"1989 the number another summer" belted out the rap band Public Enemy with Fight the Power over the opening credits of DO THE RIGHT THING. It was a hot summer afternoon in 1989 when a white kid from Portland, Oregon went to see DO THE RIGHT THING not in Brooklyn or Bedford Stuyvesant but the Beverly Cineplex Odeon theater on trendy Melrose and Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles, CA. For two hours, I was mesmerized by Lee's use of color, extreme close ups, Dutch (titlted) camera angles, and mixture of humor and drama as his story of a scorching summer day in Brooklyn, New York unfolded. Black, White, Puerto Rican, Italian, and Korean characters all intertwine until the heat and rising tensions reach a boiling point. For me, this is Spike Lee's masterpiece (better than MALCOLM X or BLACKKKLANSMAN which are both fine films). With DO THE RIGHT THING, Lee paved the way for a new generation of black filmmakers including John Singleton (BOYZ IN THE HOOD), Carl Franklin (ONE FALSE MOVE), and Ernest Dickerson (JUICE) who's was Lee's cinematographer for several of his films including DO THE RIGHT THING.
Lee, who wrote and directed DO THE RIGHT THING, sets his Greek like comedy/tragedy in the Brooklyn suburb of Bedford Stuyvesant where a mixture of different ethnic characters work and live in an uneasy alliance of racial unity. Set in a single, scorching summer day, we are first introduced to Mookie (Spike Lee) who lives with his sister Jade (real life sister Joie Lee). Mookie struggles to make ends meet, trying to support his Puerto Rican girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez) and their young child Hector. The local gathering place is Sal's Famous Pizzeria, owned and run by Sal (Danny Aiello) and his two sons Vito (Richard Edson) and Pino (John Turturro). Mookie works for Sal as their pizza delivery boy.
We soon meet more characters on the block. Buggin Out (Giancarlo Esposito), Mookie's friend, is a Nike wearing firebrand. Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) walks around the streets with his gigantic boom box, blaring Public Enemy's Fight the Power, the anthem of the film. Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) and Mother Sister (Ruby Dee) are the patriarch and matriarch of the block. ML (Paul Benjamin), Sweet Dick Willie (Robin Harris), and Coconut Side (Frankie Faison) sit on the sidewalk under a beach umbrella, a Greek chorus observing daily life in the neighborhood. DJ Mister Senor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) on We Love FM 108 plays the tunes from a nearby building. The stuttering Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) tries to sell a photo of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X together to anyone he can stop. And keeping the peace, however tenuous, are Officer Ponte (Miguel Sandoval) and Officer Long (Rick Aiello).
As the day grows longer, fuses become shorter. Pino's weary of working for his father Sal in a neighborhood that's not Italian. Pino wants Sal to sell the pizzeria. Vito's tired of Pino picking on him. Mookie tells Vito he needs to stick up for himself, irritating Pino. Tina wants Mookie to visit her and their infant more. Raheem brings aggravation with his boom box, upsetting a group of Puerto Rican youths first with his loud music and later Korean grocery store owner Sonny (Steve Park) and his wife Kim (Ginny Yang). The entire neighborhood freaks out when Larry Bird jersey wearing Clifton (John Savage) accidentally scuffs up Buggin Out's new white Nike's. They fear gentrification as the only white guy on the block goes into his brownstone apartment. Mookie gets jealous when he catches Sal and Vito acting nice to his sister Jade. But the catalyst for the film's finale is when Buggin Out complains to Sal that his pizzeria only has photo of Italians like Frank Sinatra and John Travolta on its wall but no photos of black people. Buggin Out tries to organize a boycott of the pizzeria enraging Sal but the locals like Ahmad (Steve White), Cee (Martin Lawrence), Punchy (Leonard L. Thomas), and Ella (Christa Rivers) all like their pizza slices too much to join.
Dusk begins to fall on the neighborhood. Sal starts to close up for the night. Ahmad, Cee, Punchy, and Ella beg for one last slice of pizza. Sal gives in against Pino's wishes. But then Buggin Out and Radio Raheem show up, Raheem's boom box music cranked to the highest decibel. Sal loses his cool and takes a baseball bat to the boom box. Radio Raheem leaps over the counter and attacks Sal, starting a fight that will move outside into the street, starting a tragic chain of events that will end in the unnecessary death of a black man and the destruction of a neighborhood institution.
One of the strengths of DO THE RIGHT THING is every character is flawed, no matter their ethnicity. They all have their faults as well as their good sides. Sal's an Italian American who has set up his livelihood in a black neighborhood. For the most part, Sal gets along with his black customers but Buggin Out and Radio Raheem get under his skin, revealing cracks in Sal's character. Mookie seems like a good kid. He's a peacemaker at times between Sal's racist son Pino and Mookie's friends. But Mookie's not a good father or boyfriend. Tina has to order a pizza to get Mookie to come see her and their son. And Radio Raheem may seem cool with his tricked out boom box but he plays his music too loud, not caring about the others around him. As the film unfolds, the racial divide between the multicultural block is revealed, punctuated by a brief montage in which director Lee has five different ethnic characters spew out racial epithets to the camera, breaking the third wall.
DO THE RIGHT THING can be summed up by two quotes that director Lee shows at the end of the film. One quote is from Martin Luther King preaching peace; the other quote is from Malcolm X condoning violence in self defense when necessary. DO THE RIGHT THING offers both choices and asks its characters and you to choose. The film shows most of the characters going through their lives, trying to get along, in a civil manner. But when overzealous policeman Officer Long goes too far in restraining Radio Raheem "because he had a radio", even Sal's most loyal customers turn on him and his pizzeria, needing to express their outrage at the racial injustice they have all just witnessed. It's Mookie of all people who sparks the riot. Mookie tried to be the peacemaker but it didn't work. His friend is dead. What's it going to take to make people "wake up" as Spike Lee often says. Peaceful protest or throwing a garbage can threw the pizzeria's window.
Director Lee doesn't just nail DO THE RIGHT THING'S racial tensions. From a purely cinematic point of view, Lee and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson make bold choices visually that enhance the film. Lee and Dickerson shoot the characters in numerical groups of four, threes, and twos for dramatic effect. Close ups of characters are shot wide angle, often down low looking up or from up high looking down. The camera is often tilted slightly to the left or right, making the world slightly out of balance. It's the hottest day of the summer in Brooklyn so Lee uses warm colors to give the impression of heat. The Greek Chorus sits in front of fire red brick wall. Teenagers turn on the fire hydrants to cool off, spraying anyone close by. Tina dumps her head in a bucket of ice water. The theater I watched DO THE RIGHT THING might have had air conditioning but the movie screen pulsated with heat both literally and emotionally.
Watching DO THE RIGHT THING again, I didn't realize how many up and coming film stars got their start in this Spike Lee Joint. Martin Lawrence (BAD BOYS) as Cee, Samuel L. Jackson (PULP FICTION) as the neighborhood DJ Senor Love Daddy, Giancarlo Esposito (BREAKING BAD) as Buggin Out, Bill Nunn (SPIDER MAN) as Radio Raheem, and in her film debut Rosie Perez (WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP) as Mookie's girlfriend Tina all have small but key supporting roles in DO THE RIGHT THING. Even Spike Lee who had appeared in his previous two films SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT (1986) and SCHOOL DAZE (1988) was not very well known until his performance as Mookie in DO THE RIGHT THING. Lee would become more famous as an actor in a series of Nike commercials with basketball legend Michael Jordan (directed by Lee) where Lee reprised his goofy character Mars Blackmon from SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT. Although most of the characters in DO THE RIGHT THING are not sympathetic, Mookie is our guide for the day, his pizza deliveries taking us to encounters with the diverse inhabitants of the block he lives on.
Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee (who were married in real life) are the most well known black actors in the film. Davis and Dee are touching as the elders on the block who have seen it all. Danny Aiello, fresh off his performance as Nicolas Cage's older brother in Norman Jewison's MOONSTRUCK (1987), is probably the most familiar face. Like many of the characters in the film, Aiello's Sal is hard to pin down. He's sympathetic at times but then changes with outbursts toward his sons or customers. John Turturro (BARTON FINK) and Richard Edson (PLATOON) as his sons Pino and Vito are excellent, representing both sides of Sal. Turturro could play Pino as a one dimensional bigot but he shows signs of humanity especially when Pino and Mookie discuss their favorite black athletes. Pino could be a better person like his brother Vito if he could just get past his prejudices. Vito is the more easy going brother, the peacemaker between Sal and Pino.
John Savage (THE DEER HUNTER) has a funny turn as the Larry Bird jersey wearing white guy on the block. And Martin Scorsese favorite character actor Frank Vincent (GOODFELLAS) also has a brief appearance as an Italian man caught in the middle of a fire hydrant water fight. Spike Lee's sister Joie Lee who plays Mookie's sister Jade is one of the more likable characters in DO THE RIGHT THING. She gets under her brother's skin when she flirts innocently with Sal and Vito at the pizzeria. Like Pino getting on Vito for commiserating with blacks, Mookie takes Jade aside, expressing his dissatisfaction with Jade getting friendly with the Italian-Americans he works for. Everyone has prejudices that creep out.
As I said at the beginning of this essay DO THE RIGHT THING foretells events happening in 2020 as well as the 1992 LA riots that happened just a few years after DO THE RIGHT THING came out in 1989. Interestingly, when Spike Lee made his film, Lee was reacting to several incidents in New York where black people were either wrongly killed by authorities (Michael Stewart, Eleanor Bumpers) or the infamous Howard Beach incident where four black men whose car broke down in Queens, New York were beaten by a group of white youths after leaving a pizzeria. One of the black men, Michael Griffith, ran out onto a highway to escape his attackers and was hit and killed by a car. Out of these horrible incidents of injustice in New York City, Lee wrote DO THE RIGHT THING. At the time it may have seemed like a New York problem but history has ripped the band aid off to show racism and injustice is a national issue, one that has never really gone away.
Just as I followed Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, and Oliver Stone during their creative periods, Spike Lee was a revelation for me after DO THE RIGHT THING. I couldn't wait to see what his next projects would be. Lee followed up DO THE RIGHT THING with MO BETTER BLUES (1990) starring Denzel Washington as a jazz trumpeter and JUNGLE FEVER (1991) starring Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra dealing with interracial romance. Although both well made, neither film captivated me like DO THE RIGHT THING. By the time Lee came out with his magnum opus MALCOLM X (1992) I had already moved on to the next up and coming directors (John Woo and Quentin Tarantino by that time). I wouldn't rediscover Spike Lee again until his excellent heist film INSIDE MAN (2006) came out with an all star cast including Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, and Christopher Plummer. Spike Lee is the preeminent black director of our time, still making racially and socially interesting films like BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018) and the recent Vietnam drama DA 5 BLOODS (2020) for Netflix.
DO THE RIGHT THING was both praised and criticized when it was released. Many were surprised that a film about racial discord could be so stylized. But that's exactly what captivated me about the film. DO THE RIGHT THING has a powerful social message but it's presented in a creative, fresh, eye popping way. It reminds me of another stylized film about two street gangs that fought it out in the streets of New York -- Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins WEST SIDE STORY (1961). DO THE RIGHT THING is more relevant than ever today. Even as I type, every day Americans of all color and sexual orientation are protesting for a better, more equal future. They are doing the right thing.
