
As the cops handcuffBuggin’ Out and poke him with nightsticks in a police car, the crowd turns onthe Korean market across the street. But after a loud exchangeduring which theowner desperately pleas that he, too, is blackthey leave his store alone.
Vital to Do the Right Thing is its brilliantcast, including the late Ossie Davis as “Da Mayor”; Ruby Dee, Davis’ real-lifewife, as Mother Sister; Rosie Perez, in her debut, as Tina; Samuel L. Jacksonas DJ Love Daddy; Roger Guenveur Smith as Smiley; Martin Lawrence as Cee; JohnSavage as the white owner of a brownstone; and Paul Benjamin, Robin Harris andFrankie Faison as older men discussing the passing parade.
On the DVD’s commentarytrack, the always outspoken Lee notes that “the white audience, they are moreconcerned about the destruction of property, the destruction of Sal’s FamousPizzeria, than they were about the death of Radio Raheem.”
At the end, Lee displayspowerful quotes by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Minister Malcolm X,followed by the names of a half-dozen black New Yorkers killed by white cops inhighly publicized incidents in the ’80s. As the credits roll, my Milwaukee boyhood pal, AlJarreau, soulfully sings “Never Explain Love.”
Despite some criticismfor depicting a neighborhood as drug-free that actually was ravaged by crackcocaine, Do the Right Thing isremarkable. Black New Yorkers seeing it now will remember the time, as willsome whitesbut for different reasons.
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