Do the Right Thing (1989)
Directed by Spike Lee
Sal is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin' Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.
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14 films that influenced Do the Right Thing
What critics say influenced Do the Right Thing
A flop when released, it's only grown in stature and influence over the ensuing years — for starters, Spike Lee would pay homage to Powell's tattooed knuckles via the character of Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing.
And something in the beautiful camera work of Ernest Dickerson, Lee's customary cinematographer, may recall the opening of "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," or moments from "New York, New York."
As 2001: A Space Odyssey is to Stanley Kubrick and Nashville is to Robert Altman, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is as perfectly representative of a total filmmaking talent as any movie yet made, and one of the great American films.
Like Rear Window to Alfred Hitchcock, like Nashville to Robert Altman, like Playtime to Jacques Tati, Lee’s Do the Right Thing is an undiluted representation of its creator’s artistic command.
Like Rear Window to Alfred Hitchcock, like Nashville to Robert Altman, like Playtime to Jacques Tati, Lee’s Do the Right Thing is an undiluted representation of its creator’s artistic command.
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The accepted comparison, I suppose, would be to Melvin Van Peebles (the early 1970's Van Peebles of "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song") or to Woody Allen, for their comic stance and their work as writer-directors, or writer-director-actors.
Like Rear Window to Alfred Hitchcock, like Nashville to Robert Altman, like Playtime to Jacques Tati, Lee’s Do the Right Thing is an undiluted representation of its creator’s artistic command.
As 2001: A Space Odyssey is to Stanley Kubrick and Nashville is to Robert Altman, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is as perfectly representative of a total filmmaking talent as any movie yet made, and one of the great American films.
Set on one block of New York's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood on the hottest day of the summer, Lee's third and breakthrough film isn't much concerned with romance, but nevertheless shares much in common with Romeo and Juliet.
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"Do the Right Thing" was made in 1989, the period directly before Spike Lee discovered that dialogue is much more effective when characters deliver it to EACH OTHER, instead of directly at the camera; as such, it plays like "Carnal Knowledge" juiced up with racism and other thought provoking subject matter.
So, if I go into the ocean and bite some White woman on her ass, should Spielberg be blamed for that because he made Jaws?