Do the Right Thing is a 1989 American comedy-drama hood film produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee, who also played the part of Mookie in the film. Other members of the cast include Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, and Samuel L. Jackson. It is also notably the feature film debut of both Martin Lawrence and Rosie Perez. The movie tells the story of a neighborhood's simmering racial tension, which comes to a head and culminates in tragedy on the hottest day of summer.
The film was a critical and commercial success and received numerous accolades and awards, including an Academy Award nomination for Lee for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Supporting Actor for Aiello's portrayal of Sal the pizzeria owner. It is often listed among the greatest films of all time. In 1999, it was deemed to be "culturally significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress, and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, one of just six films to have this honor in their first year of eligibility.
Plot
Mookie (Spike Lee) is a young black man living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn with his sister, Jade (Joie Lee). He and his girlfriend, Tina (Rosie Perez), have a son. He's a pizza delivery man at the local pizzeria, but lacks ambition. Sal (Danny Aiello), the pizzeria's Italian-American owner, has been in the neighborhood for twenty-five years. His older son, Pino, intensely dislikes blacks, and does not get along with Mookie. Pino (John Turturro) is at odds with his younger brother, Vito (Richard Edson), who is friendly with Mookie.
The neighborhood is full of distinct personalities, including Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), a friendly local drunk; Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), who watches the neighborhood from her brownstone; Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), who blasts Public Enemy on his boombox wherever he goes; and Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith), a mentally disabled man, who meanders around the neighborhood trying to sell hand-colored pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
While at Sal's, Mookie's friend, Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito), questions Sal about his "Wall of Fame", a wall decorated with photos of famous Italian-Americans. Buggin' Out demands that Sal put up pictures of black celebrities since Sal's pizzeria is in a black neighborhood. Sal replies that he doesn't need to feature anyone but Italians as it is his restaurant. Buggin' Out attempts to start a protest over the Wall of Fame. Only Radio Raheem and Smiley support him.
During the day, the heat and tensions begin to rise. The local teenagers open a fire hydrant and douse the street, before police officers intervene. Mookie and Pino begin arguing over race, which leads to a series of scenes in which the characters spew racial insults into the camera. Pino and Sal talk about the neighborhood, with Pino expressing his hatred, and Sal insisting that he is not leaving. Sal almost fires Mookie, but Jade intervenes, before Mookie confronts her for being too close to Sal.
That night, Buggin' Out, Radio Raheem, and Smiley march into Sal's and demand that Sal change the Wall of Fame. Raheem's boombox is blaring and Sal demands that they turn the radio down, but the men refuse. Sal, in a fit of frustration, calls Raheem a "nigger," then destroys the boombox with a baseball bat. Raheem attacks Sal, leading to a huge fight that spills out into the street, attracting a crowd. The police arrive, break up the fight, and apprehend Radio Raheem and Buggin' Out. One officer refuses to release his chokehold on Raheem, killing him. Realizing they have killed Raheem in front of onlookers, the officers place his body in the back of a squad car, and drive off, leaving Sal, Pino, and Vito unprotected.
The onlookers, enraged about Radio Raheem's death, blame Sal and his sons. Mookie grabs a trash can and throws it through the window of Sal's pizzeria, causing the crowd to rush into the restaurant and destroy it, with Smiley finally setting it on fire. Da Mayor pulls Sal, Pino, and Vito out of the mob's way. Firefighters and riot patrols arrive to put out the fire and disperse the crowd. After police issue a warning, the firefighters turn their hoses on the rioters, leading to more fighting and arrests. Mookie and Jade sit on the curb, watching in disbelief. Smiley wanders back into the smoldering building and hangs one of his pictures on what is left of Sal's Wall of Fame.
The next day, after having an argument with Tina, Mookie returns to Sal, who feels that Mookie betrayed him. Mookie demands his weekly pay, leading to an argument, before they cautiously reconcile, and Sal finally pays him. Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson), a local DJ, dedicates a song to Raheem.
The film ends with two quotes about violence from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X before fading to a photograph of them shaking hands.
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
- Martin Lawrence as Cee
- Steve White as Ahmad
- Leonard L. Thomas as Punchy
- Christa Rivers as Ella
- Robin Harris as Sweet Dick Willie
- Paul Benjamin as ML
- Frankie Faison as Coconut Sid
- Steve Park as Sonny
- Samuel L. Jackson as Mister Señor Love Daddy
- Rick Aiello as Officer Gary Long
- Miguel Sandoval as Officer Mark Ponte
- John Savage as Clifton
- Frank Vincent as Charlie
- Luis Antonio Ramos as Stevie
- Richard Parnell Habersham as Eddie
- Ginny Yang as Kim
- Nicholas Turturro (extra) (uncredited)
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 Stuyvesant Avenue between Quincy Street and Lexington Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. 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. Four of the cast members were stand-up comedians â€" Martin Lawrence, Steve Park, Steve White, and Robin Harris.
Controversies
The film was released to protests from many reviewers, and it was openly stated in several newspapers that the film could incite black audiences to riot. Lee criticized white reviewers for implying 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. Critics have seen Mookie's action both as an action that saves Sal's life, by redirecting the crowd's anger away from Sal to his property, and as an "irresponsible encouragement to enact violence". The question is directly raised by the contradictory quotations that end the film, one advocating nonviolence, the other advocating violent self-defense in response to oppression.
Spike Lee has remarked that he himself has only ever been asked by white viewers whether Mookie did the right thing; black viewers do not ask the 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 failing to see the difference between property and the life of a black man.
In June 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine placed Do the Right Thing at No. 22 on its list of The 25 Most Controversial Movies Ever.
Critical reception
The film holds a 92% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes based on 66 reviews with the consensus: "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." On Metacritic, the film has an average of 91/100, placing it as one of the top-rated films on the site.
Both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert ranked the film as the best of 1989 and later ranked it as one of the top 10 films of the decade (#6 for Siskel and #4 for Ebert).
Awards and nominations
1990 Academy Awards
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role â€" Danny Aiello (nominated)
- Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen â€" Spike Lee (nominated)
1990 Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics
- Grand Prix (nominated)
1989 Cannes Film Festival
- Palme d'Or â€" Spike Lee (nominated)
1990 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards
- Best Director â€" Spike Lee (won)
- Best Picture (won)
- Best Supporting Actor â€" Danny Aiello (won)
1990 Golden Globes
- Best Director (Motion Picture) â€" Spike Lee (nominated)
- Best Motion Picture â€" Drama (nominated)
- Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture â€" Danny Aiello (nominated)
- Best Screenplay (Motion Picture) â€" Spike Lee (nominated)
1991 NAACP Image Awards
- Outstanding Lead Actress in a Motion Picture â€" Ruby Dee (won)
- Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture â€" Ossie Davis (won)
1989 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
- Best Director â€" Spike Lee (won)
- Best Music â€" Bill Lee (won)
- Best Picture (won)
- Best Supporting Actor â€" Danny Aiello (won)
1989 New York Film Critics Circle Awards
- Best Cinematographer â€" Ernest Dickerson (won)
2010 â€" The 20/20 Awards
- Best Picture â€" (nominated)
- Best Director â€" Spike Lee (won)
- Best Supporting Actor â€" Danny Aiello (nominated)
- Best Supporting Actor â€" John Turturro (nominated)
- Best Original Screenplay â€" Spike Lee (nominated)
- Best Editing â€" Barry Alexander Brown (won)
- Best Original Song â€" Fight The Power â€" Public Enemy (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
Additional AFI titles include:
- AFI's 100 ...Cheers Nominated
- AFI's 100... Thrills Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies Nominated
- AFI's 100 Songs... Public Enemy Fight The Power No. 40
National Film Preservation Board
- National Film Registry (1999)
MTV Movie Awards
- The Bucket of Excellence (lifetime achievement award, 2006)
Soundtrack
The film's score (composed and partially performed by jazz musician Bill Lee, father of Spike Lee) and soundtrack were both released in July 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. 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.
Score
Soundtrack
References
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Aftab, Kaleem. Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It. England: Faber and Faber Limited, 2005. ISBN 0-393-06153-1.
- Spike Lee's Last Word. Documentary on the Criterion Collection DVD of Do the Right Thing. 2000.
- Spike Lee et al. Commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD of Do the Right Thing. 2000.
- Further reading
- Spike Lee; Lisa Jones (1989). Do the right thing: a Spike Lee joint. Simon and Schuster. ISBNÂ 978-0-671-68265-1. Retrieved September 25, 2010.Â
- Mark A. Reid (1997). Spike Lee's Do the right thing. Cambridge University Press. ISBNÂ 978-0-521-55954-6. Retrieved September 25, 2010.Â
External links
- Do the Right Thing at AllMovie
- Do the Right Thing at Box Office Mojo
- Do the Right Thing at the Criterion Collection
- Do the Right Thing at the Internet Movie Database
- Do the Right Thing at Metacritic
- Do the Right Thing at Rotten Tomatoes
- Do the Right Thing at the TCM Movie Database