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In many shots, our great cameraman Ernest Dickerson would put a butane lighter underneath the lens.
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Everybody used their skills to convey that feeling of heat. I wanted people to be sweating from watching this film, even though they might be seeing it in air conditioning. And the challenge we gave the cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, production designer Wynn Thomas, costume designer Ruth Carter: We wanted audiences to feel the heat. It was shot over eight weeks, but it couldn’t look like that - it was supposed to take place in one day. What was the hardest part of making the movie?
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Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing. If each character thinks that they’re telling the truth, then it’s valid. No, as a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. Were there certain characters that you identified with more? I’d wake up in the morning and write three or four hours, then I’d quit, carry on with the rest of the day, and come back the next morning. I had grown up hearing it in Brooklyn: “Do the right thing, do the right thing.”ĭid you write the screenplay in two weeks? I’m a New Yorker, so I know that after 95 degrees, the homicide rate and domestic abuse goes up - especially when you get that week-long or so heat wave.ĭid you have the title from the beginning? The day would get longer and hotter, and things would escalate until they exploded. And I wanted to reflect the racial climate of New York City at that time. I knew I wanted the film to take place in one day, which would be the hottest day in the summer. What was the original inspiration for Do the Right Thing? “It’s hard to make a good film, and it doesn’t happen very often where everything comes together.” “I’m a sports fan - you might say it was a true team effort,” he told us. We caught up with Lee to discuss the making of the movie. Spike Lee Reworking Episode of 'NYC Epicenters' After 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Criticism When Obama related that story to Lee, the director told the President, “Good thing you didn’t choose Driving Miss Daisy.”
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Do the Right Thing stands up today as a piece of art, as a milestone in African-American cinema, and as the movie that Barack and Michelle Obama saw on their first date. Jackson, Bill Nunn, Robin Harris, and Lee himself as the pizza-delivering, trashcan-throwing Mookie. Also on board: Danny Aiello, John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. It was also a gripping human drama with an amazing ensemble cast, from veterans like Ossie Davis and the late Ruby Dee to first-timers like Martin Lawrence and Rosie Perez (who not only stars in the movie, but kicks it off with an unforgettable dance routine to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”). Read the Original ‘Rolling Stone’ Review of ‘Do the Right Thing’ The film was a trenchant exploration of the racial politics of New York City at the time, from incendiary trash-talking to police violence and an ensuing riot - even extending to the graffiti on the wall reading “TAWANA TOLD THE TRUTH.” (Tawana Brawley became a political flashpoint in 1987 when, as a teenager, she was found in a trash bag smeared with feces and with racial slurs written on her body she said six white men had raped her, although a special state grand jury the following year declared that she had fabricated the story.) In a Lacanian analysis of the screen as a mirror of the audience, Lee asserts a step further that the filmmaker is the filmgoer.Twenty-five years ago this month, Spike Lee released his third feature film and, inarguably, his greatest joint: Do the Right Thing, the story of tensions between the local residents and an Italian-American family in the black neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, on the hottest day of the summer. Visually, Lee loves flaring colors and popping juxtapositions, but his idiosyncratic voice derives from simply being Spike Lee-playing his favorite songs, talking directly to the audience when the feeling strikes, amending the arc of the plot to quickly condemn systemic racism-Lee democratizes filmmaking by asserting the filmmaker is not a benevolent god but as honestly human as the viewer: emotionally, aesthetically, logically. Anybody can tell Lee began in music videos, shots galloping along Brooklyn streets to the drums of Public Enemy or through the jungles of Vietnam to the irregular heartbeat of a dying man. You can hear the dialogic difference between Charlie Kaufman and Andrew Niccol, between Aaron Sorkin and John Patrick Shanley, between Spike Lee and everyone. It takes seconds to recognize Fincher’s monochromes, or Burton’s swirls, or Wes Anderson’s pastels.